About Zach

Zach is a wandering minstrel (as opposed to a meandering wastrel) who believes in uniting diversity, social responsibility, and discovering as hard as he can. To those ends has he dedicated his life.

Atlanta, GA

Posted on September 11, 2008 by Zach

Guess where I went next?

“Um, Atlanta?” you guess.

Correct! Great guess!

“Um, it’s in the title?” you point out.

Still, a great guess. Yes, I went to Atlanta. Guess how many musicians responded to my ads?

“How about two?” you guess again.

Looks like you need answers to be in the title to guess correctly. (Ooh, punk out!) The correct answer is zero. Cero. Zilch. Nada. 공. I know for a fact that Atlanta is a bustling music city so, despite previous similar happenings in other big music cities, I was surprised by the lack of response from Atlanteans.

At least I did find a host. A truly awesome host.

“What was this person’s name?” asks the unattractive passerby from earlier. (He could use a name. Any name suggestions for the unattractive passerby?)

This person’s name was Trinh Huynh (might help you pronounce it if you read it like “Trin”). She was hospitality incarnate to Brad and me.

“Wait, Brad?”

Ah, yes. The friend who I mentioned was flying in to Atlanta.

Backstory: Brad Tretola is an absolutely phenomenal guitarist who I met when I was a music student in Minneapolis. There is a great story of how we met, which we always tell to anyone that asks how we know each other. In a nutshell, he thought I was a classical, printed-notes-only girl, and I thought he was a guitar poser hippy, and we were both incredibly wrong.

I had arranged earlier to meet Brad in SC at his parents’ home, where he was then staying. (Brad travels like a fat kid eats. That is to say, a lot, all the time.) But he had a tour cancel on him and somehow he found himself up in Jersey with some great musical prospects. He wanted to honor our gig but wasn’t sure how he could make it work. We ended up getting him a ticket back to SC for a couple days, and his flight had a connection in Atlanta, so we thought it would be cool if I just picked him up in Atlanta and he drove with me over to SC.

So that’s Brad. Now, back to Trinh. She is an accepting and quick-witted girl with a great place and an even better little dog named Henry who is a funny, friendly, enthusiastic little fellow.

She was going to have a dinner party that evening, so we helped her shop for food, then sat guiltily in her house while she cooked after she refused to accept our aid.

As it turns out, it’s probably good we didn’t help, because the meal was phenomenal. She made bowls of some delicious Vietnamese concoction with noodles, pork, apples, and veggies in a spicy fish sauce. But what really set it apart was the fresh mint leaves! Totally unexpected, but super delicious.

Everyone is there in the above picture. Trinh on the stool watching everyone enjoy the fruits of her labors, Henry enjoying the people on the couch, and Brad sleeping next to Henry (in the middle of a party!).

One of the guests had brought a guitar, and we managed to coerce Brad into playing it (“Brad, want to play?” “Sure”), which is always a treat. He even tried using a glass as a slide, but it was too big, so next they tried a shot glass, and finally, Trinh found the perfect solution: a test tube!

The next day, the three of us went to 순두부, a Korean restaurant specializing in, you guessed it, 순두부. It was delicious. Super delicious. I had been craving that very dish (it’s like a spicy tofu soup) for a while, and when she mentioned that as a possibility I perked right up.

And that was Atlanta. Better luck next time, Atlanta.

NEXT: Recording at the Tretolas’.

Birmingham, AL

Posted on September 11, 2008 by Zach

Birmingham! I like to pronounce it like “Bummingum.” Also, on the way there I saw a rocket ship!

Amazingly, I had three people contact me in Birmingham and I was unable to meet with any of them.

I played email / phone tag with one fellow, and one time I think he answered but he sounded far away and crackly and I couldn’t understand what he was saying.

Another guy who plays funk/R&B guitar was actually in Huntsville but I had forgotten his location and mistakenly thought he was in Birmingham. I drove right past him on the way down, but by the time we connected again it wouldn’t work out for him schedule-wise.

