[11/01/00]

Odds & Sods!

Once again, we returned to the Looking Glass Studios to finish up work on 'Toy'. The intention was to do backing vocals, touch up a few things, and cut some new songs David was in the process of writing. However, once we got settled in and started listening to playbacks, I made the decision to mix the album there as well. Looking Glass doesn't have what one usually would want in a full blown mix studio - they have a smaller & older console, and no large monitors - but I found the tracks to be so alive that I figured I should just go with it, as it would definitely sound different on another console, and I would treat things a lot differently in that scenario. I learned a lot on the BBC project - the mixes for that came out amazing, and I was really cranking out 2 songs a day - so I figured I'd try and have the same sort of work ethic for this project. 'Toy' was recorded really well which is another big plus, for which many thanks go to Pete Keppler for engineering the basic tracks, and to Sear Sound, for having a great atmosphere and equipment (even if they can't spell my name for diddly).

The band for the new songs was a drastically scaled down version of the 'Toy' band - Sterling Campbell on drums, David on stylophone, mandolin (!) and keyboards, and myself on guitars and bass. The first thing we tried was a version of 'Pictures of Lily' for a Who tribute record, which had been kicking around for a few months. David's idea was to do this song half time - there wasn't any point in trying to ape the Who version, after all - and it came out sounding like a glam version of Crazy Horse - fantastic! We did the entire thing in an afternoon, complete with stylophone solo, a Ronson homage outro, and football hooligan chanting courtesy of the three of us (though through the magic of overdubbing, it was around 30 of us in the end). This entire experienced was enhanced by going to the Who show at Madison Square Gar den. I'd never seen the Who (properly pronounced 'The 'Ooo', so I'm told) before, and Pete just blew me away. Amazing musician.

Each of the new songs seemed to have an interesting beginning. 'Uncle Floyd' was a moody track which really came to life with the addition of the guitars of Gerry Leonard (who plays with Duncan Sheik) and Lisa Germano's violin (she returned to NYC for round two). 'Afraid' was a track written on my mini-guitar. David was in the process of writing it, but he was a little behind (studio time ticking away..) so we had to take a page out of the old-school book (courtesy of Andrew Loog Oldham, ex-Rolling Stones manager) and lock him in a room to finish it! (and aren't we glad we did). A third (as yet) untitled song had an initial jump start from my daughter, who came to the studio one day with her mandolin hoping to play on one of the songs. David started playing her mandolin and singing her some funny little Irish-sounding bits, but then got onto something and just kept playing. Within a half hour or so we had enough to begin a basic workup of it, and by the end of the day nearly the entire track was complete.

Once the drums on the new songs were complete, we returned to 6th St. to do the overdubs. This was when we added Gerry and Lisa. The neighbors and the Italian cafe seemed to be glad to have us back. Gerry Leonard is from Ireland, and he and David immediately bonded over the old electric meters they used to have in homes in the UK - evidently, you used to have to keep putting coins into a meter in your house, or your electricity would go off! If you ran out of change, tough luck! No lights, no fridge, no nuthin.... very funny. This of course led us off on a number of ridiculous tangents.

Next up is to mix the whole lot.......