How To Play…”Rolling in the Deep”

I had a productive weekend in the studio – we laid down the basic tracks (we’re calling them “skeletons” ) for four new songs in the ‘country’ vein: “The Devil Came on Horseback, ” “Gone Long Ago,” “The Coast of Kansas,” and “Drive the Sun Down.”

Players for this session were:

MB  – vocals and acoustic guitar, Chris Jansen – drums, James Klotz – electric guitar, Brooks Robinson – bass guitar and Gordon Stacey Cargal added both lap steel and national steel guitar.

Our great and kind session producers were Jesse Wallace Jr. and Matthew Steadman.

Profound thanks to all for contributing their time and talents! This week or the next I hope to finish the tracking, probably re-doing the vocals, and adding cello by Brian Halloran and pedal steel by Bill Fleming. It’s a real honor to play with so many veteran musicians and I hope the fruits of our labors will be rewarding to your ears.

When I say these songs are in the ‘country’ vein, think Waylon Jennings, Gordon Lightfoot and others who took american roots music and sort of cross-pollinated it with rock and folk. Why do I have the need to classify the genre of song? Who knows – most likely because people always ask, “What kind of music do you play?”  Listening to the songs as they began to come together, I realized they still have much of that acerbic quality that ran through Myssouri and Antic Clay, the kind of lyrical sentiments that fans of Nick Cave and Leonard Cohen respond to. But once you hear them (and the full record, which I aspire to complete this year, and sooner rather than later) – I think you’ll agree that this is a new direction for my songs. A permanent change? Doubtful. Call it exploration. It feels great to be creating music once again. More soon…