The big news for '05 that I played on the new Nickel Creek CD, Why Should The Fire Die, which came out in the summer of that year. We cut the basic tracks over about 4 weeks in Nov and Dec of ’04. The band continued to work on overdubs, mixing, and mastering over following 3 months or so.

We’re all very excited about the new project. Eric Valentine, the producer, is a soft-spoken sweetheart of a guy who understood and helped capture the wide range of sounds and styles that Nickel Creek presents in its live shows, which was the band’s intention with this CD. Most of the selections are original or co-writes, the exception being Tomorrow is a Long Time, an old chestnut of a Dylan tune that the band renders beautifully as a trio featuring the sweet side of Sara’s versatile vocal abilities.

It was quite an honor for me to be asked to play on the whole project, including several arco (bowed) parts. I had worked hard on my bowing ever since I started to work with the band because it is featured fairly regularly in their material and I wanted to do the parts (often beautiful Edgar Meyer lines) the best justice that I could. It was nice to see this hard work pay off.

We recorded at Eric’s studio (Barefoot recording – Eric pads around in bare feet most of the time) which is an old school studio facility in N. Hollywood, CA. The band put me up at some very nice digs called the Park Suites Hotel which was conveniently located around the corner from The Urth Café, a trendy little place with sidewalk seating, very healthy and tasty breakfast and lunch offerings, and cappacino that lived up to Chris’s discerning coffee sensibilities – quite good for a paisano like me in other words. Except for missing my soon-to-be wife, it was a very positive, creative, and artistic vibe and experience. I believe that this is part of the intangible stuff that goes into making a good recording and good music in general.

The band, record company, and management are currently gearing up for a big push to launch and promote the new project. We will be doing a PR tour from mid-July to mid-August, will head overseas for a month or so after that, and will commence US touring at the beginning of Oct. Check out the Nickel Creek website for when we’ll be in your area.

WHY SHOULD THE FIRE DIE – BASS CHRONICLES

Bass #1: I bought this bass from Boston area bass repairman Lennie Harlos around 1980. Itís a good German bass, and itís what I played on most of the recordings I have been involved in. When Eric wasnít thrilled with the Hawkes I took my flight case home over Thanksgiving and brought this one back with me. It was the second most utilized bass on the session.

Bass #2: I bought this in Nashville from David Ball around 1983. Itís a good sounding old German bass that was my backup. Not as rich a tone as #1, but actually has a bigger bottom end, especially on the E string. When I started spending more time in MD I left this bass in Nashville to use for lower profile stuff when I was back in town. This was in the struck side of a car wreck I was in in early ‘02. I gave it to Jim Ferguson to repair who in his legendary fashion took two years to complete the work. He was poised to ship it to MD (I left a flight case there at the end of the 10/04 NC tour) when Eric asked if I had any more basses because he wasn’t too thrilled about the lack of low end punch in the Hawkes. So I had Q-Prime ship it to the studio.

Bass #3: This is the Hawkes bass that I bought about a year ago and that I was so proud to bring to the big NC session. Eric put some mics in front of it, then asked if I had any other basses. Though this bass has great clarity, evenness, sustain, a sweet arco voice, and ease of bowing, it doesn’t have a very explosive low end. He made it work for the first couple of tracks when that’s all we had, but it only got used one more time after that, and that was for the big room miking on Largo for which is seemed to work well.

Bass #4: We nicknamed this “The Pumpkin”. When the Hawkes didn’t seem to be panning out Eric and I took a trip to Stein on Vine, a drum and bass shop conveniently just down the street. The proprieter, Gary, was a bit short with us because he didn’t know who we were, we were trying to rent a bass, and it was 10 minutes till closing time. We didn’t see anything there that would really serve our purposes, but I was intrigued by a couple of the basses he had so I went back the next day to play some things. I asked him what his favorite bass was and he showed me an unusual bass that had an F# neck. To accommodate this the body was shortened, and the upper bout was quite wide. It sounded pretty great, though it was very confusing at first to play. I expressed interest in it and asked if I could borrow it for a couple of days. He was starting to warm up to me at this point so he grudgingly agreed. When Sara saw it, it’s squat shape and orange finish inspired her to say it looked like a pumpkin. The name stuck and that’s what it was referred to for the rest of the session.

