The heartbreak of last summer was the unfortunately premature passing of Silkworm's drummer, Michael Dahlquist. A drummer of stunning power and taste (this from a late starter!), he was also a hell of a nice guy. I didn't know him well, but he seemed to handle every situation with the exact right response--even me happening upon him on First Street in Seattle as he took a smoke break from work. (It wasn't completely random; we'd had a discussion after the SKWM show in Pittsburgh the previous September. But it was close to random, and he'd handled it well.) Other meetings were warm as well, and his fine humor comes through well in the SKWM tour diaries. If you don't know Silkworm, now's the time to get acquainted. What a beautiful band.
So. When doing a tribute to a loved band who will never come back, one weighs every decision. Even before the bad news, I was having trouble deciding on a course of action for this cover. Time went by, and I'd figured I'd have enough time to finish something, until at some point I figured I'd missed the deadline. The I heard from Ike, who put the project together--there were still a few days left before mastering, and he'd like to have me involved.
OK, so a quick triage suggested that I abandon some of my intended covers ("Insomnia" and "Never Met a Man I Didn't Like" for example), and I ended up concentrating on "Shitty Little Yacht." The riff in the recorded version is too similar (for me) to the band's cover of "Ooh La La," so I just dispensed with it, with the thought of "what if Bedhead covered Silkworm?" Well, it wouldn't sound like my results, but at least I got the thing to happen.
Over a few days I worked on it, putting additional guitar lines on (three total), and doing my latest vocal trick of blending a crystal mic with a typical dynamic, which manages to add some top end to the voice. I slowed the tempo down just a hair for this cover, but that (and the long end solo) stretched it to the 6-minute mark. I went through several attempts at the end solo, but ultimately went with the first take, which was just supposed to be a scratch take. Oddly, all the other attempts ran out of ideas too early.
After I'd done this tracking, I went back through the drum tracks and changed patterns a bit throughout, and in a couple places nudged drum hits off the grid, so that they'd match with the guitar. This is sort of the opposite of what often happens in digital recording, in which the human-played tracks are often nudged to match the machines, but in this case I wanted to keep the fluidity of the time in the guitar. In retrospect, I should have nudged drums throughout, as they get a bit tedious and mechanical in places. One last change was that I didn't like my initial backing vocal--the performance was good, but I recorded it entirely through the crystal mic, so it had that "telephone" effect, which is sadly overused and rather cheesy. I re-recorded the backing vocals, but wasn't so fond of the results, and I ended up blending the re-recording with the initial crystal-only take.
Not perfect, but the end solo remains one of my favorites on record. You can hear it for yourself by checking out the tribute disc, which is actually two full CDs for $8. Only a thousand were made, so act now. Proceeds go to two charities in Michael's name. There are some fine, fine performances on this set, I should say, and it's an honor to be in such refined company.
