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DownTown Blog – Creating A Classic Rock’n’Roll Sound

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Rock and Roll is what made America great. The music that was created in the USA back in the 1950s was the sound heard around the world. It inspired a generation of British teens who would bring it back to new heights in the 1960s and beyond, inspiring a new generation of American teens to rediscover their own roots. I was one of those American teens who heard that sound and never looked back. I started playing guitar and writing songs, while buying and listening to the greatest records ever made. It was a golden age for 20th Century music, with Rock and Roll front and center.

In 1967 it started to be called “Rock” to give it a more serious image. Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band transformed the world of popular music. This wasn’t I Want To Hold Your Hand anymore. FM Radio was giving Radio a facelift with hipper DJs and cooler sounds not heard on the AM side. New publications like Rolling Stone and Creem began to cover and give voice to the artists and take them seriously, no longer fodder for the Teen magazines. The term Rock and Roll became a cliché, used to describe the Oldies shows.

Like most things retro, Rock and Roll has found its way back into the lexicon. Thanks in part to Americana artists keeping the flame alive and those ageless wonders, The Rolling Stones, Rock and Roll is alive and kicking in the 21st Century. The late great Tom Petty shared his thoughts on rock’n’roll in his Musicares Person of The Year speech in 2017. Tom said “I was collecting records—Rock and Roll records. Not rock; this was Rock and Roll. The roll designates a swing—there’s a swing in the roll.”

Yes, for those who are serious about their RnR, there’s a “feel” to playing it that differs from Rock. Some might call it a “backbeat” or a “groove” that is not found in modern rock. I’ve been at this for a while now and I’ve been recording and producing music to make my contribution to keeping the sound alive and hopefully, inspire a new generation to play Rock and Roll and make it their own. With that said, here are some tips:

TIP #1: THE PLAYERS

This is where it all starts. For me it’s about finding the right musicians who know how to play Rock and Roll. I’ve had the privilege to record and play with some great musicians like Garry Tallent and Max Weinberg from The E Street Band. (Hey I’m from Joisey!) I’ve done most of my studio work with the great rhythm section of drummer Steve Holley and bassist Paul Page. These guys know how to play RnR! I know that it’s not that simple and it took me years to get to this point. Like most, I started playing RnR by forming a band. I could probably write a book on this subject. Bands by nature are something special. There’s a certain camaraderie and excitement playing in a band. When it’s working it’s as good as it gets. When it’s not…needless to say, there are not too many RnR bands that make it to the “toppermost of the poppermost”. This doesn’t mean you can’t create classic RnR by yourself. Just check out Maybe I’m Amazed by Sir Paul.

TIP #2: KISS (not the band): Keep It Simple Stupid

Rock and Roll is a simple style of music. It’s best played with a band or group of musicians. Don’t overthink it. Let the rhythm be your guide. Try to keep it loose, allowing yourself to feel the beat with the other musicians. You’ll know it when you’re all in sync and when you are, the fun begins. When I’m tracking in the studio I try to keep the number of takes on a song to 3-4 takes at the most. You want it to sound fresh and not rehearsed to death.

TIP #3: RETRO IS WHERE IT’S AT

courtesy of @markmaryanovich

Rock and Roll is all about the electric guitar and it started in the 1950s when Leo Fender introduced the Telecaster and the Stratocaster, two of the most iconic guitars ever made. Add to that the Gibson Les Paul and ES-335T, along with the Gretsch Duo Jet and 6120 (I can’t forget Rickenbackers), and you have the beginning of the Golden Age of RnR guitars. A new Strat in 1956 cost $175. I have a 1964 Strat that I bought for $150 in 1972…ok, it’s probably worth around $10-20,000 today, but the sound is classic and that’s what you want to hear. I know the prices are crazy now, but you can still buy a good Tele or Strat at a decent price. Also, there are great new guitar makers and modern technology is always improving with plugins and effects pedals that can give you the sound of classic guitars and amps that can be very impressive sounding.

