Once tracking (the basic bass, drum and (often) keyboard underlay) was completed to our satisfaction, the truly difficult task begins. Overdubbing, though an inherently inorganic process, is what separates a good recording from a bad one. The choices made here will affect the ultimate success of a record, for this is when guitars, some keyboards, vocals, percussion, cello, and other sweetening are added. Questions of attitude, color, dynamics, are all dealt with in this phase. Though we can often "fix it in the mix", if it's not on the tape, it won't be in the grooves or end up in your ears.

May 1, 1998

Today and tomorrow we are at Skip Sailor Sound, where we recorded much of Broken Moon, to repair the minor glitches and gaffes that have surfaced on our recordings from 1997. Dan re-sang the entire vocal to "Long Way" to make it more soulful and less grainy, repaired some vocal miscues and a rough lyric on "When The Lights Go Down" and added a spoken background track to "Do With Me What You Will". Eric re-sings his harmony parts to match. He also tries to put guitar on "Weight Of The World", but the right sound doesn't emerge, so we stop. We wind up doing nothing on the still-unfinished "Scarlet", so it's in danger of becoming a lost song. We'll see.

May 2, 1998

Phil Parlapiano starts rehearsals with Grant Lee Buffalo tomorrow, so we need to record him today. He plays accordion parts on "Weight of the World" and "Beyond The Pale", although we may have to replace them due to tuning anomalies in the instrument. Let's see how they "age" on the tape. Then Phil adds an electric piano part to "My Own Way Of Doing Things" to make it more fun, give it more sass. His parts mesh beautifully with his existing parts from the tracking date -- piano on "Weight", organ on "Beyond" and "Own Way". Dan adds percussion -- shakers and tambourines -- to "HBD2U" and "Beyond The Pale" before we call it for the day.

May 4, 1998

Today Jim Scott will mix two songs at King Sound, a small but well-equipped studio in LA. We've chosen two recorded in 1997 -- after the overdub date of May 1, they are ready to mix. Jim has selected "Do With Me What You Will" and "When The Lights Go Down". Mixing is a process not unlike film editing. Here the balances are set between instruments and voices, and effects -- reverbs, delays and EQ -- are implemented. Jim is a master mixer who had just finished working with Natalie Merchant and we're happy to have him back with us. After him producing all our studio albums, we're now producing ourselves and it's hard to record without him. His steady mixing hand will assure we sound our best. The mixes take the better part of six hours each -- actually, blazingly fast by current standards -- and sound clear, rich and punchy. As Jim once told us, "This ain't no hobby!"

May 5, 1998

This was mostly a Phil day. Spent most of the day fixing tuning problems on his accordion. We redid some parts that we wanted to improve, including the accordion on Beyond the Pale, then added Micro Organ (an "antique" portable suitcase organ with legs that screw into the case) to "Weight Of The World". Phil cut a "mystery pad" on "Blessing". Then Dan did a subtle organ part on "Maybe Tomorrow It Will Rain"and recorded his guitar on "Weight" and "Beyond The Pale".

May 6, 1998

Today we're in vocal mode. We cut Eric's and Dan's vocals on "Weight", followed by Eric's guitar on "Weight" and his screaming electric on "Beyond". After Eric's vocal on "Weight of the World", Dan cut a vocal on "Weight" and on "Maybe Tomorrow It Will Rain", which was not completely successful. After many takes, we have a keeper, unless we can top it later. Eric add his vocal to "Rain" and we're done for the night.

May 7, 1998

It's time to cut more guitar parts, including Eric's soul strut on "HBD2U" and his Ronnie Wood on "Own Way Of Doing Things". Dan recorded his guitar on "Own Way", followed by his guitar on "Rain" before we went back to "Own Way" for vocals. Eric nailed his part quickly and Dan added his in short order. We're on a roll now.

May 8, 1998

After rest and reconsideration, we decide to redo Dan's vocals on "Maybe Tomorrow". The sound is both lazier and more assured, and the overall track is greatly improved. This sets the vibe for Eric's guitar on "Maybe Tomorrow", a sultry. slinky slide guitar treatment that makes "Rain" one of the best songs we've ever recorded. The end of the song is long, though, at six minutes, but it feels so good we can't bring ourselves to shorten it.

May 13, 1998

Today we try to fix "Blessing". We wrote last night until past midnight to salvage the song and came up with material we like. Distinctly different than what we had before, the story is now less bleak and the melody less oblique. Maybe that simplicity will help. Eric takes a shot at the vocal. Eek! It sucks. OK, maybe not sucks, but we really don't like it. It's dull and wordy. The song is smothering itself. Now what? We stop, engineer Jeff sits and reads the paper while we listen to the track repeatedly, struggling for inspiration. We try to prune the lyric, hoping that will help. It does some, but not enough. We try new words, but they sound forced. Little wonder; they are forced. We almost decide to return to the original original original lyric we started with back in January, when the logjam miraculously clears. More lyric pruning inspires a subtle shift in the melodic rhythm and a more satisfying melody emerges. Bam! Hallelujah! The rest of the song sorta writes itself. The bridge, which had been stubborn, uses pruned material from earlier versions. Waste not, want not, we suppose. We put a fast guide vocal on tape and do Dan's guitar. We go home late, exhausted and a little bewildered by our good fortune.

May 14, 1998

Today we finish off "Blessing". Dan's arpeggiated guitar part (a rare instance of Dan playing electric) provides the foundation, while Eric's parts on amplified acoustic (after a protracted search for the right sound) are the perfect complement. Dan lays in a tambourine part and plays maracas that engineer Jeff had bought in Las Vegas the week before. It is the maracas' recording debut, so we're careful to get it right. We don't manage to get to the 12th song on our list, so at present it's an 11-song album. We'll try to get the newest song ready to record by the time we get back from the road June 5th. In the meantime, the promotion and marketing wheels start gearing up for an August release, and we try to catch up on our sleep.