Alone Together

Nobody could have predicted the path that An Ape’s Progress took during production. But looking back now, I feel grateful for how it turned out, with everyone — including me and my co-producer Thom Flowers — working in isolation.

After the album’s concept was set, songwriting completed, and demos recorded, the plan was for me and Thom to complete the basic tracking sessions with a drummer and bassist, record my acoustic and electric guitars, and then start working with other session players to fill in the rest of the instrumental parts and sonic flavors. In March 2020 we were ready with demos and a solid plan. And then . . . the pandemic hit.

Despite the dark cloud of COVID, there was one small silver lining for musicians: Most players have excellent home-studio setups allowing them to keep busy and with remote-session work — i.e., recording at home. Drums are the hardest thing to record well, but luckily Thom had worked with LA-based session and touring drummer Jake Hayden, helped him design a studio for remote recording, and established a good workflow with him on previous projects. In the summertime, Jake would normally have been busy with touring, but in light of the pandemic he was focusing on session work at home — so he was available! We passed Jake the first song, Proud American, and recording was underway. For each song, Jake charted the drum arrangement from my demo, added his own enhancements, and recorded several takes. Thom compiled a drum performance from these takes, and we were ready for bass guitar.

Our bassist was Dean Dinning, whose four- and five-string bass tracks locked in perfectly with Jake’s drums as we worked our way through the songs. Dean is also an excellent keyboardist, so he added tasty organ layers to many of the songs. Dean would also have normally been busy touring (with his band Toad the Wet Sprocket), but since we were all working at home he too was available, and we had our “dream” rhythm section! The album’s closing track — Crazy Crow (for Joni), a tribute to Joni Mitchell — was originally envisioned without drums, and with fretless bass in the style of the great Jaco Pastorius who played with Joni. For this, we consulted bassist Travis Carlton (son of guitarist Larry Carlton), who was also available. Travis delivered beautiful tracks for our Joni tribute, at which point we realized that maybe the song did need some light drums after all! Jake then turned in a deliciously jazzy brush-kit performance, and the last set of rhythm tracks was complete.

With basic tracking complete, I recorded my acoustic and electric guitar parts at home, along with “scratch” vocal tracks. These vocal guide tracks would allow other players to get a sense of each song as they recorded their parts, enabling them to play around the vocals and craft the best parts. I recorded my acoustic guitars using a small-diaphragm stereo condenser mic and worked my way through all the songs laying down multiple parts to combine (and choose from) later in mixing. Acoustic guitars went smoothly, and we were ready for more session players!

First up was the incredible Mike Keneally, who we were lucky enough to enlist for electric guitar on most of the songs, plus Rhodes and Wurlitzer electric pianos on about half. Most musicians would be thrilled to possess Mike’s skill level on guitar or keyboards — but Mike is equally brilliant on both! Mr. Keneally delivered a ton of amazing guitar and keyboard tracks over a two-month period, and the songs started to really take shape. Mike’s vast musical vocabulary and strong harmonic sense brought a playful brilliance to the project. Looking back now, I can't imagine how this album would have sounded without him.

Next was master keyboardist and synthesist Roger Joseph Manning, Jr., who delivered tasty synth tracks and specialty keys for half of the songs. Roger’s instrument collection, sound library, and creative compositional sense translated into powerful countermelodies, exciting musical “scene changes,” and flavorful sonic textures throughout.

For the song All for Nothing, Dallas Kruse created a gorgeous string arrangement, and executed it to perfection with his exquisite orchestral sound library. Dallas also played Rhodes and synth on the closing track, Crazy Crow (for Joni). “Crow” also features exquisite electric guitar by the masterful Allen Hinds, and a melodically melancholy guitar solo by the brilliant Lyle Workman. Allen also infused tasty Americana slide guitar into Nickel and Dime, for which Alastair Greene then delivered a beautiful resonator-guitar solo. The final instrumental tracks were those of the multi-talented Angus Cooke, whose gorgeous cello performance on Man in the Sky took the song to a new level and served as a perfect finish to the tracking phase.

My lead and harmony vocals were recorded at home, as were my wife Libby’s backing vocals on half of the songs. From her home in southern Utah, Libby’s sister Michal Patten recorded backing vocals on All for Nothing and Man in the Sky. This was Michal’s first time engineering her own vocal tracks, achieving beautiful results using an Apogee mic with GarageBand on her iPad — very impressive!

Stay tuned for a deep-dive into the vocal recording process for An Ape’s Progress, in a future post.

-Pawlie.