Day 9 – “What The Studio is Really Like” – January 23, 2000

I wake up, as usual, at 3 am and vaguely recall hearing something about sleeplessness during specific hours indicating an imbalance in certain organs in Chinese medicine. Was 3-5 the liver? I wonder. They’re definitely the hours my demons wake me up with trivialities: “You need to call the new booking agent back,” “You’ve got to do laundry today” and “Oh my God! You total jerk, you forgot Heidi’s birthday!” Agitated as a felted sock, I find myself staring at the ceiling. When suddenly, I’m flooded with all these “great ideas” for the album cover, a new sticker, and lyrics for a new tune. Stitched to the sheets moments ago, I rip myself out of bed to write a “to-do” list and while I’m up, I figure I may as well dash the song lyrics down.

This life,
It breathes me in
I’m a puppet
In a beating production

Clothed in skin
I tend the fire
And find the courage to
Leap
In

Once that’s done I think I better draw a quick sketch of the sticker idea.

And once that’s done I think I better peruse some magazines to find something that matches the mood I want for the album cover.

The next thing I know, I’m up for the day. I read. I put together a photo album. I wander around the house in my baby blue flannel PJs with the clouds on them (A gift from Mike Nichols) cleaning out the drain in the kitchen sink. I hang pictures on the walls wondering whether the neighbors mind me hammering nails at 4:45 am.

At 10 am, coffee in hand, I make it to the studio. We listen back to the songs we recorded yesterday and decide, with fresh ears, whether we want to try to get a better take of them today. Then, infuriatingly, nothing happens. I mean NOTHING. It’s as though someone hits pause on the studio and leaves me unfrozen and exasperated. It might look to the outsider like everyone is doing something, after all, Michael is touching knobs on the soundboard, Brian’s stretching his wrists, and Kenny and Soucy are snacking in the kitchen tossing grapes into each other’s mouths but nothing is really getting done. I sit in the bathtub (where a Sharpie penned sign now reads “Sally’s office.”) I make calls, return emails, and knit Kipp a birthday sweater (never mind his birthday was 3 months ago).

By the time Michael’s ready to record it’s 3 pm and I’ve already been on my feet, strapped into my guitar for an hour itching for momentum. I stand in furlined slippers in the middle of the living room, in front of a mic stand, to the right of the piano with the flowers (which are mostly dead now) facing the door. But maddeningly, It’s another hour before the recording actually begins. First, we have to get drum sounds, then bass sounds and then we have to get the right mixes (for each of us) in our cans.*

By the time we’re recording, it’s 4 pm. Believe it or not, it only takes 3-10 times playing through a song (barring technical difficulties like computer crashes, pee breaks, and re-tuning) to get what we need on tape. There are always a few things that need tightening up after we’re satisfied with a take: the bass is late, the drums are early, you can’t hear the snare, and stuff like that so things need to be patched in, glued on, so to speak. By 6 pm or so, it’s time to prep the room again for the next song, decide which bass drums to use, which angle to place the microphones, which bass tone, which version of the song to try first… fast? slow? samba? techno?

By this point it’s 8 pm, I am exhausted and there are people I don’t know hanging out in the control room,* listening in to our recording session, drinking wine way too near the control board for anyone’s comfort. These people are residents of the home studio. They’re getting off work from a long day of tree trimming or serving coffee or bank telling. All of them are ready to cut loose and all of them feel entitled to hang out in our control room, smoke grass, and talk drunkenly while we try to work.

This infuriates me. Sometimes I’m cool about it and drink a glass of wine with them and listen to what it was like to fell a knotty pine with one chainsaw. But mostly, I’m exasperated about having to step over reclining bodies between takes, and the thought of having to rearrange the room for yet another song feels unbearable. But just as I’m about to revolt, kick everyone out of the control room — just when I think I can’t stand being in the studio one more second and want to cry that my liver is waking me up at 3 am, we listen back to what we’ve recorded — what we’ve given birth to. The noise we’ve made has been transformed into music. The lyrics have taken shape and found meaning, propped behind chords and harmonies and I am rejuvenated — exhilarated like a proud mother watching her tiny baby take its first steps.

And at 11 pm, as I walk out into the parking lot, under a star-filled sky, guitar in hand, I know I can sustain another 3 am wakeup call if it means watching this album come to life.

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FOOTNOTES:
Basic Tracks: Recording Drums and Bass.
Cans: Headphones
Control Room: The isolated room where a Producer and Engineer work and where playback and listening happens.