A Tribute to My Dad

Back in September or so I had an idea to do an album of all the songs my dad used to do when he was playing guitar and we were just kids. My mom always had records going in the house, and my dad's playing and singing obviously had an influence on my getting into "the business". It was his guitar I started with, and I used his old guitar lesson books to start figuring it all out. I thought a record of me doing his old songs would be a nice "Thank you", and my mom would probably like it, too.

He started playing during the big 60's Folk Revival, and was into guys like The Kingston Trio, The Limelighters, Peter, Paul and Mary, and such. It seemed like an easy thing to do at the time -- there were 3 or 4 obvious songs, and I didn't think it would be hard to come up with enough tunes to fill an album. And since most of 'em were, supposedly, Folk Songs, it seemed like it would be easy enough to learn 'em...

But, I unexpectedly stalled out pretty early on the song list, so I asked my brother and sister, who remembered the bands involved, but not many more songs than I'd already thought of (except my sister came up with "Moon River", which I'd never have remembered). Dad's old friends Bill and Mary Jane weren't much help, either, apparently they weren't hanging out during the guitar-playing period.

Lacking a certified list (and not wanting to spoil the surprise by asking my mom), I had to rely on memory, and it was a little confusing 'cuz there were songs that I remember from my youth, but can't really place if I know the song because my dad played it on guitar, or because my mom played the record a lot. Some were obvious, and I could "hear" my dad's voice singing several of them in my head, but others -- not so much.

Anyway, once I had a list, I had to come up with the chords and work up some arrangements. That was generally pretty easy, but "Moon River" can be pretty elaborate, but I wanted to go back to the original simple style. I found several different chord sets for it, and kind of mashed 'em together, and whittled it down to a simple-sounding setup. "Lemon Tree" is a lot harder than it sounds, especially since it goes pretty quick. I came up with a cool way to play "Four Strong Winds", with Drop-D tuning, capo 2, so it works with Travis picking. Like on the Christmas CD, I overtracked some lead guitar on some of 'em, even though I don't really know how. Fortunately, I could edit together little pieces of almost-right takes into one whole-sounding solo. Don't tell anybody.

My dad and I went through his old song book after I'd given him the CD, and although there were lots of songs in there, I didn't find any that I remembered him playing (or even remembered at all), *except* "Today" (...while the blossoms still cling to the vine...), which I can totally hear him singing. I may have to record that one when I get a chance, and burn a Version 2 of the CD with that one added -- even though it's yet another slow song, in three, with the old "1, 6m, 2m, 5" chord progression; same as "Try to Remember" that's already on this CD (and a million others that aren't). Since I sound the same on every track already, it's pretty hard to figure out a way to get these almost-same songs to sound different than each other. But I'll think of something...

Anyway, I really liked playing some of those old songs, and there's nothing like just doing it to learn more about the whole recording process. And, I think it turned out pretty well, even if it was a lot of work for an audience of two.

Acacia Gets Straight A's

Not that there's anything wrong with B's...

Her report card for the first trimester of 5th grade:

Reading: A
Writing: A
     Spelling: A-
     Speaking: A-
Math: A
Social Studies: A
Science A+
Art: O
Phys Ed: O
Penmanship: S+
Technology: O

The "O" means Outstanding. Her worst subject/grade is Penmanship with a "Satisfactory Plus". Reminds me of her dad...

Christmas Songs CD

Well, I finally built my Christmas Album. I decided that it was now or never, so I just took all of Thanksgiving vacation to knock it out. I had thought that it would be pretty easy, since the "Waltzing With Bears" CD went pretty quick, but it turned out to be a bit of a nightmare.

One problem is that I don't do the Christmas songs nearly as often as I do the kids' songs, so I can't play 'em mistake-free in a take or two. In fact, some of 'em, I can't play (and sing) mistake-free at all. It's usually better to play and sing at the same time, but on songs that were hard or unfamiliar, I had to resort to playing the guitar part first, and singing over it in a separate take.

So I did a few songs with both parts together, and a few with them separate. And then my amplifier died (I need two amps (mine and the Princess one) to do two parts), so I was stuck doing all the rest of the songs in two takes, even if they were easy. That's not *so* bad, but it meant that the vocals had moved from the new amp to the old amp, which has a totally different effects (reverb) processor, and in the process of playing with all of the dead amp's knobs to try to revive it, I lost the bass and treble settings. So the reverb and EQ settings were completely different between the pre- and post-amp-death recordings.

