Addison Road

The bass and drums are all tracked, 80% of the primary keyboard and guitar parts are in place, now we’re getting to the fun stuff. Overdubs. Corey and I will get to go back into the songs and layer in the secondary parts, small fills, and ear candy jangles. Here’s why I love this part of the process:

1. You’re playing to songs, not just to charts. By the time the bass and drums are locked, there’s already a full song there. You’re building on a foundation that already feels great.
2. It’s highly creative. Innovative ideas is the point - you get to come up with, try, abandon, and recycle ideas very quickly, with instant feedback.
3. We get to play against each other. Corey and I have enough time spent playing together that we have a sense of what the other person will do with a certain section of music. We play our parts, but we also get to play gaps into the arrangement where we know the other person will drop in something amazing.
4. 1929 Steinway Piano, Hammond B3 organ, Wurlitzer, Dirty 76 Suitcase Rhodes, Clean 88 Suitcase Rhodes - this is an old school record. I love playing these keyboards.
5. On some tunes, it’s the bed tracks, bass and drums, that deliver the song (on this record, “Feel Good”), but often, it’s the perfect overdub part that just makes you lean back and go “Aaahh” (Check out Corey’s guitar chime on “A Sovereign Nation Sleep Beside Me”).
6. You get to do science experiments - setup instruments in odd ways, amp and mic them awkwardly, play them in unconventional ways, hoping to get a spark of something amazing and creative. Chad gave me 20 minutes to chase down a rabbit trail on “Kiss Us Goodbye” that ended up being a fantastic science experiment. It involved palm-muted and plucked piano strings, slammed lids, tapped harmonics, getting overtones to speak across a group of held sostenuto pedal notes. The end result barely sounds like a piano, but it is awesome.