Sessions for an Album

Guitarist/singer/songwriter Moris Tepper has played guitar with Captain Beefheart, Tom Waits, Frank Black, P.J. Harvey. He’s a really interesting songwriter, generally categorized in alt rock or folk genres. Here are samples of his lyrics:

“results and separations felt by everyone,

but there’s nothing in the blueprints, nothing can be done.

I would climb up a mountaintop, sail out to sea,

just to meet you halfway honey, but there’d be no one there to greet me!

just like moving trees, make the wind blow,

and the ocean makes the moon move slow,

the blame is falling over on the other side,

standing here on the fault line.”

-- and --

“no one’s mind hardly ever talks,

no one’s mind sleeps on rocks.”

Moris called about piano and organ for his album, “A Singer Named Shotgun Throat”. We decided to track at my place. About a month later, he started sending me mp3s. What started as four songs became nine. I was in Moris’s touring band for 6 years, so it was easy to communicate about music – we’ve still got ‘the shorthand’. He would send me mp3s with descriptions – calliope organ, murky underwater piano…

The mp3s were rough mixes of guitar, bass and drums – and the instrumental parts were really built around Moris’s rhythm guitar parts – the band was sort of wrapped around Moris’s rhythm guitar parts, which were really connected to the vocal lines. – He’s got that cool guitarist/singer/songwriter thing, where everything is really integrated…

I did thorough takedowns of guitar and vocal parts for several songs, then worked on parts, shooting for piano parts that would sound like additional strings on the same guitar. It’s easy for piano to obscure guitar parts, and I can remember album dates years ago where my contributions were ultimately simplified, cut, or mixed way down. When recording for a guitar-based song, I like to pick ranges to play in or avoid, and be really aware of hammer-ons and other subtleties. I’ve had some long associations in the acoustic folk world, and with guitarist/songwriters. Since unaltered, "indigenous" guitar doesn’t have oodles of sustain, guitarists often re-attack the voicings, or having little hammer-on movements to alternate single notes. I like connecting to those, doubling them on my instrument or staying out of their way.

I started recording and sending him the tracks. With him not being there, I was deciding what my parts should be, how dynamically to play, whether to play fills or leave them for another instrument.. I recorded two or three passes through each song. Some of those tracks “stuck”, and Moris also asked for changes. He came over a couple of nights to work with me. We had a lot of fun working together again, we had spent a lot of time on the road together years ago... When we got together, he brought some new songs. “In The Summer Sun” had constant shifts of meter and chords. He wanted an angular, single note organ line, and thought it better not let me learn or hear the tune before recording. Ultimately, we came up with an 'every-note’s-a-surprise, every-rhythm-is-different' sort of part. That song is a favorite of mine from the album.

While working on “Shotgun Throat”, I listened to Moris’ demos and to his other recordings. That helped me to immerse in his musical world. Usually, the more time I put in connecting with an artist’s music, the better. When Moris pressed copies of the album and sent me one, I felt that the listening and transcribing had paid off. I was quite happy with the “rightness” of the parts.