The more I played it, the more I liked it. Very warm, rich, big, open sound, both for pizz and arco. After the Thanksgiving break I made a deal with Gary to let me try it out for a week gratis, then rent it for the remainder of the session for a decent fee that the studio covered.

~

When in Rome
- Cut on #2 bass in main room with baffles; used Fishman bridge PU; very few overdubs on this

Runaway Girl
- Cut on #4 bass in main room behind baffles

Caleb Meyer
- Cut on #1 bass, all on 1 mic - an old 44 ribbon mic, mono; band in semi-circle on one side of the mic, me on the other (mic has fig 8 pattern)

Best of Luck
- Cut with #3 bass on platform in booth. Some not too extensive overdubs

Someone Like You
- Cut on #2 bass on platform in booth. Sara sat next to me while recording and overdubbing to mute strings with her hand just above bridge on verses. I plucked high up on the neck to get to get a warm, round sound on muted parts. Took a good bit of overdubbing to get a consistent volume, tone and groove on these parts.

Can’t Complain
- Cut on #3 bass; arco parts on #2 bass. Sara and I did opening and closing drones together as OD in front of echo chamber. I played a danged D note for hours on end. Then did some interesting nasty slides down which Eric did some processing on to accentuate one part.

Helena
- Cut on #1 bass with E tuned down to D; arco parts on #4 bass. Lots of ODís on this one. Did all 8th note pizz parts over using only index finger to get consistent sound - the speed was not a problem but the consistency was hard for me - took some work. Two diff kinds of arco parts - pretty lines that always take a lot of work to get right; some particular troubles with #4 bass because though it has a beautiful arco voice there are some notes that are very tight, especially with the Thomastic strings that I put on it (it had some warm, much more arco friendly solo strings on it). Chris & Tony rewrote one of the lines backing a verse while I was out in the room doing the overdubs. Came up with a beautiful line with some big intervals that I lucked into fairly easily. Some other lines took more work, punching note by note (on Pro-tools) to get them. The 8th note arco stuff was again a challenge to get it consistent tonally and rhythmically. I just don’t have much experience with this technique and I’ve never recorded something like this before.

Lonely Days
- Cut on #4 bass. We put the Realist pickup on this bass for overdubs on Helena after cutting the track with bass #1 using that pickup for the first time. Eric liked it better than the Fishman Full Circle which he had been using before I pointed out the Realist. This bass with this pickup seems to be getting good points. Spent the first part of the day tweaking the arrangement. Monday morning, everyone a bit slow. Took me a while to get a grip on where the downbeat was kicked, where it wasn’t. There was a modified chorus progression at the end that was simple but repetitive in a way that kept getting away from me as often as not. Had good feels and good moments scattered throughout many cuts and ended up putting together a pretty rocking track.

Stumptown
- Cut on #1 bass as homage to its history in contemporary bluegrass (used on Drive, an influential recording in NC’s musical development). This was cut along with most of the other songs the band intended to record as a demo the week leading up to the beginning of recording proper (with me). They and the producers liked the demo so much that they considered just having me overdub bass on the demo. We pursued this strategy and I spent a couple of hours overdubbing bass on the demo.

After this exercise the band determined that it wanted to re-cut the tune live. Chris and Sean were in the middle of the room, Sara was in a little iso-booth they built in the room for her, and I was behind some baffles, which had become the preferred place for me. We played the tune several times while they set the room up and I personally was a bit worn out on the feel by the time we got around to recording. We did multiple takes which had their moments but lacked consistency of feel.

They proceeded to start trying to piece it together.

We had dinner (Thai, I believe) and decided to give it another whirl. Having taken a little break, we had relaxed a bit and we achieved the consistent relaxed feel we had lacked before. They started the editing over again drawing mostly I believe from the post dinner cuts. There was a good bit of overdubbing - some on rhythm section stuff, mostly on solos.

