February 15, 2025
When we planned this project last autumn, our goal was to record as much of the material that we've written and performed together over the past 15+ years. Some of those songs are in our regular setlist, while others got left on the shelf for a variety of reasons - starting with a show can only be so long!
One thing they all have in common is that we've developed concert versions, often with extended jams, audience sing-alongs, and other elements that optimize the experience of being at a live performance. A studio recording is obviously different; there's no audience energy to include as a “5th member” of the band, but there are also no limitations on the amount of voices or instruments. Here we're limited more by our creativity than any other factors, but the end result is often a shorter, more concise and more produced version of the song. Arranging is really the process of developing a version of the song.
I often tell my students that a good song is like a nice car, and how you arrange it is where and how you drive it. I have recorded three very distinctly different arrangements of “Chemical Voodoo” from my 2nd album Where This River Runs. In addition to the original album version, I typically do it solo on the lap slide guitar, and with Beyond Borders we've done a more electric guitar and percussion arrangement.
So a big part of our work together is to collectively develop the studio arrangements, and it is an opportunity to revisit those “on the shelf” songs and change them up a bit. Yesterday's session we focused on “Steal Me Home”, which has a really cool Cajun groove with Les playing accordion, and Stephanie's “Song for Pearl” which is softer and more acoustic. We have a recording of a 2014 show where we played both songs, and we really loved the arrangements of both songs at the time - “Pearl” sounds sort of like a Cowboy Junkies or Cranberries type treatment compared to the two guitars and two voices version Stephanie and Les typically do together.
Arranging is a creative art too, and the give and take of collaboration is what makes a successful musical ensemble really gel. Using our 2014 versions as a template, we made some changes, did some experiments, and collectively settled into how we want the basic foundation to sound. Arranging songs for a lengthy project like this requires enough vision to leave space for other things we may or may not add later. Truthfully no one really knows how it will turn out in the final version until we're actually hearing it all put together.
And to me, that's always exciting - anticipating the unknown and having little ideas drift into the creative conscious about various small elements to try, and especially hearing something larger created in the end.