The third guy, a singer, actually set up a session with me for the next morning, but I was set to pick up a friend from the Atlanta airport two days later.

“So how does that–”

I was getting to it. When I double-checked his ticket I saw that it was actually arriving in Atlanta the next day! So I had to leave Birmingham not too long after waking. I could have recorded with the singer, but then my friend would have been waiting for hours at the airport. I sadly made the call to cancel the session.

“So did your time in Birmingham suck?” asks AG sympathetically.

Not at all! I stayed with an awesome bloke by the name of Richey.

Richey retired not long ago, and has plunged into the world of Couchsurfing, meeting new people and hosting many travelers in his comfy home. He was a great host, and we had a great time chatting about everything under the sun over some great new (to me) beers. Naturally, we sat on his balcony for this, since his backyard is pretty awesome and features a lake. Well, kind of a pond. But a big pond.

NEXT: My doctor said Atlanta.

“Wow, is that a 90’s medication commercial reference?”

Haha, yep.

Nashville, TN

Posted on September 11, 2008 by Zach

Nashville! One of the three biggest music cities in the US, Nashville is positively brimming with musicians. I expected a great response from the playaz here.

But life is full of surprises. I only got three people interested in the project, and one of them decided he wasn’t interested when I couldn’t pay his full fee. Another one didn’t work out schedule-wise, so I was down to one person. That person was Don ‘DC’ Chamberlin, bassist.

I spent a pleasant morning/afternoon with Don laying down bass parts for several tunes. Don in particular was all over one of my older jazz/blues tunes, playing a part far better than the part I’d imagined. He also gave me a banana for breakfast. Thanks Don!

And that was that. Nashville.

“Why do you think the big cities seem to give you the littlest response, Zach?” asks Attractive Girl inquisitively.

My theory is that in the big music cities, most of the players are busy working, so they’re not out hunting for more work. Thus, they miss my ads and never even know I was there. I have no proof of that, but it seems to make sense in my head.

“Do you have any other interesting observations about Nashville?” she continues inquiring.

Why, yes. One other thing. Everywhere I’ve gone, the response from musicians has been one of excitement, mixed with a little bit of awe. They think the project is unusual and awesome and they are usually happy to be a part of it. Some pro players who usually play for money even donate their time. Nashville players, on the other hand, responded differently.

“How much does this gig pay?” asked one of them.

“Does this thing pay?” asked another. In fact, that was the entire text message. No introduction, just that.

This is not a judgement — I don’t think ill of musicians trying to make a living, in fact I rather think ill of people abusing musicians by asking them to pay for free since it’s just “having fun.” If I had backing for this project I would pay all the players. But since I’m paying for this project myself and I’m already going broke buying gas, I have to rely on the awesomeness of the project, involvement with lots of other great musicians nationwide, convenience of participation, and the publicity the project will generate to draw in the musicians. And that was not enough for some of the Nashville peeps.

“Hmmm, interesting,” muses Attractive Girl. “Will you pay me for being Attractive?”

NEXT: The ham is birming!

“Hey, you didn’t answer me.”

Knoxville, TN

Posted on September 10, 2008 by Zach

Before we commence with the text-only Knoxville section, I would like to describe a happening peep I chanced to rendezvous with en the route to Knoxville — Jeremiah Nave, owner of East Coast Mobile Recording. He has the coolest truck I have ever seen in my life:

Movie Preview Man: It looked like an ordinary truck…

But inside are all kinds of goodies, including a complete recording studio. Definitely check it out in more detail on his website, linked above. It’s kind of like the Lovemobile times 10. Or, squared. Or times ten and then squared. Yes.

(Lovemobile * 10)^2

They both look nondescript, but inside are some serious technological goodies. I was pretty awestruck.

