My new cd

I wanted to find an organic, folky, pure sound for my third cd, Daisy Petal in the Dirt.  No fancy tricks! I had always admired a band in Chicago called Sons of The Neverwrong. I love their vibe, their music, their live show. And as I was once a rocker chick, the thought of recording it folk & roots like the Sons seemed pretty enthralling. You can’t get away with anything when you’re in the raw, a girl and a piano.

In July of 2009, I went to Sons’ producer/writer/guitarist/singer Bruce Roper’s studio pad on the north side and began laying down scratch piano and vocal tracks for 15 tunes. It took several months just to get those done because I was stealing hours during the day from my mom and jobbing band duties and I happened to be intensely loaded up, schedule-wise. But, it was worth the time because in all my mistakes and re-dos, we nailed down tempos and keys pretty well and had a decent enough basis for the rest of the musicians. I especially loved Bruce’s microphone, an Audio Technica AT-4050, and vocal set-up. The scratch vocals sounded so purdy.

Then we started bringing in some players and sent tracks to Stevie Blacke, a fantastic LA-based strings musician (who has played with some pretty famous people like Pink and Beck), two different drummers and a bass player.

While the Stevie stuff came back so gracefully, our Chicago sessions were sort of uninspired. Not because of the musicians but by the lack of vision and skill on the part of the “producer,” moi. I was hoping things would just come together, not realizing players generally appreciate more direction than “that sounds nice.” I expected the whole thing to unravel naturally, effortlessly. Although I loved the players we brought it, I knew something wasn’t adding up when it all came together. The recordings sounded soulless. My options were: 1. To finish what we had; 2. To trash the whole thing and start again;  3. To find a proper producer who could work with what we had and enhance what we needed or 4. To quit music entirely.

I spent about four or five months contemplating what to do while Bruce comped vocals and met me here and there. I was thinking: should I re-do what we have or should we mix it and hope for the best? I sent a few songs to various mixers and friends to see if they could rectify the situation or offer advice. Yet still, I wasn’t excited about the recordings. If I could find someone who wouldn’t charge a ton, I could send the material out of town and work the tracks from a distance (maybe I needed some distance at that point!).

I found an old college friend, Craig Havighurst, who referred me to Neilson Hubbard, a Nashville producer. Neilson spent about a month organizing the pieces after bringing in his guys to re-track rhythm. Believe it or not, he kept two things: my scratch piano parts and Stevie’s strings. Oh, and he also loved a lot of the quirky background vocals Sue Demel (of Sons of The Neverwrong) had done – she’s so cool.  I found out later, when I went down to Nashville to sing my leads, that Neilson didn’t receive any click tracks on the hard drive I sent him. So, for each song, he and his boys had to follow my scrappy piano parts and play to them! Awkward. So much for all that time Bruce and I spent on programming the click to all my weird tempo changes!

I went down to Nash (with bronchitis) on March 8^th, 2011 and spent two days singing with Neilson after he had spent some time re-tracking and recycling what I had sent in the instrumental tracks. He’s sweet and low-key, a Mississippi boy. He knew what he was doing, but you might not think so by his humility. No ego at all. We did six, seven or eight vocal takes of each song – 7 songs the first day and 4 the next day – in a smooth, easy-going, yet purposeful manner. He had chosen 11 of the 15 to work on. He did reject one of my old standbys, Something’s Missing, but it wasn’t too hard to let that one go after I’ve been playing it since 2003 or 2004. All the other songs he chose were written more recently. He rejected another one I loved, Sweet Color, but maybe that one will reappear later (it has multiple annoying tempo changes and it arrived with no click track like all the others).

Neilson brought the boys back in and they tracked three more songs: Hand of a Rebel, Marie and Walk To the Water (which I later 86’d). I sent Marie and Walk in there last minute just to give them something extra, but “Walk” wasn’t a fully developed song yet, so it made it to the trash pile. Again…maybe next record.

Neilson came to Chicago in April 2011 to play a show with one of his artists, Kim Richey. So, I booked a couple days at Transient Sound, a St. Ben’s-area studio owned by my friend Vijay Tellis-Nayak and his partner Steve Gillis. We recorded lead vocals for Hand of a Rebel, Marie and one other song that needed another look, Come Orion.  I also invited two brilliant Chicago pals - Liam Davis and Cheryl Wilson - to come in for some background harmonies. Since Dan Mitchell, the keyboard player he works with, was here with Neilson, he sang some and played some piano and organ as well. It was a very productive day and-a-half!

Neilson went back to Nashville and I got busy laying down background vocals for a couple songs, recording at home on my M-Box. Not exactly high-fi, but good enough for backgrounds, Neilson assured me. Then, we realized I needed to get down to Nashville for final mixes and some last-minute vocal changes, so I spent a day in late May in his studio and we finalized our mixes.

So, after starting a total of 18 songs in Chicago two years ago, we had now collectively whittled things down to 13 tracks, then ditched a piano-cello piece, Easter Day, in the 11th hour. My old friend from Northwestern, Thom Russo, offered to give me some re-mixes at this point, so Neilson sent him the files in June 2011. Thommy did so well with those, he ended up re-mixing the entire record. I can’t wait for you to hear it. It is so beautiful (in my opinion). I haven’t made a cd in almost nine years, and this one is my most proud. For sneak peaks, please go to soundcloud to hear some of the songs. 


CD release party for Daisy Petal In The Dirt will be at Mayne Stage in Chicago on September 15th, 8pm. Tickets are $15 for general seating.