Back in the studio (Blackwater Sound & Mastering, Webter, NH) all last weekend, and Sunday morning when I wake up it occurs to me this will be the last time the three Buskers are in the same place until spring-–by which time I hope to have the new album mixed and off to the printer. And we need photos.
Those elusive Buskers. Oh, you can take candids of them in performance, on stage, microphones in their faces, various attitudes of strangled concentration or ecstasy, for what that's worth (note in particular Paul’s Hendrix-like “O” mouth-workings when he uses his wah-wah pedal).
But get them together for a clean studio shoot? These are busy people. Well, if Mohammed won’t come to the mountain… I email Hanzi, the photographer/artist who has been (slowly) putting together our new and improved website, on the off chance he can come out to the studio for an hour and grab something on the fly.
He can. Fortunately, he doesn’t live far away. Mid-afternoon, as he is due to arrive, I leave Kathy laying down a violin track, and tramp around outside in the sunlight, the intrepid location scout. The studio is in shouting distance of Blackwater Falls Dam, but I don't have to get too close to see the No Trespassing
signs everywhere and feel that post-9/11 paranoia/surveillance vibe. Not good Feng Shui. Hanzi arrives and together we continue the search for the perfect backdrop with the perfect angle of sunlight in Westerman's back yard, a bucolic setting only slightly compromised by two shed-like outbuildings that have renters living in them. We feel like we're totally invading their space. Over there; that big patch of bare dirt where a new septic tank has just been put in. How about there? Is that good Feng Shui?
Pretty soon the rest of the band plus Chris the engineer-slash-rural slumlord, all wander out and join the hunt. The latecomers helpfully suggest every idea Hanzi and I have just tried and rejected. It's getting cold and windy. But after so many hours—days-- of listening, it’s novel to squint in the sun and look hard for a change. Finally we settle on--into-- the funky swallow-you-up antique velvet sofa on the back screen porch. Pretty fuckin’ down home or what? Especially after I grab the dulcimer and start to strum and we launch into “Didn’t Leave Nobody But The Baby,” which we'd just finished recording, old school: guitar, dulcimer and voices, recorded live (each of us in a different room, with sightlines to each other).
Just settin' on the couch: old friends, bandmates... family. But we’re also feeling major pressure to get back to work and finish the session, which we hope will be the last; so up we get. Before Hanzi packs up his tripod we try a few last shots in the studio, through the control room window and other Artful Ideas. And of course, a couple of us with El Maestro Respected Engineer (see above).
I haven’t seen all the pics yet--Hanzi must have taken two hundred, so hopefully at least one of them makes me look young and handsome. Maybe. But I’m sure we’ll find something to grace the back cover of the next album, at any rate. Which is due out next spring, and which we promise will be packaged in recycled paper with no shrink wrap. In the meantime, check out Hanzi’s beautiful psychedelic, astral plane take on nature photography at www.eyedreamdesign.com.