TIP #4: SuSuSTUDIO

Joe DeMaio and SG

Of course, recording on 2” analog tape on a Studer 24-track machine is a sure way to get a classic sound, but Pro Tools has pretty much made that extinct. Nevertheless, if you really want to create a classic Rock and Roll recording, then you owe it to yourself to record in a studio. I feel sorry for the younger generation of musicians today who will not have a chance at recording in the great studios that once dotted the RnR landscape. So many incredible and fabled recording studios have gone the way of the dodo, but there are still some around. Your best bet is to find a studio with a “Lifer” running it. These are the guys that will never quit and are always looking for vintage gear like an archeologist looking for that rarest of finds. They know how to get that classic sound. The early studios like Sun or Chess were primitive compared to what came later, but back in the day, they cut killer tracks. Today, vintage outboard gear like compressors and limiters are highly sought after, along with vintage mics. There’s your classic sound. They don’t make ‘em like that anymore! I’m very lucky to record at Shorefire Studios in Long Branch, NJ. It boasts the last Helios recording console ever made. This was the console used at Trident Studios in London, where all those classic records were made by The Stones, Led Zep and many others. Also, owner and engineer (“Lifer”) Joe DeMaio has all kinds of vintage amps, keyboards, and drums. It’s like working in a RnR museum! lol

TIP #5: EXPERIMENT

Some of the coolest sounds on classic records were created by experimenting. Sometimes trial and error are the way to go. The goal of any classic recording is to create a “Vibe”. That’s a certain feeling a track has that’s just undeniable and undefinable. I like trying to create magic in the studio whenever I can and sometimes that occurs by paying attention to the little things like mistakes I like to call “happy accidents”. You never know when it’s going to happen, but when it does, try to be alert and willing to go with it. Garry Tallent once told me a story that when recording with Bruce Springsteen “mistakes” would occur. Bruce would go home and listen to the recordings, and after much listening, Bruce would not hear the “mistakes” anymore. To him they were now part of the song, and Garry said, the band would have to learn the “mistakes”. 🙂

Rock and Roll has a rich tradition and I’m honored to be part of carrying it on. But this is also the 21st Century with a new generation that can take all the new technology and information at their fingertips and create something that’s never been heard before. All it takes with Rock and Roll is a little inspiration.

DownTown Blog – Fly

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With the release of the 21st Century RnR album, I felt like I had made peace with the end of an era. The songs represented the best of the work I did with my engineer of 20 years, Ben Elliott. It was time to move on and I was ready to do it. The release of the 21st Century album was timed with going into the studio to record new material in a new studio with a new engineer.

For 20 years I had recorded at Ben’s Showplace Studios in Dover, NJ. The studio was gone with Ben so I had to find a new place to record. Change was in the air. I sold my house of 40+ years during the Covid Pandemic and had moved 80 miles south down the GSP. A year after Ben’s death I closed on my new house and realized I was only a half hour from Shorefire Studios in Long Branch, NJ where I had recorded the On E Street sessions with Garry Tallent and Max Weinberg. 

Shorefire Entrance

Garry was a co-owner of the studio then and I hadn’t been back since he sold his interest in it. A guy named Joe DeMaio had bought the studio. I didn’t know Joe, but as it would turn out, we had many things in common, including being guitar players. What was amazing was how we had managed to never meet before I walked into the studio in January of 2022. My fellow compatriots in the enterprise were 2 old friends–Steve Holley and Paul Page. It had been a while since we had played and recorded together.

Paul, Robert & Steve

What I didn’t know was that Steve had been working with Joe at Shorefire for 20 years! As is usually the case, we picked up as if we had just seen each other yesterday. Covid had surely changed everything but some things never change, and as far as I was concerned, that was definitely a good thing. 🙂

I found out very quickly just how fast and on target Joe DeMaio is as an engineer. Setup was a breeze and Joe had the sound of the drums down with very minimal sound checks. We were recording from the word go. That was something I was not used to. But Joe knew the sound of his room. Having briefly talked beforehand, Joe told me he had set Steve’s drums up like Ringo’s kit and that was no exaggeration because they sounded great! Also, Joe had replaced the original MCI board with a classic Helios console, one of the last to be made. This was the console used in all those classic 60s and 70s recordings in the UK. It had THE sound!!

Joe DeMaio at the Helios console

I was originally planning to work on 5 songs but we ended up recording10 tracks. One of the songs had different versions. I was not a real fan of a song called Fly. I mean, I liked it but it wasn’t exciting me in its original form. What was exciting me was doing a different version of it ala Buddy Holly. Paul was very much for doing it but Steve was a bit reticent about it. He thought it was a great song and was afraid I would release the Buddy Holly version instead. However, he finally agreed to record a BH version, setting up his drums like Jerry Allison, the drummer for The Crickets.

