Transparent recording process reveals all. On June 18, 2009, Linus of Hollywood, the producer of my Parador album, is house sitting at some Hollywood Hills chalet, and is writing songs for his next album. He’s been producing albums for a ton of other artists and is now wanting to make music suited for his muse. I was thrilled he invited …
Transparent recording process reveals all. Archivists know that the most illuminating moments in music often come when the engineer leaves the tape machine in recording mode, as the musicians talk about whatever suits them. This week Shelly Peiken and I finished writing a song we started last Spring. It’s called Better Not To Care. For the sake of remembering the …
Transparent recording process reveals all. In the midst of yearning for someone who doesn’t feel the same about you, who of us hasn’t wished that they’d have played it a bit cooler? Stayed aloof. Given less. Kept your stock high in the eyes of someone you wish would love you back? Good luck with that. What does it mean that …
Transparent recording process reveals all. My wife walked over to the piano with our new born in her arms. She dipped down with one hand to show the babe how the piano makes noise. I stood across the room, witnessing this, and in her five random notes, received the vision for an entire song. I ran to the piano, and …
Transparent recording process reveals all. Turning on to Ryan Adams hit me like a thunder bolt. In admiration of how prolific an artist he is, and how wonderfully nonchalant nearly all his work tends to be, I wrote this one as quickly and decisively as possible. No second guessing, or thinking too much about what the listener might want to …
![Jackie Lomax "Fall Inside Your Eyes" [Apple Records] The Beatles George Harrison](https://williewisely.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Fall-Inside-Your-Eyes-300px.jpg)
Transparent recording process reveals all. Eric Heywood came in yesterday and set pedal steel down on two new recordings. If you’ve seen Over The Rhine, Tift Merritt, Ray Lamontagne, Andrew Bird or The Pretenders over the past few years, you’ve definitely had Eric blow your mind. First, we tracked Jackie Lomax’ “Fall Inside Your Eyes” – plainly, a song I …
Michael Ryther’s “Kids of the Earth: Songs For the Green Generation” produced by Willie Wisely. Michael Ryther, a grade school teacher here in Los Angeles, approached me about producing an album of kids music. He had a batch of awesome rough demos, each with an important message about environmental activism. Gathered together these songs would become “the Soundtrack to Save …
Transparent recording process reveals all. Finished in 2012, this version re-imagines the “No Surprise” that originally appeared on my “Parlez-Vous Français?” album in 1994. Normally for the Singles Series I’d show you the process of recording, but here you have a version that is twenty years old with a very different vibe. For the new version we used a Gram …
Transparent recording process reveals all. I do believe all components of this recording are present and complete, the first song in The Singles Series to reach that mile marker. It now requires some objective ears to mix the thing. Gotta tease out each part more separately: Kelly Jones backing vocals, John Fields bass drums production, Mike Railo piano, Ken Chastain …
Transparent recording process reveals all. I’ve known John Fields a long time. It’s a friendship that veers between collaboration, BBQ, the camaraderie of our same-aged daughters, and our passion for the great music. With long-time relationships, comes funny stuff. Truth becomes unavoidable. Walls come down. And elephants in the room suddenly begin screaming. He and I met at his studio …
Transparent recording process reveals all. After years of not playing the slide guitar, “Invisible” beckons to shake off the rust. It’s something I love to do, having learned how in the 90’s, playing along to “Love In Vain” on The Rolling Stones‘ “Let It Bleed”, and J. B. Hutto & Lightning Hopkins records. It got to the point where we …
Transparent recording process reveals all. Originally I’d shown up at John Field’s studio to talk him through my drum vision for “Invisible”, a new song by Cliff Hillis & myself. Instead, John picked up his trusty Harmony bass, and got to work laying it down. Without any thought or discussion we kept last week’s rough drum edit muted. Besides, he’d …
Transparent recording process reveals all. I emailed him, “play the drums like on Matthew Sweet’s ‘Girlfriend’ or ‘Rhiannon’ from ‘Rumours,’ or both simultaneously.” Then, night fell. The next morning John Fields, producer of two Wisely albums (“She” and “Turbosherbet“) sent me his big messy test pass of drums. Suddenly, the arrangement for “Invisible,” co-written with pal Cliff Hillis, leaps off …
Transparent recording process reveals all. Thirty-one years ago this May, my band “The Addition” and I were LITERALLY arrested while making our first album––caught breaking and entering into our own recording studio. These days, a band making an album couldn’t even FIGURATIVELY get arrested. Music is too ubiquitous, or as former Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren once told me and …