I guess he liked what I was doing. After a gig with him in November, and another last month, Colin Bullock asked if I could come and play bass on his new record - essentially all the tunes we'd been playing live.
I headed out to Room & Board Studios in Abbotsford, BC, which is run by Ryan McAllister. Ryan's band some years back was called Dakona, and they had some success in North America, signing to Maverick Records and presumably playing a crap-ton of shows all over the place. Turns out Ryan is a great producer, and even though he was officially just engineering and playing host, his laid-back vibe and songwriting experience helped us over a few humps with parts of songs here and there. He's having me back next month for some more recording on other stuff, so I'm looking forward to working with him again on that.
As usual for bed tracks, it was just bass and drums for those two days. Colin and his producer/roommate Francis were kind enough to have put some work into preparing good quality guitar/vocal scratch tracks. Much more helpful than playing to a click and looking at a chord chart while annoying MIDI pads drone in the background. The drummer was the same as the live shows, and also a guy I've played with in The Reckoners, another Vancouver band. His name is Sam Heard and he's a motherfucker on the drums. For example, drop the needle on any classic Tower Of Power tune and he will not only play Dave Garibaldi's drum part verbatim but sing you the horn parts while he's doing it. Sick. The two of us are such jazz-funk-fusion dorks I'm surprised we got anything done amidst the yakkin'.
Fun Fact: this was the first record where I've played every single one of my basses at least once -- the Lakland 55-01, Ibanez acoustic bass guitar, Fury fretless Anthem bass, and the Geddy Lee Signature Series Fender Jazz. I think the album is going to sound rad.
I'll have some video up of the sessions soon, as will Colin, but I'll wait for the mixes and try to sync the video with that so you can hear everything. In the meantime, some photos from the sessions (and some more on Flickr):
Check out my Flickr page to see more photos from this and other recording sessions, as well as from live shows and tours.
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Unlike previous CCMAs, my official duties were minimal. I played a three-song set with AJ Woodworth at the Universal Music showcase at Oil City Roadhouse (it went great, AJ nailed it), and other than that I was just hanging out with AJ, Jesse, Kylee, and Melissa-Rae Barrie, trying to get into the various galas, showcases and parties without really having tickets for anything. Pretty good. I was nominated again for Bass Player Of The Year, which is actually amazing -- there are a great many talented bass players on the country scene so I felt quite honoured, again, to be recognized.
In mid-October were the British Columbia Country Music Association Awards, and the best part about that, aside from being nominated for BCCMA Bass Player Of The Year, was opening the show with my buddies in Jessie Farrell's band doing an acoustic-y, bluegrassy (bluegrassish?) version of her single "Heart Of Gold". I borrowed an upright bass from The Daver and had a lot of fun with it, not including the blister on my middle finger the size of a garbanzo bean. I had forgotten about that part of playing the upright. Electric bass players are wusses, I'll admit it. Not as wussy as oboists though. Most oboists.
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The band rehearsed in the old Opera House for 4 days leading up to the show. We were able to leave all the gear set-up all week which allowed Chris and I to rent some bicycles. The "commute" from the little condo where the band stayed to the Opera House was a nice bike path through the valley. A couple hours of tunes, a lunch break, some more tunes and then the bike ride home as the sun was getting low was just about one of the best work schedules I think I've ever had.
During rehearsals, Toni really knew what she wanted to hear and wasn't afraid to ask for it. This was actually nice for me because it took some of the decision-making out of my hands and I could just play my parts as best as I could. The music was primarily world-beat pop, I suppose from Toni's experiences writing and recording in Africa and working with musicians like Peter Gabriel, but there were also a couple numbers that were definitely more rock with a little R&B in there too.
The concert was at the Sun Valley Pavilion, a 1500-seat, $30-million venue just a couple hundred yards away from where we had been rehearsing. Toni had decided late in the week that she wanted to fly in one of her regular band members, a cellist from L.A. named Ana Lenchantin, so we brushed up on a few of the tunes at our (really long) soundcheck as the venue's crew was getting everything together. The show started just as the sun was going down, and with the exception of a few dodgy endings, everything went off without a hitch. Toni's fans were ecstatic and by the end of our set there was a happy group of people right in front of the stage singing along and getting into it.
The highlight for me, aside from traveling to a new place which I almost always enjoy, was getting a chance to hang out and play with some old buddies and bandmates in that new context. Sun Valley is a beautiful place, and if I ever won the lottery I might consider purchasing a small, modest chalet in Ketchum for a ridiculous sum of money in hopes of running into the likes of Clint Eastwood or Bruce Willis at the local organic market.
