Sidetracks

Over the last six or seven years, I've made five records (I call them records because that's how I approach them - as documents with a beginning, a middle, and an end). They were all recorded in continuous blocks of time, usuallya couple of weeks for basic tracks, a week for overdubs, and a couple more to mix. Sometimes this process can be disorienting and frustrating and I found myself wishing I could simplyrecord one song at a time from basic track to final mix in a day or two. This, I told myself, was how The Beatles did it when they convened at Abbey Road every few months in the mid-sixties to record their singles, (which are) in my opinion, the greatest recording sessions in pop music history.

The problem is that my bass player lives in L.A., my guitar player in New York, and my dance card is way too full to make the process practical for the production of full length albums (there I go again, CDs are nearlyextinct and I've never been comfortable with the term - it sounds so Wall Street). As close as I get is when I'm asked to make music for a film or a tribute or benefit record. With the exception of the instrumentals, which we left off of Transcendental Blues at the last minute (a decision I have often regretted), these are not outtakes. They are, rather, stray tracks - recorded at different times for different reasons that I am very proud of and are either unreleased or underexposed.