BEHIND THE LINES DWIGHT ALRIGHT
BROUGHT TO YOU BY
WITH MICHAEL SMITH
JEFF LOOMIS GUITAR CLINIC
Nevermore guitarist Jeff Loomis took the classic techniques he learned from listening to the likes of Jason Becker and Yngwie Malmsteen and recast them into a playing technique all his own. Wednesday 26 September, Allans Billy Hyde and Schecter Guitar Research proudly present Loomis in a performance/clinic from 7pm at Allans Billy Hyde Camperdown, tickets just $15 online or instore.
REHEARSE/RECORD AT THE LIVEHOUSE
With a backline installed, Sydney Livehouse (the Lewisham Hotel’s auditorium) is now offering independent artists and bands the option of a recorded rehearsal for just $220 including GST for a three-hour session. You have to bring along a USB hard drive to take away WAV files, with a minimum of 20 gig free space, the perfect way to get a demo or even just drum files to take elsewhere for that live feel. For more information or to book a session, call aJay on 0414 590 070.
NEW NEIL YOUNG & CRAZY HORSE Going completely against industry wisdom, Neil Young & Crazy Horse are releasing a second new album, Psychedelic Pill, barely three months after releasing their Americana set, recorded again at Audio Casablanca with Young producing with John Hanlon, whose engineering and mixing credits include records for Stephen Still, Robyn Hitchcock and Cat Stevens, and Mark Humphreys. And, despite being just eight songs, it’s a double-album with an additional alternative mix of the title track – that’s how long the tracks are, truly old school. Knowing Young’s thoughts on the whole CD/MP3 thing, he’s ensured that there’s a vinyl release – a three-LP set in fact. It’s all released through Warner Music Friday 26 October.
SOUND BYTES
The Who’s Pete Townshend will be picking up the Les Paul Award at the 28th annual Technical Excellence & Creativity (TEC) Awards in Anaheim, California at the end of January next year. The TEC Awards honour “outstanding achievement in audio technology and production.” The third album, unimaginatively titled #3, by Dublin’s The Script, was recorded at Sphere Studios in London and produced by band members Danny O’Donoghue and Mark Sheehan with fellow Irish producer Jimbo Barry and mixed by Mark Stent (Coldplay, Muse, Oasis, No Doubt). Old Crow Medicine Show headed into Sound Emporium in Nashville with Englishman-in-California and founding member of Flogging Molly, producer Ted Hutt (The Gaslight Anthem, The Bouncing Souls, Dropkick Murphys) to record their latest album, Carry Me Back. Hutt also mixed the album with Ryan Mall at King Size Sound Labs at Eagle Rock, California, Tom Baker then mastering it at Precision Mastering in Hollywood. Glasgow’s Frightened Rabbit recorded their forthcoming fourth album at the famed Monnow Valley Studio in Rockfield, South Wales, with producer Leo Abrahams (Brian Eno, David Byrne, Grace Jones). Scottish singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, Sandi Thom recorded her fourth studio album, Flesh & Blood, at 16 Tons studio in Nashville, Tennessee with producer Rich Robinson of The Black Crowes. Canadian singer/songwriter Tim Chaisson recorded his new album, The Other Side, at Woodshed Studio with producer Colin Linden (Bruce Cockburn, Lucinda Williams). Vancouver, Canada metal band Bison B.C. recorded their third album, Lovelessness, due in October on Metal Blade, at Soma and Electrical Audio Studios in Chicago with producer Sanford Parker (Pelican, Yakuza, Zoroaster). Irish singer/songwriter Damien Dempsey, who has just signed with ABC Music’s alternative imprint FOUR|FOUR, recorded his latest album, Almighty Love, in Kilburn, London, with producer John Reynolds (U2, Bjork, Seun Kuti). The eighth album, Away From The World, from the Dave Matthews Band, was recorded in Seattle earlier this year with UK producer Steve Lillywhite (U2, The Killers, The Rolling Stones, Peter Gabriel). Tim Whitten (Augie March, The Go-Betweens) recorded the debut album, A Year At Sea, from The Winter People, with Brooklyn NYC’s Peter Katis (Interpol, The National) producing and Rich Costey (The Shins, Bloc Party) mixing. The forthcoming fourth album, Atlas, from Parkway Drive, was recorded in Los Angeles with producer Matt Hyde (Slayer, Hatebreed). btl@streetpress.com.au 58 • THE DRUM MEDIA
For album number 26, 3 Pears, Dwight Yoakam kept things real, though he’s not looking to be retro, as he tells Michael Smith.