Now you’re probably thinking, Buddy Holly?? Yes Buddy Holly. In fact, the original title of Fly was Buddy Holly. That was before I had any lyrics. For some reason, I kept hearing Buddy Holly influences in the music on the demo. So much so, that I wanted to record a version that was based on Buddy’s Peggy Sue. And we did! I still have some work left on it before I can mix it, but this track will be released someday! 🙂

Robert on the Breedlove

It was the original version of Fly that we cut that would take me by surprise. I knew exactly what acoustic guitars I was going to record on it, including the 12-string Rickenbacker. What I didn’t know was that the 12-string Ric would be recorded through an early 60s white Vox AC30 with the Blue Celestion Alnico speakers…a Beatles geek orgasm if there ever was one! The Ric sounded amazing through it! The song took on a whole new character for me after that. There’s a bit of a laid-back Tom Petty feel to it that works really well. Recording the vocals was a breeze and it would be the 1st song I ever had Steve Holley sing harmony on.

The day before he came down to record vocals, Steve had lost one of his oldest friends. He seemed to be in a sad place but I think having him come down to record vocals helped to lighten his load a bit. He had some ideas for the harmonies that made me rethink the parts of the song. One was in the main refrain which acts like a bridge in the song. I had recorded a high harmony on the demo but Steve didn’t hear it that way. He heard a lower harmony for it and I was glad he did because I wasn’t sure about the harmony on the demo.

By not singing a harmony over the lead vocal on that part, it allowed me to keep the focus on the main melody and that was helpful. But in working on the song, it took on a zen-like quality for me that I had never experienced before. The mix was one of the easiest I’ve ever done, which owes a good deal to Joe DeMaio’s engineering. But it also had a very calming effect on me, which was odd. The song somehow transformed into something I really dug and I decided I had to release it as the 1st Single from the sessions! 🙂

Fly was recorded in January and February, mixed in March, and released in May. To date, it’s getting airplay on 100+ stations in 25 countries around the world. I also decided to make it my 1st single release at AAA Radio in the US in over 6 years. That just might be too long a time to be away but I also decided to release the song When The Angels Sing as a AAA Exclusive and part of the Fly single release. Steve also sang harmony on that track, but I’ll save talking about it for another day.

Fly just seems like a song for this point in time. I wrote it during the Covid lockdown and I think it speaks to a lot of people around the world who just want to get out and about again. At the time I wrote it I was just trying to lighten up a bit from some of the more intense songs I was working on. But as I played it for people, their feedback made me look at the song in a totally different way. It’s not easy trying to put complicated ideas in a simple straightforward way, which is what Fly seems to do. It’s one of my favorite tracks now.

All in all, I’m having the time of my life working with Joe D. at Shorefire. I’m a retro-sounding artist that has to deal with “classic rock” comparisons but that’s what you’re going to sound like if you’re trying to compete with recordings made 50-60 years ago. It comes with the territory. In doing so, I don’t sound like anybody else and having the chance to work with a Helios board only enhances the sound. Also, these are much different recordings from any others I’ve done before and a challenge to me as a producer. I could not ask for more! 🙂

DownTown Blog – DownTown Mystic On E Street Deluxe

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After going 4 years between releasing albums, DownTown Mystic has released 3 in the last 3 months! Ok, technically Welcome To Sha-La Land is not a DownTown Mystic album but DownTown Mystic is featured on all the tracks and released the Test Of Time single from it. But the release of the DownTown Mystic: Used Records History 1979-1985 album in November sparked the idea for the release of DownTown Mystic On E Street Deluxe. Going through the archives and listening to the music made back in the 80s and then releasing it was somewhat liberating. All those years of silence would finally be rewarded because of the reaction that the music received from fans and especially from the airplay at Radio.

Living in New Jersey, everyone knows Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band is the biggest thing that ever happened to the state. And that’s pretty BIG when you consider that Frank Sinatra, Tom Cruise and Bon Jovi also come from New Jersey, as well as many others like Jack Nicholson! People like to make fun of the Garden State but just look at those names!! Seriously, Thomas Edison invented the light bulb here. Come on people!! In the 80s Bruce was “The Boss” and about to release the biggest record of his career—Born In The USA. At the time, I happened to be working with his bass player, Garry Tallent.

