Recording The Into Thy Hands Album

Wow... where do I begin?!!

This is one of those moments in my life that has left actual scars on my soul. There are so many memories and so many stories I could tell, that I hardly know where to start... and which stories aren't really necessary to re-tell?!

It was January of 1988. Most of us were in our early to mid 20's. I had just turned 22.

As I mentioned previously, the band came as close to breaking up as possible right as our album was to begin. How we made it through those first few weeks is beyond me, and honestly - back then, none of us were drinkers, otherwise, that might have helped ease the pain!

I guess I can start with some technical recording information to help get the ball rolling.

This would be our first album recorded to 24 track analog tape. We had more keyboard gear at our disposal, but we wanted this album to have a less keyboard-enslaved sound than our previous album. Mike may have had hopes of playing live drums on the album. I don't recall for sure, but I know that just before the sessions started, he bought a brand new Ludwig drum kit.

The bare-bones honest truth of the matter was: This was the freakin 1980's!! Everything was perfect in the 80's. Drum programming made every quaver fall into place in the most mechanical of ways. Tough keyboard passages could be (and WERE) recorded in "step time" making it impossible to play a wrong note or anything remotely out of time with the clockwork precision of the drum machine.

As a performing band at this time, we were very energetic and exciting, but not all that accurate. (These past few weeks I've been listening to some old cassette recordings of our live gigs from this era, and nobody was terribly accurate as players. My singing was pretty rough, my keyboard playing was sloppy, and our tightness as a band varied from show to show and song to song.)

With big American money on the line, and with an album as electronically "perfect" as "Sanctified" behind us, we couldn't risk having our band perform in the studio and have it sound sloppy or, god forbid - LIVE!!

So I hope this was a group decision, but however the decision was reached, it was concluded that we would base our bed tracks for the new album on Mike performing on electronic drum pads instead of his new Ludwig kit. This way, he was actually playing the drums, but we would have the ability to fix rhythmic errors after the fact before we potentially built our songs on an unstable foundation.

This ended up (in hindsight) being the first of several major technical errors that ended up marring the outcome of the album.

You have no idea how much time was spent by Rick Hutt, Mike Powell and me in the studio going through song by song, part by part, trying to correct out of time playing, but also try to maintain some human feel that wouldn't have been there had we just "quantized" everything to perfect meter. In retrospect, I wish we had just quantized the whole thing. I swear there were more out of time kick drums because of our choice of working than if we had just taken extra time to get Mike to nail the bed tracks on his real kit.

The problem was, this was totally untested. The Awakening had never setup together and recorded in a studio. We had no idea how long it might have taken to get bed tracks together in this manner. We were at that time more of a live band than a studio band.

So on that shaky ground, we started our foundation. Mike played Simmons pads to a click and to some previously programmed keyboard parts, and then we started tracking. While other pre-production issues were being worked on, I would be in the office at the studio, trying to correct and fix the drum performances. Often, the mistakes were made not because of technical errors on Mike's part, but because the Simmons pads didn't trigger very well, so some notes would either not happen at all, or would create double-hits and un-wanted flams. Very tedious work! It was probably 2 weeks before we could even get serious about recording anything else, because we spent all this time fixing the drum parts.

Months later, we had Mike setup his Ludwig kit, and we attempted to replace most of the triggered Midi drums. I believe we kept all the triggered kick drums and snare parts, so we basically had Mike play his tom fills, hats and cymbal parts, and maybe the occasional song on his snare too. This was unbelievably complicated to do. Mike said it would be like recording a guitar part one string at a time. This also took forever. There were times during this process when tempers would flare, and I even recall a nasty "Police During The Making of Synchronicity" moment, when after Mike had recorded hats on "Lonely Place," I went in later on after he left and re-played the parts myself! I'm sure he could hear the difference, but I was looking for a more inventive hat part for that song, and I think Mike was just thinking "Why the hell am I doing this anyway?!!"

So the opening month of our Into Thy Hands album was pretty intense.

In my last blog entry, I mentioned that we had a major personality break-down right before we started recording the album. One song that needed a complete overhaul was called "The First Step." It had a great verse and some interesting parts, but the chorus was dreadful. We needed to re-write this from scratch, and we did so in the studio. But, because of the recent tensions that had taken over, we had to work as a 3 piece unit, with our producer Rick Hutt trying to help fill in for the missing member who refused to attend the session.

What we came up with for this song was actually pretty great, but the tension surrounding it was something I'd hope would never happen again!

