 LONDON, UK (Sony Music UK) - 'songs for silverman' is the recording of eleven events in the studio. they're fairly pure and recorded pretty quickly. i think that shows through on first listen. there is overdubbing and arranging as well, but these things happened quickly, almost in a frenzy sometimes so that we could walk out of the studio with a representation... a finished recording rather than a theory. jared and lindsay and i locked ourselves in the studio each day, taking breaks for a soy chai or lens testing or even beard trimming, learning songs that i'd already demo'd, interpretting them whichever direction the wind blew that day. thus, a fairly country version of 'give judy my notice' - since bucky baxter, legendary pedal steel player dropped by that day. the recording of 'songs for silverman' is very stark and flat, not often very compressed or hyped, unless i got a sudden hankerin' for some tasty EQ and some aural excitement. we used fewer mics on the entire band than lots of people use on a drumset these days. but when a moment could be better, or a sound could be more magical, we put the time in and went steely dan on that shit. at the core, the performance, the spritual SMPTE track remains in tact and true to the takes. no click tracks or tempo maps or gay shit like that. here's how it happened:
i recorded most of these songs while doing the ep's. all by myself. i didn't like them so i just sat on them while i worked on the shatner album and did some short tours. during this time i decided i wanted to tour with a band again. so jared reynolds came in to audition as my touring bassist last summer for some upcoming shows; i'd already decided on lindsay jamieson as the drummer.
i was writing 'bastard', which is the first song on the album and thought i'd just have him play with lindsay and me on that song to see how he went. it's in lots of different time signatures and was a brutal thing to do to him especially since i also told the recording engineer to start recording that session to multi track that day. a few days later, after i'd decided where the song would change from 6/8 to 7/8 to 5/4 and back, jared came into the studio again and we recorded the version that's on the album. i don't recall if i actually told him that he had the gig but we recorded jesusland next and so on. the last song on the album was the last song written and recorded for the album and there you go. god bless all you mother fuckers.
i hope you like the album.
by the way, jared, you got the job.
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