I have begun the process of converting some analog reel-to-reel recordings my grandfather made with his bluegrass combo.
My grandfather Wendell, who passed away a few years ago, had given me a Sony TC-530 reel-to-reel machine quite a few years back, but I had no idea what to do with it. It didn't work up to snuff for recording purposes, but there was a stack of his tapes that came along with it.
I have no ideas when the recordings were made (I imagine late 70's) but they were made at my grandfather's house in Marshalltown, Iowa. I'm just in the stages of researching, but I believe it was a three piece combo consisting of my grandfather on banjo and occasional vocals, and two other gentlemen on guitar and fiddle.
Sorry, my grandfather can't hear you over the sound of how awesome he is....
I posted the first recording I digitized on the player to your right, "The Girl I Left in Sunny Tennessee." I chose this particular recording because it features my grandfather on vocals, which is rare as he usually just played banjo without singing.
I have no idea whether this is a "good" version of the song according to them. There aren't really any notes on the tapes about which take is which or whether it's a good one. I haven't even listened to all the tapes, so there could be a much better version of the song on a different tape.
I just wanted to start somewhere, so I started there.
So listen and enjoy!p.s. Nerdy info = I sent the audio out from the reel-to-reel into my Tascam FW-1804 through the line input, then used the Tascam to convert it to digital as it has a Firewire output. I captured the audio in Garageband on my G4 MDD PowerMac. I then had to send the .aiff of the recording to Audacity to speed up the recording. Based on the fact that the song is traditionally done in the key of G, I sped the audio up 17%, bringing the guitar and banjo into G. Then I reimported in Garageband, doubled up the track, panned them for mock-stereo, and did some equalization to eliminate some hiss. Then I sent it to iTunes as an .aiff, and converted it there to .mp3 for the web. Whew!
Alrighty, enough foolishness...
My latest recording is a cover of John Prine's "Please Don't Bury Me"...
I customized some lyrics!
One take on this one!
Awesome!
We might have a fine companion to "Wuzzat a Godd--n Alien" and "Fudge Parts" in "Funk For Funk's Sake", the newest recording completed in just under an hour....
Enjoy on the player to your right... You might need to get up and dance to this one...
Also, all lyrics were ad-libbed as they were recorded...
That's me on various acoustic guitars, bass, and vocals... Garageband on the drums.
Funk!
My latest recording tackles a classic (so I've heard) Georgia Satellites song "Battleship Chains"...
I became aware of the song while listening to (Warren Zevon + R.E.M. - Michael Stipe) = Hindu Love God's version of it...
So I took a stab at it, and it's somewhere between the two versions... In style at least, in quality it's obviously much, much lower...
That's me on bass, rhythm guitar, lead guitar, vocals, and harmony vocals... Garageband is on the drums... Sorry, I didn't go to Sherbie's to record a drum part.
My first stab at harmony vocals, so laugh it up!
Also, try not to snicker at my terrible guitar solos... I thought the song would be easy because of the easy chord progression, but the simplicity proved to be more difficult than anticipated...
Enjoy it on the player to your right!
My latest recording (which you can find as track one on the player to your right) is a cover of John Prine's "Sweet Revenge"... It's a tune (and an album for that matter) that I've been getting into lately, so I thought I'd give it a shot...
That's me on acoustic, electric, bass, vocals, and drums...
Thanks to Sherbie for letting me come over to his place during the day and record a drum track using his brand spanking new (used) Premier drum kit he got...
The drum track was recorded with my Powerbook's built-in mic (covered with a couple layers of cloth and recording level turned way down) and the only adjustment to the drums and cymbals was a strip of painters masking tape on each...
So not too shabby sound for a shitty mic and not much set-up!
Enjoy!
Recently I've really gotten into Gene Vincent, and so along those lines, as well as keeping in the recent pattern of alternating epic prog rock and 50's Rock n' Roll, I recorded a tribute version of Vincent's most well-known song "Be-Bop-A-Lula"...
That's me on acoustics, lead guitar, bass, vocals, screams, and a cardboard box drum...
Hopefully, after listening to it, Gene isn't spinning in his grave, and hopefully you aren't either...
The song can be found on the player to your right!
p.s. My first walking bass-line.... and yes, my guitar solos are ridiculously poor...
If you look to the player to your right, there is a new track, "Leviathan Teaser"... Pete and I are in the midst of a new epic tale (this one weighing in at 6+ minutes already) that is a sequel (prequel? (postquel? (epilougue?))) to "Crown of Cyruss"...
And while it's still a huge work in progress, I thought I'd give you a tease of what you can look forward to in the next track from "Minions of Lebanon"...
Check it out!
In the wake of such an epic last-post, this time around we go back to light and fun with a One Take cover of Eddie Cochrane's "C'mon Everybody"...
That's me on gitbox, bass, and vox... The bass was an overdub, but only one take, I swear!
Enjoy on the player to your right!