One area we definitely wanted to change with regards to the making of this album was Al's contributions as a bass player. On our first album, he sometimes would get replaced by a bass synth part. Sometimes it was because of accuracy issues, but often times it was stylistic. The most embarrassing example of this is the bass part to our forgettable song "Distant Light." The bass was programmed by me on a DX7 using a patch called "Super Bass." There was nothing super about that sound. Talk about ruining a song with one sound!!

On Into Thy Hands, there probably are a few cases where we went with synth bass ("Onward" comes to mind), but we really wanted Al to play as much on this album as possible. Where on previous albums, his parts would get done fairly quickly or would simply be programmed on computer ahead of time, he had many late-night sessions getting inventive bass parts recorded for the album. On a song like "Knife Of Life" he played 2 or 3 different bass parts on that one song. The creative bar had been risen significantly for everyone.

After all these years, I certainly don't remember what songs we recorded when or in what order, so I won't attempt anything of that nature here. I'll just try to capture some of the broad strokes of the album. In my next blog entry, I'll go song by song and try to explain some of the technical details behind them.

To end this chapter off, I'll simply state that this album was a huge adventure for us. We had 12 songs to record, and a few of them needed major re-writes before we got rolling. Andy and I had the luxury of being able to work on this daily at the studio because we were technically employed by Cedartree Studio, so part of the budget covered our paychecks. Mike and Al never had this kind of flexibility, so they would often show up at the studio late in a day, and no surprise, probably felt somewhat ignored during the process.

I know in some cases, Al would show up late at night just to give Andy support. I remember a major moment on the album was Andy's guitar solo on the title track. It took hours and hours to get. I wasn't there during any of this, but Al was there with Andy helping him stay focused and encouraging him to go for it. This would happen again and again in our time together. Al was a guitar player too, and I know he really looked up to Andy as a player, so he was a source of great encouragement and support.

We had an initial deadline of March/April 1988, and as that time line approached, we got a visit from Jeff Moseley, our A&R rep from Reunion. We had a lot of stuff to play him when he got there, but we were honestly nowhere near ready to mix. I remember this time period being very unpleasant and stressful. He was making some judgment calls on our tracks before they were far enough along to make those kinds of comments/criticisms.

My whole life, I've had to deal with an arrogant attitude on my part that states that "if you wear a suit, and get paid to find the next "hot act" to make money off, you no longer have a right to call yourself a musician and, therefore, you should keep your mouth shut when it comes to creative decisions!!" I've seriously had to confront this snotty attitude more than a few times in my life, as the guy writing the cheque wants to have some say in how things should get done. Andy was always diplomatic. I would put up road blocks at every opportunity in hopes that the cancer in the room would remove itself!!

Well my first such experience in this regard was with Jeff Moseley. It had to do specifically with the song "Clear Day." This was my baby. I was very proud of that song and felt it was one of my "greatest achievments!" I put that in quotes and with an exclamation mark because, come on... get real!! I needed to be knocked down a few pegs back in those days, but I was young and over-confident, which is typical of most young musicians. I hadn't had the wind kicked out of me yet, so I was still a real arrogant jerk when it came to my music. I'd like to think that I'm not the same way anymore!

Anyway... Jeff was urging us to change the key of the song. He felt my vocals were sounding "strained and thin." He was absolutely right about this, but back in 1988, I sure didn't see it this way. I'm sure I wasn't actually rude to him, and I'm sure I didn't swear at him, but I'm pretty sure my underlying message to him was "shut the hell up and go back to Nashvegas!"

I stuck to my guns and I have to assume that my unwillingness to change anything may have had an impact on how Reunion sold our album when it finally came out.

I still wholeheartedly believe that an artist's vision is sacrosanct, but not when there's money involved. Unfortunately, if someone else is fronting the money, they WILL have an opinion. I can take heart by writing all the crazy, unmarketable music I want to, but nobody with unlimited funds is going to give me a loan to make it. It's only once in a very rare while when some artist breaks through in the major label system who does music that is actually uncompromising and brilliant. Elliott Smith would be one that comes to mind.

So I digress again!

When Jeff went back to Nashville he made it clear that we really had to wrap up the album asap. They wanted it out for an early Summer release, so it all had to be in the can very soon.

Realistically... we were nowhere near done.

