Greetings from Liberty, and yes, it still exists here. We have numerous belief systems running around these parts, but we manage to coexist. It works somehow. My wife, Sue, questions my ability to remain on the ridge without a visit to the flatlands, and I simply say, “why leave, I guess I like the high life?” Actually, a few weeks ago we had a week of arctic temperatures, snow and ice. We had to remain on the ridge for eight days. We simply couldn’t drive in either direction to go to town, ten miles away. The grades in both directions have steep moments, and even in dry conditions, you must pay attention or risk plummeting several hundred feet down into a hollow. Ain’t life grand?
In early 2020, after doing three years of solo touring and three records, the touring stopped because of the Covid pandemic. My wife was considered an essential person ( I don’t disagree), and was able to continue to work. I was not. I went on emergency unemployment. Thank you US federal government and State of Tennessee. I also secured a small business loan from the Small Business Administration. Thank you again, US federal government. So financial assistance wasn’t a severe problem.
But what about my social skills? Looking back, I didn’t look to state and national government agencies for assistance for those items. One reason may have been because of my proximity to an artistic community right here in Middle Tennessee and one of its members.
Roquè Marcelo, a multimedia artist who lives only about eight miles from The Scratching Post (TSP), my project studio here in Liberty, wanted to record a song he had written. I met Roquè at a “coffee,” a local gathering that happened on Wednesday mornings from 8am-10am. Attendees were encouraged to bring musical instruments. The first time I went I thought it odd to have my guitar with me for an event that early in the morning that wasn’t some PR event at a radio station. Roquè performed at one of those gatherings, and his passion, creativity and skills made me take notice.
It was around this time, late 2019, when I met Roquè, that I was interested in trying to do a recording session at TSP with live musicians. I found out that Roquè had a drummer, Joe Allen, and I really wanted to try a session with drums. I did a few sessions with Joe, a solid trap set player who has excellent fills while holding a beat down, for my own music before we did a session with Roquè. After a few sessions with Joe behind me, I was ready to try a session with more than just drums.
We set up a session with Roquè and Joe. I believe the first session happened sometime in May of 2021. We were still masking because of the pandemic and thinking about our distance from each other. Joe was downstairs with his drums while Roquè and I were in the great room upstairs. Roquè was on my acoustic Kawaii studio upright piano, and I was on bass and engineering.
Joe and I had never heard the song before. It had multiple sections; one section was an obvious departure, a bit of a dance, funky and fluid. The song was simply called, “Vampire.” Joe and I listened to Roquè and found our places. Roquè sang and played the piano live. It felt so good to be making music with a drummer and a singer/piano player. I sometimes feel that I enjoy playing bass just as much as I enjoy the guitar. A bass player can affect an arrangement more so than a guitar, dynamically. I may like the high life but love the low sound. We did six takes. This was the fast thinking, the fast work.
Then the slow thinking and slow work began. Joe’s contribution was complete. Now the process of finding the best performances from the different takes began. Roquè and I got together most Wednesdays for about four hours and we did a composite take of the drums, bass and piano. We had recorded Roquè’s performance with the microphones set up so that there wasn’t a lot of bleed from the vocal to the piano mics. That meant that we could rerecord Roquè’s vocal, which we did. We did several takes of his vocal and then composited a finished vocal from those different takes.
Roquè wrote string and horn parts. We recorded those with a virtual sound library. We overdubbed an organ sound from a keyboard he brought. I overdubbed some guitars. We had many moments of exploration without expectation that proved fruitful and fun. We worked on the tracking for nearly a year and then worked almost another year mixing and mastering the song. Yes, that sounds like a long time for one song. It was. We didn’t work every week and even had a few breaks. Plus we sometimes had extended lunch breaks talking about current events, art and then some.
As mentioned earlier, Roquè is a multimedia artist and decided that the recording with its unforgettable soundscape was worthy of a video.
Roquè released his “Vampire” recording on January 12 and the video on January 19.
You can check out the video here.
You can find out more about Roquè here.
In a way, my time with Roquè was a bit selfish because I was in need of exercising my social skills during the pandemic. I am grateful to Roquè and Joe for spending time at TSP and watching Sue and I raise our beagle, Mavis, who came to us in December 2022.
I titled this post, “An Immortal Lock,” playing off of the gambling expression a mortal lock, which basically means a sure thing. The title is dedicated to the song, “Vampire.”
Thanks for visiting. Here’s wishing everyone safe and happy travels until the next time.
Cheers,
Billy
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