Launching on Thursday 16 November at Little Susie with a listening party is Aunt Cathy and Me, a five-track EP of songs by Cathy Cilliers and Roz Fisher performed by the Coz Collective – find it here on Bandcamp. LengPleng sat down with the record’s producer, Greg Beshers, to discuss the recording process.
How did you come to produce this EP?
In recent years I’ve acted as a producer with Joe Wrigley on the Joe & the Jumping Jacks EP Best Damn Bar and the still to be released Miss Sarawan LP Sabay Jong Jam, also with Jared Bibler and Jet, and some of my own songs. I already knew about Roz’s project; she had sent Joe three songs, and I think he suggested I produce. He played me the songs and I mapped out some quick production notes in about 20 minutes, oh, it’s this meets this meets this. I was actually under the mistaken impression that these were her Aunt Cathy’s songs: oh, these are pretty good. And Joe said no, these are Roz’s songs. Well, yeah, these are pretty good songs.
The inspiration: Cathy. Photo supplied
How important is it that the songs are strong to begin with?
For me there’s no point in doing anything if the songs are not of good quality. Like everyone who wants to make a record, Roz said let’s do ten! I said let’s start with four, maybe five – we chose three of Cathy’s songs and two of hers. I got Roz to demo Cathy’s songs, because she only had the sheet music and I don’t read music, and then I did some editing, arranging, re-writing – there were some melodies that weren’t working over the chords, so I went in and brushed up some spots, but really minor stuff. The skeletons were there.
The role of the producer is not necessarily twiddling knobs, but rather herding cats, corralling everything, making sure that there’s a roadmap for recording and overdubbing, making sure the songs are finished and arranged before we go into the studio. Some people do tinker in the studio, but I prefer to know what we’re going to do. Studio time is not cheap. Also a lack of experience in studios is something to take into account – some musicians who are great live will get in the studio and freeze. I like to have everyone comfortable with what the song is, where it’s going, have everything mapped out. Okay, today I’m putting acoustic guitar on tracks two, three and four, we’re going to a piano on here, an organ on there, tambourine. All of that helps with the budget, with the best use of time. It’s fun to experiment, but money is not limitless.
Where did you record? And how do you go about shaping a sound, constructing arrangements?
With Miss Sarawan there was a deliberate effort to go back to the Cambodian golden age, so that was our template. With Jared it was an Americana template, and with this one it’s more country-flavoured. Joe and Sal [deGaetano, drummer, Joe & the Jumping Jacks] and I went into the studio, 60 Road in Siem Reap, where we did both the Jumping Jacks record and the Miss Sarawan record. Ian [Croft]and Steve [Bloxham] are amazing guys – it’s a world-class studio, and I say that having been inside a few world-class studios, recording and working for studios in and around New York. We did only two days there, I think, basic tracks and a few overdubs, and that’s a testament to Sal and Joe as well – we just blazed through them.
Back in Phnom Penh we worked on vocals in a little place off Monivong Boulevard – I don’t know the name of the studio, the engineer goes by the name Peace. I sent the basic tracks to a friend of mine in California, Peter Craft at Boxer Lodge Studios, who has access to a pedal steel player who also plays banjo and mandolin – I said just do your thing, this is country-esque, just play to your taste and we’ll edit afterwards. They sent back some different passes and we used a bit from here and a bit from there. I did much the same for the couple of tracks I did this year under the name The Parker Brothers – went in with a metronome and an acoustic guitar and played a couple of songs, sent them off to California and they built the tracks there.
The producer and the key players: Greg, Sal, Joe
Once you’re happy with the tracks do you do the mix or send it out?
I know how to set up a mic, I can put compression on something, I can do live sound, but I’m not a knob-twiddler, my expertise is not behind the board. It’s more about building an overall end product. Peter Craft mixed the Parker Brothers songs, and the Miss Sarawan tracks were sent to a mixer in Nashville, Bobby Harlow. Roz really wanted to work with Andrea Rubbio from Geography of the Moon, who is really good, I really like what he does. He doesn’t much like country music or Americana, so he was a perfect choice for the mix because he brings in something that’s different, his own more rock/punk/shoegaze sensibility. He mixed it while on tour in Japan on days off between shows, so I couldn’t be in the room with him. In that sort of situation I don’t send 15 tracks of vocals, for example, and say use bits of take 3 and take 7 – I hand over exactly what needs to be mixed.
I know Andrea had to do some work in automating some of the vocals, making sure the levels were consistent through the verses and the choruses – which is no easy task, you can work on ten seconds of a song for days if you want to get into it- and he did a great job. I also sent These Nights to Peter to do a mix in a more Americana style; his mix is ‘poppier’ for lack of a better term. That track, the California Mix, will be included on Bandcamp as a bonus track if you buy the whole EP.
Roz trusted my judgement. She would come to me with ideas: I want to have a children’s chorus on this! I said let’s just finish the song first and I’ll let you hear it. She’s been very excited, which I love, but as a producer you have to temper that enthusiasm with what we can realistically do. Not only due to lack of access to a chorus of any kind, but also budgetary constraints. These Nights was fleshed out with Marianna, Roz and myself singing massed overdubbed back-ups, for example.
We used four different lead vocalists: Cat Isaacs from The Broken Cymbal on These Nights, Marianna Hensley from Grass Snake Reunion and Muxu on Forget and I’ll Be Gone, David Zdriluk of Cambodia Country Band on Because I Love You, and Roz sang You Don’t Get To Love Me. For her vocal, Roz and I went into the little studio and did a couple of takes, which she took home to practice for a few weeks to get the delivery we wanted. It was just a matter of never having that experience before.
The singers: Roz, Dave, Cat and Marianna Photos supplied
Hear the EP Aunt Cathy and Me at a listening party at Little Susie on Thursday 16 (CDs and t-shirts will be available to purchase); buy the EP online here on Bandcamp from Friday 17.