09 My Man Is Gone

My Man Is Gone
Ralph and I went studio shopping and ended up at Steve Crimmel’s Painted Sky Studio in Cambria, Ca. We set up, Me in my G&L Broadcaster thru a Vox AC 15 in the middle of the room about five feet from Ralph on the vintage Ludwig kit. Everything we did that day is on the track. Rhythm guitar, lead vocal, drums and harp. There’s as much Ralph as me on my vocal track so there’s no fixing that even if we wanted to. At one point I either clutched or dropped a pick, or got tired of playing that one chord and walked it up to D. Voila! Blip, blop, bloop, instant bridge! We tried to beat the demo, couldn’t, so we overdubbed Billy and everything else. Barry was brilliant on the piano as usual. Guitar-wise it was George Bradfute soloing in Nashville, Jan in Chicago, I filled in some cosmic debris at Painted Sky. As for the background vocals (woah-oh-ooh-oh) my original plan was to have a really swanky ’40s style DeCarlo Sisters approach. Molly Pasutti (of Party Drawers fame) handled that. The union of opposites tack, didn’t work. Taryn Engle then sent us a Raylettes version, uhhh nope. Me, Ralph and Billy took a swing, sorry, no dice. We tried it all. Then one day we were listening and for some reason, it sounded really great. Steve finally realized he had left all the vocals un-muted. They were all in. Counting the double ones that was a lot! Problem solved. Everybody made the cut! And it still sounds like we were all in the room together, bashing it out.
Billy Talbot – Bass, Vocals
Ralph Molina – Drums, Vocals
Phil Lee – Guitar, Vocals, Harmonica
Barry Goldberg – Keyboards
George Bradfute – Guitar
Jan King – Guitar
Taryn Engle & Molly Pasutti – Background Vocals