As previously mentioned in the Used Records History blog post, I had met Garry when I was in The Tupelos, and Garry would record and play a show with us. We re-connected a couple of years after I left The Tupelos and Garry had returned from The River world tour. Garry had bought part ownership in a studio in Long Branch called Shorefire Recording. He was interested in learning to be a studio engineer, and when I asked him why he told me in part because of what he saw had happened with my band when he recorded with us in Washington D.C. That had been a disastrous situation where the engineer had sabotaged our sessions. That’s another long story but I knew what he meant. He said he never wanted that to ever happen to him. So lesson learned! 🙂

Garry & Max
Photo by Danny Clinch

I sent some tapes to Garry and he picked some songs to record. Hard Enough was his pick and when it came time to cut the track he had contacted the E Street Band’s drummer—“Mighty” Max Weinberg to come down and play with us. I thought this was going to be interesting because even before Max had gotten the gig with Bruce, he was already well known in my town. He was a BMOC in high school because of his drumming and when he showed up at the studio while setting up to record Hard Enough, I started throwing out names of people we both went to high school with. Max had graduated the year before me but we knew some of the same people, so we started reminiscing about our alma mater—Columbia High School in Maplewood, NJ.

While mentioning various names of people we had in common, at one point Max stopped and asked me, “Do you remember this girl?”—and was about to say her name, when I looked at him and we both said her name together, which really got Max going, “YES, you remember her??!!” LOL Garry had been slightly paying attention to our conversation, but when Max and I both roared about this girl (who I will not name to save her any embarrassment), he wanted to know all about her. Garry asked us, “Who is this girl? I want to meet her!” Max began to tell Garry about the hottest girl in our HS, and how every red-blooded male in that school would drool over her. I added that she was like a Playboy Centerfold at 17, but looked like 25. The irony was that the song we were about to record was probably written using her, from my subconscious, as the model for the girl in the song! Crazy, right?

Needless to say, the good vibes carried over to the session because Max kills on Hard Enough and Garry’s bass line reminds me a bit of the bass line he played on Springsteen’s Ramrod, which is a fave of mine. Like any good classic RnR song, there’s a double meaning that’s sexual in nature. However, I must confess that the double entendre of “it gets hard enough to love her” was more by accident than planned. The only reason I wrote hard enough was that “it gets difficult to love her” didn’t fit or sound right. The whole song is about how difficult this girl makes this guy’s life, but she’s too hot for him to say no to. Garry had a good laugh about me and Max still being able to rave about this girl so many years later. How could this song not be about her? I’m telling you she was hot!! 🙂

We also cut Sometimes Wrong that day, which I picked. The version that appears on the Deluxe album is listed as a “demo”.  This is mainly due to never quite getting the track right. Garry and I would tinker with it over a 2 year period, adding parts and mixing at least 3 different versions. Going back and listening now it’s easy to hear “Mighty” Max and how bombastic he could be live. He’s the highlight on the track. It wasn’t until the Standing Still sessions with Steve Holley and Paul Page that I cut the original version the way I wrote it and it finally worked. I was probably too close to be objective because the “demo” gets rave reviews now from reviewers. But that was the great thing about working with Garry because he would try everything. He had the studio time and it didn’t matter if something worked or didn’t because we were learning as we went.

At the next session we cut And You Know Why and Way to Know. Max had just written his book called The Big Beat where he interviewed great drummers like Ringo, Charlie Watts, Levon Helm and Hal Blaine to name a few. I think he really took to heart what some of these great drummers told him so he could become a better well-rounded drummer. On And You Know Why he put that knowledge to good use. It might just be the least “Mighty” Max you’ll ever hear on a song he plays on, but he’s still solid keeping the groove against Garry’s economical bass line.

The next time I was going to the studio, I stopped at Garry’s to give him a ride and he told me to come in and sit down. He had headphones out by his stereo and told me to put them on. He then put on a record and I heard the Born In The USA album for the first time in its entirety. This was a week before the official release of the album, and as with all things Bruce, I had to swear not to tell anyone that I had heard the record until its release. The album floored me, and I understood why Garry played it for me when we got to the studio.

Up until then, Garry was not interested in using synths but after Born In The USA, it was obvious that synths were now going to be a big part of Bruce’s sound. In the studio waiting for us and already set up with his synths, was Joe Norosavage, who Garry had brought in to play on the tracks we recorded with Max. Joe immediately made a great impression when he came up with a cool lead line for And You Know Why. The rest of the session went just as smoothly and I started up a friendship with Joe, who would work on many of my projects in the coming years. I’m pleased to have been able to unearth the tracks and make them a part of the DownTown Mystic On E Street Deluxe album.

Looking back, the thing that I find really interesting is that at the time, Garry wasn’t doing any recording for himself with the studio. I couldn’t believe it when he finally recorded and put out a solo record a few years back. I never knew he had it in him and when I asked him why now, he said “67”. He had just reached that age and felt if he didn’t do it now, he never would. It just goes to show it’s never too late, even for an “old pro” like Garry Tallent. 🙂