Individually, the songs didn't sound too bad (probably since I'm not much of a "sound guy", so I don't know no better), but strung in a sequence (say, on a CD), they were desperately different-sounding. I wasted a bunch of time (this is weeknight evenings, by now) trying to modify the separate tracks' recordings to match each other, but it was mainly no-go. So I had to re-record half the vocal tracks (which were actually probably improved for it).

Then I spent the rest of the week listening to test CDs in my car on the way to and from work, just trying to get them all to sound at about the same volume. Since they were all done with different methods, on different amps, with different settings, and even different microphones, they were at all different volume levels. Anyway, enough whining -- I learned one Important Lesson: choose a method, and stick to it. (That's why the "Bears" CD went so easy -- it was all done the same way.)

But after all that, I'm mostly proud of most of it. I think the main flaw is that it's all me, all the time -- and it gets monotonous, literally. I tried to vary the sound, but, like John Hartford said, "Style is based on limitation".

To add *some* kind of variety, I dragged my old bass out and added a bass line to "Blue Christmas". Originally, Warren was gonna do me a lead solo verse, but he got too busy, so I got out my swap meet electric guitar and figured one out for myself. I think that's the thing I'm most proud of on the whole CD -- only because I've never played lead guitar, ever, so I have no idea how to do it. But I just played the song over and over while fiddling around on the electric, and some kind of thing emerged. Not sure how good it is in the grand scheme, but I like it. So I'm on that track four times: guitar, bass, vocal, and lead.

Somewhere I got the notion that my mom really likes "Silver Bells". I don't usually do that one, 'cuz it really requires the vocal harmony. But on the CD I could double track myself, so it worked. And I put in the "chimes" with the electric guitar (although it took me a zillion tries to get it (mostly), 'cuz they go by so fast), so I'm on that track 4 times, too.

On "Jolly Old Saint Nicholas", I was trying to add *something*, 'cuz it's pretty repetitive. First I tried to add autoharp, but even though it sounded pretty good live, the mic only picks up the "jangle-ness", and none of the actual, like, notes. It made it sound like one of those Gamelan bands from Java. Cool maybe, but not exactly what I was going for. So I scratched that idea, and got Acacia's cello out. Took me a while to learn how to play it well enough, but I got the hang of it, mostly, and mixed that track kind of quiet.

On the last song, "I'll Be Home for Christmas", it was clearly too short (like most of 'em), and it's just one verse repeated twice, so it was just begging for an instrumental verse in-between. The original recording I'd done was pretty good, so I split it in two and inserted a new guitar-only verse, and then added an electric guitar "solo" on top of that. I just played a slightly-ornamented version of the real tune, though -- no made-up solo this time.

Anyway, if you're reading this and don't have a copy of the CD:
(A) Who are you?!?
(B) There are MP3s at http://68.5.108.28:2222/DISK%201/Christmas%20album/MP3s/

KC - Yorba Linda 02Dec2005

Well, I had my, as it turns out, only shot at playing Christmas songs at Borders on Friday (and my first solo gig at Yorba Linda), and it didn't work out anything like I'd hoped. I played and sang OK, but the crowd just wasn't into it/me. I got a little appreciation later on from a nice older lady and a pair of Asian Studyin' Girls, but mostly dead silence.

It may have been the sound -- I was using the store's amp, and I thought it sounded really good, but the recording is way over-reverb-ed, so I wonder if that's what it sounded like in the audience. If so, I can see why they seemed so underwhelmed. (The only song that came out half-usable was "When You Wish Upon a Star", which I put up on keithandwarren.com as the Song of the Week.) I really gotta figure out how to figure out what the sound sounds like to the audience.

The only real fun I had was the little Asian girl (7-ish?) who, although terribly shy, kept creeping over to listen. I played several songs just for her, 'cuz she was actually listening. Since I'd brought a stack of the new Christmas CDs, and nobody was taking/buying them, I gave one to the little girl -- or tried to. Although I told her mom that it was a Christmas present, I'm pretty sure she snuck over and put a fiver in the jar when I wasn't looking.

We've had at least one Really Good night at Yorba Linda, but this wasn't one of them. Oh, well. The Good Ones certainly make up for the Bad Ones.