B
orn in Kentucky, it was in Los Angeles rather than Nashville that singer/songwriter Dwight Yoakam’s mix of traditional country, rock, Americana, pop and soul found its first real audience, in the early ‘80s. It’s where he recorded his major label debut LP, 1986’s Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc., and it’s where, 25 albums later, he recorded his latest, 3 Pears, surprisingly perhaps only the second he’s produced himself. He utilised four different studios around LA – Sunset Sound, Capitol Studio B, EastWest and Henson Studios – to record the album. “All four are pretty historic rooms,” Yoakam explains from a chair in the Warner lot where he’s being prepared for a film shoot in the Warner Sound Live Room. “Three of the four are Neve boards; at Henson, we were using an SSL, but that’s still the old school of Class A/D [analogue desk], and we were using the same amps, moving from room to room. It was interesting – I enjoyed the experience.
Yoakam’s vocal on A Heart Like Mine is drenched in reverb; very Sun Studio meets mid-‘50s rockabilly. “Beck ran that through an Atari eight-track one-inch tape machine from the ‘70s, and he actually put the tape slap onto that, so it’s real tape slap that he’s got running. We were just exploring what was here in the moment. We weren’t trying to do anything that was retro but unlike on contemporary records where it’s all cut into hard drive, Pro Tools, it’s done through real tube amplifiers, tube mics and through Telefunken mic pre’s – some of the best music recording was done that way. “The thing he and I kind of established on [those two tracks] was my approach. I just went in by myself with my electric guitar and his assistant engineer played drums and synth engineer played the bass, and I overdubbed a little electric and acoustic, and I found that to be a good template for the rest of the record.” Gibson recently released a limited edition of one of Yoakam’s trademark guitars, the Elitist Dwight Yoakam “Dwight Trash” Casino Epiphone, and has also released a Dwight Yoakam Honky Tonk Deuce Acoustic-Electric guitar.
“EastWest Studios was originally United Western Recorders, where I did some of my original demos back in 1981, that were on the Best Of that Warner’s and Rhino put out in 2004, and it was really interesting to go back, and we worked in there a lot. Capitol Studio B, we cut Long Way To Go there, blocked out the time there for the one track, but we worked a lot in the old A&M Studios, which are now called Henson. Those are great rooms – the molecules in those rooms are simply magical.”
While it’s been seven years between 3 Pears and his last album, 2005’s Blame The Vain, his first not to be produced by guitarist producer Pete Anderson, Yoakam was writing new material throughout. The gap was essentially down to his decision to leave the independent label he’d signed with – New West – and seek another major label, ultimately signing once more with his original label, Warner Music. As for the songs themselves, though undeniably country, they’re shot through with Yoakam’s other, sometimes unlikely, musical passions. For a start, the album opens with the track, Take Hold Of My Hand, written by Kid Rock.
As it happens, United Western Recorders’ Studio 3 is the room Brian Wilson used for much of the recording of The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds. While Yoakam produced the bulk of 3 Pears, he did hook up with Beck to co-write, record and produce two songs – A Heart Like Mine and Missing Heart. “I just wanted to be in real rooms with real sonics. Beck and I went to Sunset Sound where we cut Missing Heart. The first track I recorded with Beck, A Heart Like Mine, was actually at his home studio, which is dubbed The Library, in one section of his house.”
“There are a variety of melodic influences throughout,” he explains. “I mean there’s a bit of The Monkees’ lick from I’m A Believer, Neil Diamond’s song, at the beginning [of A Heart Like Mine], but it turns into a bit of an homage, unintentionally, to the Stones’ The Last Time kind of meets Johnny Cash. I grew up listening to Top 40 radio when it was truly an eclectic mix of all kinds of music, and that’s had a major impact on me that remains. So with Trying, I’m sure the influence of having heard Sam Cooke’s work is there.”
