Pro Tips & Techniques
Don’t blow so f—in’ hard!
The people who blow their harps out frequently don’t like to be told that the reason their harps fail is that they’re playing too hard. But that’s the only reason why anyone burns through a lot of harps. The ONLY reason. So if you’re burning…
What every player (including a novice) should know and do about harp setup
I read a lot of posts on Facebook from people who have bad experiences with harmonicas right out of the box. These people complain that the harp is out of tune out of the box (which I agree is bad), reeds break (FYI, you’re blowing…
Recording “Beautiful at Night” with the Mustang III
About a month ago Edward Abbiatti, leader of the Lowlands Band (whose last gig I unfortunately missed in April) asked me if I’d like to play on a track called “Beautiful, At Night” from his next record (which I think not coincidentally is called “Beautiful,…
Reminder to self: Back It Up
A couple of nights ago I left my laptop in a hotel bar. I realized it the next morning when I picked up my laptop bag and realized that it was a bit light. For some reason I did not immediately freak out, notwithstanding that…
How I recorded “The Road Out of Here”
“The Road Out of Here†is inspired by Bob Dylan and Jackson Browne—I think of “Highway 61 Revisited†by the former and “Redneck Friend†from the latter. In style and to some extent theme (one verse is about lyin’ and cheatin’) it’s some kind of…
The Harps and Gear I used on “Orphan Black”
“Orphan Black” is the theme song for the BBC series of the same name (which is about a bunch of clones, in case you didn’t know). The piece was written and produced by Amon Tobin, who (if you’ve heard the original) is pretty deep into…
The harps and gear I used on “Double Lucky”
As a rule, most of the pieces on “The Lucky One” have somewhere between three and five harmonica parts in the mix. “Double Lucky” is an exception, with only two harps, and I think its simplicity makes it a good place to start my series…
How I Recorded “The Lucky One”
I’m planning to do a series of posts describing the specific sounds and techniques I used to record every song on “The Lucky One,” and I thought I’d start out by laying out the overall process that took this record from idea to finished recording.
Making the Harps a Little More Grippy
When I recorded with the band in Philadelphia for my upcoming record “The Lucky One,” we had to turn off the air conditioning in the studio every time we did a take, and that room got pretty toasty after a while. On some of the…
Another day, another (country) session
I took some time off this week from working on the songs and arrangements for my upcoming record, “The Lucky One,” which is set for recording in the third week of September in Philadelphia, to record harmonica parts for Austin TX producer Bobby Flores. (Congratulations…
