Live Recordings

One of the things I enjoy doing a lot is live recording at concerts and other venues. Lately I've been able to streamline the amount of gear required to do a full-on multi-track recording on location which has yielded some spectacular results! Please check out the items below.

These two tunes by a great local band from the mid 90s came from their reunion show in 2010 at Play by Play in Silverton which was released on DVD. One of the most intense live recordings I've ever done, it came out sounding amazing for a live show. The band members said that this live thing sounded better than any of their studio CDs; I take that as a high compliment!

This probably wins the award for "Most Complicated Live Show I've Ever Done". It was a jazz big band with 13 horns and full rhythm section, orchestral woodwind section, and full string section, totaling 44 inputs, and I also provided the live sound for the concert as well. The singer is John Vincent, the most unlikely looking Sinatra sound-alike singer you'll ever see; think NFL lineman! Once you get over "that sound coming out of that guy" it was a pretty amazing show. Wish I could have enjoyed it at the time, I was sweating bullets monitoring computers and attending to the string section submix!

This concert recording stands as a monument to one of those extremely rare circumstances where the entire Universe aligns in your favor for a few hours and something amazing comes out of it. This was a live recording at the Greenwich Tavern in 1994 (I think…). It was mixed live to two track stereo which means that all EQing, mixing, adding of effects, everything was done in real time while the band performed, from the back room, wearing headphones. The band was fired up, I had great mics on great players and you can hear the results in this inspired reggae arrangement of Over the Rainbow and Mandela.

Mandela marks the very first time I tried to significantly edit down a piece of live music using some brand new, computer based digital editing equipment we had just bought. The original version was over fifteen minutes long and we were trying to get it on the radio but even a super-friendly DJ is not going to program a fifteen minute cut so the task fell to me to cut it down. I needed it shorter but didn't want to castrate it by taking out a bunch of solos so I went through ruthlessly removing any nonessential moments and six hours and 53 edits later I had it down to 8 minutes flat and the only edit you can hear is the one I wanted you to hear. After I heard the whole thing played back I realized I had just passed through some kind of professional time portal. I told myself, "What you did just now, used to be impossible just months ago". I knew I'd never use a razor blade to edit with again if I could help it.

If you'd like to own these cuts they are available for purchase in my online store here.