Trio Recordings

Currently, our band is recording a batch of tunes in our acoustic trio format (guitar, bass, mandolin, harmony vocals, dashes of harmonica). These are tunes we've played for many months, and yet the strategy we've settled on is this:

1. Rethink our arrangements by repeatedly overdubbing each part to try out different textures and rhythms on each section of the tune.

2. Settle upon an arrangement, get a very strong track recorded for each instrument on each song.

3. Re-record all the songs live to utilize the enhanced energy that is only possible in such a setting.

4. Compare the final products for the live versus the overdubbed performances--choose which version will be released.

The beauty of self-recording is that it gives you the financial freedom to try a method like this--when we recorded Frontier Blues tracks in the studio, we did everything live in the course of three nights with just one day of minor overdubs afterwards. That was all we could afford, since a decent studio engineer runs you at least $30/hour. With our self-recording method, our final product will not be as polished (none of us are whizzes with recording technology yet) but it will sound thoroughly decent from a production standpoint--and the performances and arrangements will be stronger as a result.

We will release the first of these recordings some time in the late Springtime, so keep your ears here to hear when we've settled on a date.