I seem not to be writing these newsletters very often nowadays, mostly because I’ve been conveniently ignoring the gig-booking portion of our program in favor of the suffering-through-the-recording-process portion of our program.
I’m recording my album at the Root Cellar, which is a cozy venue owned by the eponymous Jeff Root. This is where the magic happens, in a ten-by-ten room in Jeff’s basement (and also the children’s playroom next door, where Dave, my long-suffering percussionist, is banished for sound separation reasons). Jeff’s determined to make the recording process fun – but while I will admit to having laughed more often than I’d originally planned, the fact is that nothing, but nothing, can make me enjoy it.
See, what I’ve always wanted, of course, is to record my next album during a series of live shows attended by large, loud, enthusiastic audiences. Since, inexplicably, that doesn’t seem to be happening, I’ve needed to fall back on the studio approach, which leaves a good deal to be desired, in spite of Jeff’s attempts to entertain me. First of all, nobody applauds. (Well, Dave claps, occasionally, but not for me – it’s some sort of drummer thing.) It’s like playing in my living room, in the sense that my wife, She Who Must Be Taunted, doesn’t applaud either. Somehow, she’s grown overly familiar with my genius after all these years. I suppose I ought to acknowledge that she also didn’t applaud when we first met, but at the time I assumed that she was simply concealing her enthusiasm – sixteen years later, I know better.
Then there’s the endless repetition and the expectation of precision. I am not, you may have noticed, a particularly precise instrumentalist – my philosophy seems to be that any one of two or three neighboring strings will serve the purpose at any given moment, although, in my own defense, I will point out that I’m always certain which guitar I’m going to end up hitting when I strum. The recording process looks dimly on this degree of approximation. As a result, I end up playing the same song over and over again, until I get it (mostly) right or we can paste it together from snippets of things I’ve managed to play accurately for several seconds at a time. It’s like those photos on the cover of Cosmopolitan – the music will be carefully scrubbed of the stench of reality.
It’s true that the recording process allows me to do enjoyable things that I’m not otherwise able to do, such as play piano while I’m playing guitar or create multi-part harmonies on my own (really, it’s hard to get any more vain than wanting to listen to four of yourself at the same time). But these things do little to offset the remarkable level of tedium involved in creating my next masterpiece.
Reflecting on all this, the obvious conclusion is that Jeff and Dave really need to step up. They need to applaud for me after every take, and maybe even ask me for my autograph at the end of each session. They may even need to pipe in some crowd noise, probably dim the lights a bit, and, to properly simulate the coffeehouse atmosphere, sell tea and pastries during the intermission. Maybe then I’ll be able to finish this damn thing.