Jeremiah contacted me because he thought my project was awesome, and since he was kind of on the way for me, I made a bit of a jaunt through the Tennessee mountains to pay him a visit. He was showing me around his place when we came across a pretty amazing organ in his garage. He has one of the rarest leslies around for it too, which sounds appropriately trashy, as a good leslie should. He told me about a recording artist who denied that Jeremiah actually had this leslie, since he thought he had the only one left. Ha. Look at this picture, recording artist!

When he turned it up to a nice garage-floor-vibrating level, the tubes got nice and warm.

Of course, once we had dialed in some great sounds, I had to get this organ recorded, so Jeremiah let me include his organ on my project.

From there it was off to Knoxville, where due to my forgetting to take pictures the world was text-only. Let’s begin now.

Knoxville! Oddly enough, sometimes referred to by locals as Knoxvegas. Actually, some people in Nashville said that too -- Nashvegas. Can you just add "vegas" to placenames like that? I guess I'm from Omavegas, NE. Anyway, I arrived in Knoxville in time to meet my host for a late dinner.

"Who was your host?" asks AG. "And hey -- why does everything look funny? And why aren't there any pictures??"


Calm down, Girl.  The funny-looking-ness is temporary.  Everything will be back to normal after Knoxville.  And my host was my buddy since high school, Paul Coker.  We haven't actually seen each other in a number of years, so it was great to reconnect with him and his snappy wife Kris.  (Snappy in the "quick perceptive skills" sense, of course.)  Paul and I had good times over some fine tex-mex before joining forces with fellow Couchsurfer Julia Zagaya.  She and her friend were over at a bar to listen to one of their friends play some music.
Paul and I continued the tradition of great times by also having great times with Julia and her friend.  Do you like how I keep talking about this person as a "friend"?  That's because I can't remember her name.  I'll just come right out and say it.
After a pleasant night's sleep on Paul's couch, I met up with Neel, a guy with a long Indian name that I can't remember so I'll just write Neel.
"Dang," says AG, shaking her head.  "You can't remember pictures, Julia's friend's name, Neel's name... I bet you can't even remember the capital of Poland!"
Hey!  That should be capitol with an 'o'!  HA!  Gotcha!
"sigh"
Is it Krakow?
"No, but it used to be.  It's Warsaw."
Dang.  Anyway, I met up with Neel, a reasearcher at UT who is also a multi-instrumentalist who plays awesome music with a very sensitive, meditative bent.  He recorded some guitar, voice, and hand drums for me.  I learned a bit about Indian music as well, in particular some interesting things about modes -- which modes apply to which emotions and topics, which is not the same feeling or sense that Western ears have for those modes.
This topic came up because, of course, I wanted him to do a "romantic longing" introduction to a song in Mixo b2 b6, which he didn't feel as easily as he would have if the song were in regular old major.  Super interesting.
After that, Neel recommended an excellent Turkish restaurant, where Paul joined up with us again, and where I had an absolutely fantastic beef kabob!  Mmmmm.

NEXT: Normalcy returns to the blog, as we re-enter the world of words accompanied by pictures.

North Carolina

Posted on September 10, 2008 by Zach

North Carolina! The state of a mysteriously disappearing English settlement, the Calabash cooking style, and the Wright Brothers. Also the state of many missed connections (and I’m not talking about the “missed connections” category on Craigslist, although that would be hilarious). I had about seven people to contact in North Carolina, but I ended up meeting only two of them. Some people never got back to me in time, and some people I didn’t get to in time. Alas.

Let’s start with my host, fellow Couchsurfer and antique car owner Paul MaGee.

Paul had offered the services of his 1970 Plymouth Fury for recording a good engine sound, so when I arrived in the Raleigh area I headed over there to meet him. Unfortunately on the way there it started raining, and his rule was that the car, being an old convertible, does not go out in the rain, a rule which I understand completely.

So, without a sweet old car to record, we instead spent a pleasant evening chatting about this and that. A few interesting things about Paul:

He has many house plan books. When the books were not taunting me themselves, wanting me to waste many hours looking at them, Paul was taunting me with them himself.
His car is named Fluffy. He has a “Friends of Fluffy” group on Facebook. I am a member.

