A couple months ago I announced on this blog that I’m getting ready to make a record. The shape and sound of that record is coming into focus.

For a start, it’s going to be stripped-down. I’ve realized that the stuff I’ve most enjoyed playing in the last few years–such as the gig I played with Lowands at the Windmill last month, and the work I did a few years ago with Brian Maw–is stuff where I’m one of a very few players on stage. I need sonic room to play out my conception of what harmonica does in a band. I can’t express that conception when I’m struggling to find space for the instrument behind (and I do mean behind) a wall of guitars and keys.

So this record will feature guitar, harmonica, and drums for the most part–the same lineup that backed Little Walter on his great recordings. That doesn’t mean it’s going to sound like Walter. The sound I have in my head is something like Morphine meets The White Stripes: big sounds from minimal instrumentation, low, dark, with big grooves burning underneath. I’ll use the looper with my RPs to create layers of harmonica, of which there will be a-plenty. There’ll be various flavors of blues involved, as there is in almost everything I do, but the overall sensibility is rock.

I’m writing lyrics daily now, and writing music to fit those lyrics. That’s the opposite of the way I’ve always worked; I’ve always started with a groove, gone to a song structure from there, and then to the lyrics. But starting with the lyrics seems to be working for me now, and I’m going to stick with it. I saw a documentary on Carole King, and it turns out that that’s how she worked–her collaborators delivered lyrics to her, and she’d write the music. (In the case of “Too Late Baby,” apparently it took her about an hour from the moment she first saw the lyric sheet. Genius ain’t slow.)

So the songwriting is underway, the lyric sheets are piling up, and the music is coming into focus. Pretty soon the planning for the sessions will begin. My producer and I have discussed the players, and we’re clear on who we want and where we plan to record. I’m figuring to launch a Kickstarter campaign in the next couple of months, and to to do the recording sometime in the second half of this year.

Pretty exciting, huh? I’m looking forward to making a great record. Here’s a taste of what’s coming. “50 Grand” is a blues with a rhumba beat, and it features two harmonica parts: one with an amped sound that’s a dead ringer for some of my favorite Charlie Musselwhite tones, the other with a tenor sax sound, both sounds courtesy of the Digitech RP500. The harp parts were recorded with my favorite harp recording setup: Audix Fireball V mic into Digitech RP500 into the computer via USB. The drum track is generated by EZDrummer 2; nothin’ fancy, but it’s a demo. I played the bass and keyboard parts. I don’t expect to use keys on the album much, but I don’t play guitar, so the demo’s got keys. I can stand it if you can.

It’s just a demo, but I like the greasy (pronounced “gree-zee”) groove on it, and the lyrics have a lot of black comedy in them. I also like the part of the second solo chorus that’s harmonized in 6ths, a plenty cool sound that I don’t think I’ve heard from anyone else. It’s the kind of thing you can do with a Fireball mic, and can’t do with a bullet, because a bullet would just make an ugly smear from those chords.

Enjoy.

“50 Grand” by Richard Hunter. Copyright 2016 by R Hunter/Turtle Hill Productions, all rights reserved