I played bass on my third country record this past weekend. The first two records were some demos with Jack Ingram and Elizabeth Wills’ record Road trip. This time it was with Houston Marchman. Houston is really more Texas singer-songwriter/Americana than hee haw, but it is about as country as I get. Jack Ingram used to introduce me as John “T” Country. I think he was making fun of this city boy. Anyway, I can’t wait to hear how the session turned out. the whole thing happened so damn fast. Houston would strum his way through a song and then we would cut it usually in one take. I know we did six songs that day, but there are two that I don’t remember doing because we did them so fast. Totally different than the way we are doing the Matt Nathanson record. With Matt, we are looking for that one magical take off each song and that can take a little while to get everything dialed in. I personally like the one take approach unless there is a train wreck and it was nice to see it in action last weekend.
My buddies Kyle Schneider played drums and Gabe Rhodes played guitar, so that had a huge impact on the magic. MVP of the session has to go to Milo Deering. Milo played with Lee Ann Rimes for a couple of years. I knew he was a monster Guitar/Pedal Steel player from the Elizabeth Wills Road Trip session, but he broke out the fiddle for some songs with Houston. He plays so beautifully and has such a great sound. Better than any fiddle player I’ve heard in a while. I’ll be sure to post some clips when I get a copy.