Next morning, I was off to nearby Durham to record with Ken Ray Wilemon, a percussionist and all-around cool musical dude.

We spent a highly enjoyable afternoon putting down various percussion goodies on a handful of songs. One trick in his bag is that he sometimes runs some of his hand drums through a delay pedal for all kinds of strange and interesting effects, so we got some of that bizarre loopy-sounding goodness on the project as well.

From there, it was off to Knoxville, TN, which was to prove both productive and text-only.

NEXT: Knoxville in letters.

Virginia

Posted on September 10, 2008 by Zach

The next day I had Virginia on my mind!

“Not Georgia?” you wonder, while also wondering how you came to be one of my narrative devices.

No, not Georgia. She will be on my mind later. On this day, it was Virginia. I drove down to Bristow, VA (not far at all from DC) and met up with my old college friend Brandon West.

He recorded a healthy smattering of things for me, because oh my goodness — look at that room. He has a room in his house which is full of odd instruments. His father is military and always brought back unusual instruments from his travels abroad, eventually accumulating a significant pile of instruments. Look at this:

That, my friends, is called “hours of fun for everyone.” Check out Brandon breaking it down on the dulciflangitar:

Brandon also does an absolutely amazing cricket impression. So I also recorded that.

Then, foolishly leaving behind my favorite hat, I headed south to Williamsburg, sometimes called “colonial Williamsburg” due to its historically colonial nature. It was indeed quite historic.

But I didn’t go there for the history. I went there to meet a cool dude named Christian Amonson, who is an organ student and has access to several pipe organs around the city. He is a sound engineer as well as a multi-instrumentalist.

I got there in time to hang out with him and some of his friends, then, after sleeping at his place, we arose determined to record a bunch of stuff. We first recorded a smattering of drums, then headed off to a church with a large pipe organ:

Oh yeah.

So we set up all the stuff and then some other guy came in to use the organ so we instead went off to see an amazing concert by a guy who plays the glass armonica, an instrument invented by Beethoven.

“I’m pretty sure Beethoven didn’t invent any instruments,” you say, because you are smart. “It was probably Da Vinci. He invented a lot.”

(Sweet new technique — flatter my readers by making them appear as super smart narrative devices.)

Okay, so it was invented by Leonardo da Vinci, or “Vince” as I like to call him. Anyway, it’s a long cork dowel attached to a spinning wheel, with all kinds of glass bowls of different sizes attached to it. Once you get it spinning, you can moisten your finger and touch it to the edge of the spinning bowl to get a nice ringing sound.

“Um, guys?” says Attractive Girl. “The glass armonica was invented by Benjamin Franklin.”

Well, I guess that’s why her first name is Attractive. Franklin it is. Anyway, this guy’s concert was awesome, he also played a handful of other amazing instruments that use ringing glass as the primary sound generator. Check him out! The crystal bachet in particular is an amazing instrument.

I asked him if he had time that day to record any of his glass instruments for my project, but alas, he was unable to make time in his busy day on short notice. I do hope to encounter another glass armonica player somewhere though; the sound was definitely unique.

Then we were back here:

Christian had a ridiculously nice Shoeps mic which we used to record the organ in a mid-side configuration. It was my first time learning about this micing technique and it seemed pretty conceptually awesome. The results were pretty aurally awesome too.

We spent a while coming up with a contrapuntal Bach-esque part for a song, then recorded it, in four parts: melody, harmony, chords, pedals. Each part had its own huge sound with the natural reverb of the sanctuary. It was huge and awesome.

I just noticed that Christian is really getting into that organ playing. Let’s zoom in for a closer look:

NEXT: Carolina gets on my mind, pushing off Virginia to become king of the mindhill!

Hit the Road, Zach

Being a recounting of Zach's Recording Tour of Love

Author Archives: Zach

About Zach

Atlanta, GA

Birmingham, AL

Nashville, TN

Knoxville, TN

North Carolina

Virginia