Talk about the recording of Dusk
Jeff Martin writes:
Dusk, or the tunes put on the album, were intended as demos for the next Badlands album after Voo Doo Hwy. We had worked up that group of tunes at rehearsals at Mates in North Hollywood two months before recording them at Good Night L.A by a friend of Ray's, Shea Baby.
It's all 24 track full studio recording, but we did it all in less than 6 to 8 hours. We put the Mic's up, made sure they worked and Go! We recorded them primarily for Atlantic Records to hear and give us a budget for the full recording of the same tunes, if they liked what we had. They did not like the direction of the songs, for what ever the reason. Some months later we were dropped from Atlantic.
At the time we were happy with that outcome and so was the Management, being that Atlantic was not doing anything for us anyway. We shopped new prospects.
Almost every song was one-take recordings. I remember having floor Tom mic problems where we stopped to fix it, then restarted a song. But all in all, one takes. Even some endings were a little funky on my end, but Jake just flagged it off and we go to the next tune. I think Jake is the only one who did not make one mistake...if he did I did not hear it.
Ray had about 50% of his lyrics together. The rest were what he called Jib-A-Jab. He would put a word or two on the front of a line and rest were all vowels. He was amazing at it, and most folks never could tell the difference. He would come up with his melody line by Jib-A-Jabbing. I think he had a harder time finding lyrics that fit his Jabbing, due to the timing and the percussive hooks he would come up with while scatting along.
Nothing on Dusk was fixed, that Ray did, obviously due to his passing before the putting together of the tracks. For him to sound like what you hear on the album one take each tune, still amazes me to no end. He was one you could say had true talent, pitch and tone.
Why did you record Dusk "live"??
If you wanted to hear what Badlands sounded like in room, where you could just sit and watch. No mirrors, no smoke, no Bullshit. That is Dusk.
The best thing we did together was play. The biz end and all that comes with it, was the hard part. I have a recording of a Radio show around Seattle called Bob's Garage where we actually set up in this guy's garage. We played a few tunes and then did an interview. I had come across that tape a few years back and it's so tight and squeaky, it hurts. Both tunes were our jamming tunes...that anything go's. It was banging. I do believe Bob's Garage was used to weed out false musicians and bands. We passed with flying colors.
If you got another deal....would you have released Dusk as is? made fixes or re-record all the songs and make a "real" album??
It would have been all re-recorded at a huge amount of money. Most likely with changes in the songs and different songs. Atlantic, or the person we had to deal with, Jason Flom, like to get his mitts on tunes and fuck with them. Jake would not have any of that kind of Crap....one of the things I liked about him! Most likely why Atlantic jerked us around, we would not try to fit in to what ever band just made them alot of money and they thought it would be a good idea to follow........ but who know for sure.
One thing I must comment about Dusk is a vision I see in my mind every time some brings up the project or I listen to it myself.
During the begining of the song Sun Red Sun, while Jake was doing the intro, I could see Ray in the Vocal booth through a glass partition sitting on a stool giving me that charismatic smile of his. His arm held out in front of him and running his index finger back and forth across ten or twelve thin silver Indian bracelets he always wore.
That's the chimes you hear in the track.
