Well, dear readers, walking into a recording studio, for me, is like coming home. I feel so comfortable and at ease there and it’s a world I dearly love. These days I don’t do much in the studio, but on the rare occasions I’m back it’s just a feeling I love. Especially at Westlake Recording Studio, where we’ve done so many of our albums – that’s where both duets albums were recorded with Emily Skinner and Alice Ripley, where Brent Barrett did his Kander and Ebb album, where we did Drat! The Cat! and Judy Kaye and Judy Kuhn and Cinderella and the Sherman Brothers album and Guy Haines and Michelle Nicastro’s On My Own album and the Burt Bacharach album and on and on. And so yesterday we were back at Westlake to begin recording the new Sandy Bainum album. Normally when we do the band date we have about fifteen to seventeen players – we do one pass and then a second pass of the band so that in essence we end up with thirty-four or thereabouts. But doing the overdubs is always time consuming and occasionally irritating, so for this album we made the decision to just have thirty-four players so that we only had to do everything once – no overdubs at all. Aside from cast albums, it’s the first time we’ve ever done it, and boy is it easier and more fun and the sound is so beautiful with everyone just in the same space playing together. Here’s a photo taken from the booth – it’s hard to see how many musician’s are there but the room was packed with ‘em.
And when you have the band and the conductor is good, everything goes so much more smoothly and that is exactly what happened yesterday. Thanks to everyone being on their game, we were up and running right on time, at ten. My wonderful rock of an engineer had the sound sounding great almost instantly. In the first fifteen minutes we had the usual malarkey with headphones, but our three assistants were on it and by ten-thirty we had our first track in the can. And so it went – we were ahead the entire day. The original schedule was to do the six full charts and then let the brass and reeds go and do one other with just strings and french horns. But we were so ahead that we ended up doing one of today’s scheduled songs – in fact, the song I wrote, Simply.
Lanny’s charts sound fantastic as played by this crème de la crème orchestra. And an orchestra it is – with piano, bass, drums, guitar (great guitarist who is new to me), harp, percussion, four trumpets, four reeds, two trombones, two French horns, and twelve violins and four cellos. It’s always nerve-wracking when you have no idea what the orchestrations are like. The arrangements on this particular album are really kind of Lanny and me working together – a lot of the central arrangement ideas came from me and then we finessed them. One arrangement I’ve mentioned before was my take on Rodgers and Hart’s Where or When. I’ve been trying to come up with an arrangement of that song for years and I could not quite ever put my finger on what I wanted until about a year ago, when I came up with a way to do it that had never been done – a completely unique take on one of my favorite songs. We first did the arrangement in Karen Gedissman’s act, but while she loved it neither of us felt it was for her. Arrangements really have to work for the singer. When I told Lanny and Sandy about it, and then played it for them, they flipped. And I must say, hearing Lanny’s orchestration of it, it’s just incredible. Everyone will have their favorites on this album (it’s filled with great songs, none of which are overdone), but Where or When may end up being mine. That said, when I heard what Lanny did for my song, I almost burst into tears, it was so heartfelt and beautiful. I’m very particular about my songs and how they’re interpreted and Lanny just respected the song so much and basically found the emotional core of it and translated that into a simple, gorgeous chart. It’s written for just strings, one flute, French horn, and guitar, harp, drums and a little percussion, I think. I was over the moon about it. He has to add his piano part. I’m a very pianistic writer, but hearing the harp and guitar play the vamp that runs throughout the song, I’m just not sure we even need the piano – it’s so pretty as it is. So, I’m thinking maybe piano from the bridge on. We’ll record it for the entire song, but I’m just in love with the harp and guitar doing it.
The other charts all have the Lanny touch. I turned to our orchestra contractor at one point and said, “This is like doing an album in 1959 with all the great players.” That’s what the sound is like. And the contractor agreed and believe me he’d know, since he played on Streisand’s early albums with Peter Matz, as well as with Glenn Osser, who did a lot of Columbia vocal albums. It’s just the kind of sound and stuff that I live for. I don’t really want to give away what any of the other songs are, for as you know we have many prying eyes here. We also recorded the backup singers for one song – Lanny wanted kind of an M-G-M feel – I gave him four great singers, all of whom have done our Kritzerland shows – Dennis Kyle, Lisa Livesay, Kristofer McNeeley and Jane Noseworthy. We also had photographer Michael Lamont there, so we’ll have lots of fun photographs, and we had the Outside the Box camera crew there, too, and we got some great video. It was just kind of a perfect day – no stress at all, and everyone having a great time and making beautiful music. Sandy was in her little vocal booth all day, and unlike the Christmas album, where we didn’t get one usable word from the scratch vocals, several of the ones she did yesterday have lots of usable things. I think it’s going to be a great CD.
After the session, several of us went to Genghis Cohen. I don’t think I’ve been there once this year, which is shocking. As always, the food was yummilicious and there was a lot of it. I ate too much but hadn’t really eaten anything but some fruit during the session. When I got home I did a three-mile jog so I think I’m fine.
Today, if I can get up by seven-thirty and out the door by eight, I’ll do a jog. That will give me just enough time to shower and get to the studio by nine-thirty. Then we have seven more tunes to do, only six of which involve the orchestra, which is much reduced for day two – it’s just strings and reeds, harp, bass, guitar, drums and percussion. Then there’s just one piano/vocal to do – that has to come at the end of the session because we have to get the band out so the big piano can be moved from its corner into the main part of the room. If we finish by three, my plan is to try and get two final vocals done, and that will mean that between Monday and Tuesday night’s sessions we’ll need to do thirteen finals, and that’s very doable. Then we’re all going to The Federal to see Sharon McNight.
Tomorrow I have a teeth cleaning with Dr. Chew, then I’ll relax and do work on the computer until the vocal session at seven. Same thing Tuesday. Wednesday Sandy and I will talk through her upcoming Ira Gershwin concert at the Signature Theater, then she goes home. The rest of the week for me is prepping our next release and doing packaging for two subsequent releases.
Here’s the second Benjamin Kritzer original song from Kritzer Time, this one called Lucky Me. I probably wrote this in 1964 when I was sixteen. Musically, I think it’s pretty sophisticated for an untrained youngster, especially in the chords and harmonies.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, do a jog, do our second session, and see a show at The Federal. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s free-for-all day, the day in which you dear readers get to make with the topics and we all get to post about them. So, let’s have loads of lovely topics and loads of lovely postings as I hit the road to dreamland after an absolutely perfect day.