There are two versions, too, of Long Way To Go – a full band version and a haunting solo voice and piano one that closes the album. “Yeah, it just seemed that night, in the studio, Joe Chiccarelli was actually engineering, and I walked by the mic and I said to my extremely talented multi-instrumentalist sideman Brian Wheelan, ‘Hey, would you just play the chord changes on Long Way To Go?’ ‘cause we’d just recorded it – he played bass on the track, on the electric version – so he started playing it through and I said, ‘Just play the changes. I’m gonna sing it stripped down like that.’ And we did a version of it that way, and there’s an additional verse on that version.” Monday 24 September Yoakam will be presented the Cliffie Stone Pioneer Award at the sixth annual Academy of Country Music Honors Awards in Nashville. Then in November, Yoakam brings the guys he made the album with to Australia for a tour. “Hopefully people will see what the new album has in it for me, the message of joy and happiness.” 3 Pears is out Friday through Warner Music. Dwight Yoakam plays the AIS Arena, Canberra, Thursday 15 November; the Hordern Pavilion, Sydney, Friday 16; the WIN Wollongong Entertainment Centre Monday 19
GEAR REVIEW
TECH 21 BOOST SERIES PEDALS
Tech 21 are one of the the effects heavyweights, based in NYC, USA on Andrew Barta’s vision of the Sansamp. His legacy lives on through other killer pedals like the new ‘Boost’ series featuring a form of drive coupled with up to 21dB of clean, switchable boost. The Tech 21 Boost Overdrive was first under the microscope. I used this pedal with my Les Paul and Marshall Plexi to get a beefier tone out of my amp. The overdrive consists of controls for ‘Level’, ‘Tone’, ‘Drive’ and ‘Sparkle’. All the usual suspects are here except for the addition of the ‘Sparkle’, which “adds upper harmonics for an open, snappy sound.” The overdrive did a very convincing ‘TS808’ emulation, a great ‘Top Booster’ for ‘70s drive, and good blues overdrive when dialed in with cleaner tone. Overall I thought this pedal sounded great for older ‘70s and ‘80s hard rock/metal tones, and using the boost on its own sounded the best with my Marshall for getting the tone I was after. I took the same approach with the Boost Fuzz pedal and plugged into a driven amp, and what could be better than a Strat into a vintage Marshall for that Hendrix sound. The combination of a driven amp plus fuzz results in magic. Again, this pedal sees the same format of ‘Level’, ‘Tone’ and ‘Drive’, but the inclusion of ‘Sag’ adds an extra dimension, “allowing notes to bloom and sing at your command, for a dynamic, organic performance.” A wide array of tones was available, from Hendrix to Weezer to The Smashing Pumpkins. This pedal did a killer job of emulating those vintage Germanium fuzz pedals guitarists drool over. The Boost Distortion has hints of that iconic modern Tech 21 distortion heard all over the world on some great albums (nevermind…). It was easy to a get a thick clear distortion that emulated a modern high-gain amp, and is perfect for turning a good clean amp into a monster. This time the ‘Sag’ effect “adds an expressive tube-like response to every pick stroke,” and did a good job of sounding like a worn-in tube amp when digging into the strings, adding that tube feel even with solid-state amps. Finally, a pedal for bass; the Boost Fuzz Bass was my favourite of the bunch, as it did a number of
different things really well. I plugged this pedal direct into my mixing desk as I was after that insane fuzz bass you hear on Nine Inch Nails recordings and on some electronic recordings and it delivered with unexpectedly good results. This time the secret ingredient was the ‘+ Clean’ knob, which dialed back in a clean signal making it possible to blend fuzz and clean together generating a massive doubled sound when distorted guitars are in the mix. There is so much drive on tap that it is possible to go from warm, spongy drive to insane globs of mush that would be perfect for heavier styles such as stoner rock, death metal and industrial music. Dialing back the ‘Level’,
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‘Tone’ and ‘Drive’, and boosting the ‘+ Clean’ adds a bass boost to your overall tone, while turning the ‘Tone’ up keeping the ‘Drive’ midway was cool for ‘Sabbath-like’ rumble. This new line of Tech 21 pedals is great and will appeal to musicians searching for a certain sound, whilst still having the flexibility to produce a variety of different tones. Each pedal has a certain vibe to it and the inclusion of a switchable clean boost means you won’t have to rely on your sound tech to turn you up for lead passages. Reza Nasseri For more info head to www.nationalmusic.com.au