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Meeting and recording alongside Garth Hudson.


ersh

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[blurb]So, last minute at the end of last week, I found out I was tentatively going to be in the studio with the Trews recording a track with Garth Hudson for an upcoming Band tribute CD produced by Garth. Saturday night, while playing a gig in Sarnia, we found out Garth wanted to recorsd the next day in the afternoon, as Neil Young had cancelled his slot due to a bad throat. (!)

We rushed back to Toronto Sunday morning, got to the studio in the mid afternoon, and worked out the track we were gonna do - Move to Japan off Jericho. Garth's choice for us. [/blurb]

He showed up a while later, came in and shook all our hands, and sat down so we could talk about the song. About one minute into the converstaion he asked who the keyboard player was, and I said it was me... and we immediately went into some technical keyboard dialogue for about 20 minutes. Just talkin gear, players, techniques... all kinds of stuff. Real nice guy... easy to talk to.

Garth's pretty out there. He's got a bad hunch these days, and you have to have some patience with him too... in the middle of talking about his old organ he played with Band, he suddenly said, in a slow low voice... "Oh sorry, I was thinking about a dead raccoon on the end of string." And he cracked up! But he's still full of ideas, wit and charm.

We figured the arrangement out and all went to the live room... Garth's set up was in there. I played a Rhodes on the song, and he played on the track with us. Sat in on the beds and jammed right along... He left after we got the bass and drums, and went to sit in with the Barenaked Ladies at massey Hall.... we tracked for a while more... and when he came back we had pretty much finished the song. We listened to the track a bunch, he gave us some ideas and pointers, and generally seemed to like what we'd done. The emd of the song is me soloing and then turning it over to him. At the end of the night, I was showing him a pedal I use (Blue Line 6) and told him it sounded like the intro to King Harvest, to which he told me that "the original pedal was a Uni Vibe. Richard used to play it, and keep it on top the piano and work it back and forth, back and forth, back and forth." Too much...

We're going back to finish it later this week, so I guess I'll see him again.

He's without a doubt my number one musical hero. I'm insanely blown away by last night.

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It was amazing to interact with him like that, to hear his parts soloed in the mix, to having him tell us that Move to Japan is a protest song and he wanted us to play it more 'metal', to having him describe some of that parts he played and say that they were just saftey lines that he's able to fall back on if he needs to... even to learn that he likes kit kat bars.

He paid me some really, really nice compliments too. Makes me smile.

On a side note.... the owner of the studio we recorded in, a good friend of Garth's, is actually in possesion of THE Basement Tapes. The original 36 reels of 1/4" 2 track tape! Apparently there's loads of stuff they're restoring from them that's never made it out. A release is planned after some legalties get cleared up so I hear.

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