In the studio last week

First I had the stomping banjo player. Old man luedeke.
His banjo didn’t have a resonator, it was just an open backed thing. He had his own mic installed inside. It sounded quite good, but I mixed in a bit of My microtech geffel from in front about a foot away just to add a bit of air. He was also stomping his foot as part of the sound, but on our parquetry floor just sounded like a bit of a slap, so I pointed a mic at his foot and wound out the top end, so it sounded like more of a thud than a slap.

Then I had Jenny Lewis. She turned up with her acoustic guitar, and another acoustic guitar player and a lap steel player. This is how you trick the engineer – sound check the song with 2 acoustic guitars, both with a blend of pickup and mic. Then when you go live to air, only have one guitar and don’t plug in the pickup. So I went from 4 channels of acoustic in sound check, down to 1 channel on air, without any warning. Yep thanks for that one. She has a great voice.