We had another problem. Our Producer, Rick Hutt, was contractually obligated to start producing a major label album for Canadian band "The Northern Pikes" in New York in April. We were supposed to have been done our album in time for him to leave to do their album, but that wasn't going to happen. So the only solution to this was for Rick to leave, and for Andy and I to take over production of the album. (The Pikes were on Virgin Records and had come off a very successful debut album in Canada, and this 2nd album had high hopes. Rick could not let anything bad happen to this album, so he had to go to New York and see them through their tracking and initial stage before he could come back to Canada and help us finish our album.)

Without Rick in the studio, we still got lots done, but we found it harder and harder to get things in a state of conclusion.

I remember at one point, probably in mid April, I had had enough of the stress. I invited Glenn Koehler, the band's manager (and great keyboard player in his own right) to come in and do some keyboards on the album. Initially this was to free me up to do other work with Andy, but I remember at least a week, where I just didn't bother coming to the studio at all. Glenn's keyboard work was most noticeable on the song "Thoughtful." Other than that, it's been too long for me to remember where else his parts got featured or which parts got deleted and re-done by me later on.

Some of the experimental elements of songs like "Knife Of Life" and "Into Thy Hands" took up tons and tons of studio time. The vocal intro to the album alone must have taken days to get right, and then there was editing, and sub-mixing to do too. Back in those days, because I was far from a pro singer in the studio, I would sing multiple performances of a song, and then Andy would sub-mix the best parts into one final track. This sub-mixing process could literally take a full day for one song. I can't tell you how many times Andy would do this work, only to have me come back a few days later wanting to completely re-sing the song from scratch! This explains why Into Thy Hands went $30,000 over budget and way late in delivery!

Ultimately, Rick came back in late April, and we did our best to get the album finished up.

Reunion put the pressure on, demanding a specific delivery date. If we missed that delivery date, there was no guarantee they would actually release the album, so we knew we had to get it done no matter what. The mixing process was one of the longest 2 weeks I've had in a studio. We literally worked around the clock for most of that time period. We were still tracking keyboards and fixing vocals when we were supposed to be mixing. Songs like "Clear Day" and "Knife Of Life" would take over 24 hours to mix. Our time was getting eaten up.

(oh, and by the way... this was before the age of digital mixing consoles with auto-recall and flying faders. They had these things in the 80's, but not at our studio!! Mixes had to be done by hand in real time. Sometimes a track would have 2 or 3 elements on it at different times, which would require an EQ change or volume change. All of these "moves" had to be rehearsed and performed on the fly. We would often have 3 or 4 guys around the mixing desk moving faders and changing settings. Going back to re-mix at a later date was virtually impossible. You had to get it right the first time.)

By the last 5 days, we still had at least half the album to mix. This resulted in an almost endless 5 days without sleep. I remember it well. It was Rick, Andy and I, with Al and Mike spending tons of time after they would have worked a regular dayshift at their respective jobs. Plus, I remember my friend Darren Walters being in the studio with us those last 5 days. He and I went to high school together and to this day are still dear friends and co-workers. On Into Thy Hands, he played violin on two songs, but was also an employee at the studio. He helped Rick get his final DAT masters organized, and obviously lent a hand to our complicated mixing scenario.

The sad thing about our marathon 5 days without sleep was, that crucial mistakes got made and key songs got left to the end, where there was no time to get them right. How else can you explain the horrendous mix of "Don't Wait For Me?" !! Sadly, the last song to get mixed was "Never Say Goodbye," and although in retrospect, it has some great elements and decent sound quality, I had this grand vision for the end of that song, which never saw the light of day. It was to be our "Day In The Life" moment on the album, right before "Clear Day" would close it off. But it never happened.

As exhausted as we were, Rick was much worse. He had been killing himself to stay awake, and yet after all of this, he had to fly to Nashville with our master DAT mixes and be a part of the mastering session. The mastering sessions could have fixed some of the errors we made in the mixing process. This is often the way things go. But Rick was in a virtual coma from the time he got to the mastering studio. He told us later how creepy it was to wake up with this man standing over him saying, "Rick, I have your album here. We're all done."

With that, there was no more time to fix anything. It was out of our hands. I'm quite sure we all slept for days after this. This is truly a life that can only be kept up by young people. I couldn't do 2 weeks like that now. I have deadlines and stress, but I never have to work like that anymore! Poor Rick was not as young as we were, and he pulled hours like this all the time. When he went from Nashville, he had to go back to New York to continue working on the Pikes album, so I'm not sure he ever got to catch up on his sleep!

I'll leave any postmortem comments for my next blog.

Thanks for reading.

Ian - June 10/09