Doc's 50th Birthday Party

Lessee, what would be the best birthday party I could ever have... How about recording parts of Jacqui Naylor's upcoming album The Color of Five at the legendary Coast Recorders, with some of my dearest friends and family in attendance...

Pianist/guitarist Art Khu, vocalist Jacqui Naylor, bassist Jon Evans and drummer Josh Jones hammed it up a bit before the session - for a professional photographer who was shooting for their new album cover - and I snuck this shot.

Jacqui sits in on a last minute meeting to finalize some charts. No doubt that the girl is a knockout. But more importantly she's sharp as a tack, funny as hell and just a phenomenal talent.

What Jacqui is watching is Jon and Art running through charts, that Jon is writing on the fly as they talk thru what they want to do. These two guys are brilliant, gentle and formidably gifted musicians.
If there's one thing my mentors Paul and Michael tell me, it's don't fool around with anything less than great mics. Here's a Klaus Heyne tuned Neumann U67 and an M47, placed high and low on the piano. Jacqui sang into a Brauner VMA - another incredible sounding mic.

Much like the new Gibson guitars that BB King sets on the stage during a show, my new mic got to sit in and learn at this session. That's a heavily modded Apex 460 that I built for Michael, behind Art. Paul used it as a far mic to pick up the room sound of the piano. The mic has a C4S'd hybrid tube shunt regulator and a C4S'd voltage amp, using a vintage GE blackplate 6072 tube. The inline box strapped to the boom houses a Peerless 4722 mic transformer and Vitamin Q coupling cap. The cap between capsule and tube is a V-Cap. Certainly no Brauner beater with it's stock Chinese capsule, but the consensus was pretty much unanimous that it whupped a Telefunken M-16, and I had two RFQs on the mod by Monday.  

Josh gets his drum kit dialed in. What a drummer! At some point an 88 beat-per-minute click track was called for, and Josh just started tapping. When the metronome finally started, Josh was perfectly on tempo.  Lots more great mics here, most notably Paul's awesome AKG C24 stereo mic, running as the far mic just out of the top of the picture.
Michael gets Jon's setup dialed in. A very accomplished engineer himself and the bassist with Torey Amos' band, Jon ran both mic'd and direct inputs to the console.

As well as an incredible pianist, Art is also an accomplished guitar player. He too ran both a mic'd amp and a direct input to the console for his guitar and the Honer Clavinet. 

Old school, baby. A couple of engineers came in and were somewhat stunned to see the 16 track Studer 827 running in tandem with the digital recording setup. I contributed a couple of reels of Agfa 469 for the evenings' performances. The band worked hard, running somewhere around 21 takes of 12 tunes over the course of the evening. The disposition of the material on tape is under negotiation, possibly to be used as the basis for a title on our upcoming open reel tape label. 

Colin, PJ and Mike Paschetto watching the organized confusion of the soundcheck. All of these guys completed their mic cable coiling training during setup. 

What can I say about these guys, but that I love 'em. My bros Michael Romanowski and Paul Stubblebine put together this superb session as one of the greatest birthday presents I've ever received. Hmm, I wonder where they got those cool looking black mock turtlenecks...

My nieces Berrit and Emma assisted at the Neve console. Each girl got a couple of faders to run, under the watchful eye of Dr. Knobs. As bedtime approached the girls had to head home. Art noted that the vibe in the studio just wasn't the same after the younger kids in attendance left the control room. 

PJ and Katlyn manned the producers seats in the control room for a bit. Everyone at the party got to stroll into the control room to watch the session in action, and then walk down to the Camellia and Magnolia mastering rooms at Paul Stubblebine Mastering to hear the live mix on two butt kicking listening rigs. The sound in the Camellia room was just amazing. Gotta get the name of the guy who did the electronics in there.
The highlight of the evening- with the session nearly over Eileen and I were taken into the studio. Michael brought in a candlelit table, two martinis in lovely Czech cut crystal glasses, and a two pairs of cans. Jacqui and Art serenaded us with an absolutely gorgeous rendition of "Here's to Life", while I sat and cried like a baby. I just hope that Apex mic didn't pick up too much of my sniffling...

photo credit - Bodyslam

I've been pretty lucky in business over the years, but my greatest luck has been in finding such wonderful people to be my friends and family. Words cannot express the thanks and the love I feel for everyone who attended that special evening, but I'll try -

Thanks to Jacqui, Art, Jon and Josh for sharing their incredible talent and friendship, and letting us in on their wonderfully creative session.

Thanks to my audio brothers Paul and Michael for offering up 1340 Mission for the event, putting together a fantastic recording setup, and for teaching me so much over the years.

Thanks to my family and friends for making the effort to be there, and last but never least, thanks to my eternal love Queen Eileen for coordinating the party plans and looking soooo fine that night.

Doc B.