THOM DAUGHERTY

ERIC BAKER 001

Several months ago, my friend Eric Baker - a talented singer/songwriter/piano-player - asked if we could get together and have coffee. Said he’d written a bunch of tunes over the past couple of years, and it was finally time to record them. I assumed he was about to ask me if I’d play guitar on the album, and I was prepared to say, “Absolutely. I would be honored.”

But then I heard the words, “How would you feel about producing it?”

The idea of producing is something that I’ve always filed under “I really should try that someday”, but I never took it very seriously, even though an engineer and friend here in Indianapolis (Mike Petrow) has been telling me for a few years, “Have you ever thought about producing? I feel like you’re built for that sort of thing.”

I think my grand plan for life was just to play guitar in The Elms for the next 15 years and not do much else, but… well… you know.

Here I find myself. All points converged at me finally seeing if this is something I can do effectively or not.

We chose 10 out of 11 potential songs. We enlisted the help of Chris Thomas on drums. We rehearsed. We spent awhile cutting pre-production demos. We strategized. We strategized some more. And finally, this week, we loaded Chris’s drums into Mike Petrow’s studio to begin work on Eric Baker’s debut record.

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First off, where I feel like I’m qualified to do this is in the realm of listening to the songs and making sure they roll out in the right manner. Dynamics. Instrumentation. Motion. Where I feel like I have a bit to learn is in the way of capturing sounds (engineering.) But thankfully, we had enough in our budget to leave all of that to Mike.

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Monday night, Chris and I drove up to Indy to set up. Mike had all of the mics ready to go, and soon they were all placed and working. 20 tracks of drums, people! Wild. I’m sure we won’t use it all, but it’s certainly nice to have options. I think we’ll be able to create pretty much whatever we want to when it comes to mixdown.

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Tuesday, August 24th:

Eric showed up for breakfast at 9AM, and after a little Sausage & Egg Quiche and Banana Bread, it was time to get to work. All of the sounds were up and rockin’ by 10:30AM. The drums were very lively and exciting! First off, Chris’s kit would sound great even in a janitorial closet, but secondly, Petrow’s drum room is a nice environment, too. Two of the walls are brick, which act as a natural wave diffuser. And dimensionally, it’s perfect for what I wanted to hear.

The plan this week was to cut three songs a day Tuesday-Thursday, and then spend Friday doing aux perc for Eric’s record as well as recording drums on one song for another album we might be starting soon.

But as it happened, instead of knocking out 3 songs on Tuesday, Chris barreled through 5. The last take was pretty much always the money shot, but I’ve got a few other takes if I need to grab something from a previous playlist. I don’t mind the tedious work of editing drums to a grid, but I don’t feel like that would be right for this album, so it’s nice to have the options elsewhere if need be.

Eric played a scratch piano track, sang a scratch vocal, and I played bass in the control room so Chris would have a guide. Eric and I will recut our parts later, but it was nice playing together as a band as opposed to having Chris follow the pre-production demos I’d made. Allowed us to make tempo and arrangement tweaks as we went along.

All-in-all, we finished drums for:

-Kingdom Breaking Through
-Life Is Beautiful
-Come And Be Our Peace
-Tearing This House Down
-The Last Amen

After seeing those titles, you might be asking yourself if this is a Christian album. And I’m not really sure. Eric is the worship pastor at the church I call home in Indy - Grace Community. But I’m not sure how to characterize this one. People ask if it’s a worship album, and it’s not. Then they ask if it’s a Christian album, and I say, “Not really. If people went into listening to this hoping that it’d be a Christian album, they’d probably be disappointed.”

So then… what is it, exactly? And I’d say it’s just… very… Grace Community.

Songs about Justice. Songs about Mercy and helping “the least of these.” Songs that will hopefully wreck us and inspire us to think outside of where we normally live. Tunes that espouse a very practical, others-centered Theology, I suppose. Make sense?

Anyhow…

Tried something really cool with “The Last Amen.” I used Pete Yorn’s “On Your Side” as a reference, and wanted something that sounded almost loop-y, but played loop-y. A really simple drumbeat that we then put an eighth-note slapback on (kick, snare, and hats.) And when I say hats, I mean two 18” crash cymbals that Chris threw on his hi-hat stand. Pretty crazy. Reminded me a little of something Soul Coughing would do. Slight distortion, a lot of room mic, and the slapback make everything sound pretty trippy!

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Wednesday, August 25th:

Since nobody had expected for Chris to blow the roof off the place like he did the day before, we sensed we’d be finished with the full kit way ahead of schedule. Decided to start the morning with the song we were planning on doing Friday for someone else. Guessing Eric didn’t mind hearing, “Hey, the good news is you don’t have to show up so early today.” And once again, Chris learned and blitzkrieged his way through the song in 23 minutes. Fantastical.

When Eric got there, we finished the following:

-Eyes To The Hills
(I’m pushing for it to be spelled “Eyez 2 Tha Hillz.” Probably shouldn’t get too attached to that idea though.)
-Square Peg In A Round World
-The Chair
-Bridges Burned

I’m tempted to go into more detail about how these songs come off sonically, but think I should wait until we at least finish the bass, piano, and guitar tracks. Even then, who knows if you’d be hearing the same thing that I am.

Nine songs on drums for Eric Baker (the last song on the album will most likely be just piano and a vocal) and another one for a project to be named later. Ten songs in two days. Nothing to scoff at.

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Thursday, August 26th:

Chris had to head back to Seymour last night, and got back up to the studio in Indy today by 9:30AM. In the past, when it came to aux percussion, I’d always used a nice large-diaphragm condenser. Mike’s done a lot of work with Ray Kennedy (part of The Twang Trust - any Steve Earle fans here?), and Ray awhile back told Mike he thought his aux perc tracks could stand to be a little dirtier - told him to cut them into a 57 from now on. And like it does on most other applications, the 57 just seems to outperform all of the higher-end microphones. I was shocked at how cool it was.

Took about two hours to cut shakers and tambos on the 7 tunes we felt needed it. Hung out for a bit, processed (conversationally) what we’d done this week, and then everybody went home except for Mike and I - we felt we deserved a little Chicken Tikka Masala from India Diner for all of our labors.

And that’s it for now, I’ve got a weekend full of drum-comping to look forward to. Hoping I can get around to cutting all of the bass guitar tracks starting Monday or Tuesday? We shall see!

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Thanks for reading. I know it was long, but I had 3 weeks or so of non-blogging to make up for.

As Garrison Keillor tells me every morning…

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.

— Thom