Day of Atonement
It’s Day Three here in New York. My friend David Sanborn is working with producer Phil Ramone in one of if not the largest room in the City. The discussion of the moment is around whether to go in and replace or just cut another version. Seems to be leaning toward a new one.
The sound is a mix of big band and the kind of feel of the early Sanborn days when many babies were made (paraphrasing the chatter in the room on several ballads.) But the description does the thing no justice; this is something old and new at the same time. There’s a kind of methodical approach to a question that hasn’t been asked.
Ramone is a sly, gently funny general with more credits than a Hollywood blockbuster — Google it for details. At one point yesterday drummer Steve Gadd suggested a new approach on a ballad, where as best I can remember it, he suggested they let the tune play them rather than the other way around. The idea worked, but the result was a track that suddenly sounded like a Phil Ramone record. Go figure; Ramone’s style is velvet hammer, seemingly relaxed and flexible with no room for bullshit at the execution level.
Now the Marcus Miller tune Brother Ray is on Take Two, not counting a rehearsal recorded as per standing instructions. There’s been some time eaten up chasing a click track from an earlier version done at Sanborn’s home studio. The business of recording doesn’t add up much these days, but as with the technology game, something will emerge.
Ramone just threatened to wait until the last day of the sessions and then spring a marathon run-down-all-eight-tracks on the band. “There’s no cure for cancer here. Now that we’ve got it all in the can, let’s do some real shit.” He’s joking but seriously.
Food breaks and playbacks typically dissolve into escalatingly dirty jokes. The horn leader is Lou Marini of Blues Brothers fame and a music camp buddy of Sanborns as a child. None of his stories are repeatable.
September 22nd, 2007 at 3:11 pm
Please pass on my best wishes to Blue Lou: the children of the St. Helen of the Blessed Shroud Orphanage in Calumed City will forever be in his debt.