Doubting Thomas
- Cut on #4 bass. Some not too lengthy overdubbing on this one. May recut whole thing??

Indeed, Chris played so softly on the guitar that there was too much vocal on the guitar track to use it. They considered just re-cutting the guitar which was a bit problematical because he was the central rhythm instrument. But we all knew that if anyone could pull this off it was Chris. Ended up re-cutting. Played ensemble for a while and there was some experimentation by both Chris and Sean using different guitars - Chris tried the nylon string, Chris and Sean traded guitars, I suggested Sean try the tenor guitar, which they may consider.

In the end they decided to record Chris by himself and add the rest of us one by one. I wasn’t too wild about this - felt like it was too scattered a way to record. I felt like it might make sense for Chris and I to lay down a track - we had actually discussed this when running through the tune earlier because it felt very natural and relaxed. But they proceeded and worked very hard on Chris’s track. I did my overdub, but it did not feel as comfortable going down as it had when we played it live together. But it passed the muster of Chris and Eric who are both very picky. I’m sure it will feel great when it’s all put together. This was done again on #4 bass, though at this point we had added the Realist pickup to it. This turned into the preferred combination by about 2/3 of the way through the sessions.

Did arco ODs on #4 as well. Moved into the main part of the room and they set up a stereo pair of distant room mics as well as two close mics. It was painstaking because it was already quite late (my last night of recording before having to fly home) and I was using a bass that I was not intimately familiar with so pitch was a bit of a crap shoot. In addition, though that bass has a beautiful open tone, it’s got a slightly stiff response. The part was also very exposed so it had to be expressive. We finally got it with a lot of pro-tools cutting and pasting.

First and Last Waltz
- Cut Pizz with #3 bass with both far stereo and close miking to get a lush, orchestral sound. Chris & Sean cut this first with Chris in the echo chamber playing with a felt pick to cut down on pick noise which was very accentuated in there. Sara and I then overdubbed separately. Arco parts were cut on #4 bass in the final hours of my participation in the recording - in fact it was probably cut between 3 and 5 in the morning. Really fried and frustrated. The arco work track I threw on when we did the pizz so I could remember the part almost sounded better than the labored version we eked out in those early morning hours. I have confidence, though in Chris and Eric’s ears and cut and paste capabilities.

Anthony
- Cut on #1 bass. This one was a bunch of fun. Sean, Chris, and I all bellied up to the 44 and Sara was in her temp iso-booth with the uke. We were just getting started when Chris had to leave to go do a solo opening set at Largo. Eric decided to get Sara’s parts before and after the ensemble section so Sean and I went with Chris to give moral support - this was his first real official solo set - and he did a great job. We drank a Guinness, I had some dinner, and we jawed some with Gabe Witcher who had come to the show.

Gabe came back to the studio with us to hang and we all had a shot of single malt. Sara finished her parts soon after we returned and we went in to record – late night, relaxed, slightly tipsy - it was the right vibe for this song and we got a good raucous feel on it with the boys singing live and all. Eric had a mix idea to pan the band to one side and Sara to the other so you could discern the uke without any problem. Pretty effective.

Jealous of the Moon
- Cut on #4 bass (I think). Each verse had a slightly different bass part and I kept getting them mixed up which was frustrating.

Evaline
- Cut with #4 with the E-string tuned down to C. Made that string pretty floppy but that bass handled it pretty well. This tune had some nice arrangement additions including a heavy groove section toward the end that we rocked pretty hard.

I played the arco parts while we recorded. This was fun, but a bit problematical because the mics were kind of in my way and I had to think of when to quiver and un-quiver the bow. At the end of the groove section there was a low pizz C that had to morph immediately into an arco part on the same note. Since it was a quiet place in the song I was able to finesse this by plucking the low string with a finger of my left hand while my right reached for the bow.

Scotch & Chocolate
- No Bass

Tomorrow is a Long Time
Why Should the Fire Die