[charlene]

MORE from Daniel: As promised, here is the rest of the story...
This is long. Some (all?) of you may find this kind of boring, but I wanted to put down as much as I could, what I felt comfortable sharing, and you can skip through the stuff that you think is less than interesting. Thanks.

Bob Doidge did an introduction, asked us to make sure all of our phones were turned off, as any electronic signal would be picked up by the sound equipment and mess up the recording. I think it was Bob who explained that Barry would be playing the percussion box (I'm sure there's a more technical name for it), because the drum set in the studio was in a completely different room way behind us. Turns out that Barry had actually invented this device and it functioned somewhat like a metronome, laying down a beat as needed. Very cool thing, about the size of a large bread box (if any of you remember how big they were).

I neglected to mention previously that, aside from the 12 of us and the band, Gordon’s daughter Meredith was there, as well as his wife. Rick Haynes’ wife was there as well, and maybe a couple of other people.
As we settled in for the session, all of the band members were in place, and seated left to right were Barry Keane on the drum/percussion box; Mike Heffernan on keyboard; Rick Haynes on bass; and Carter Lancaster on lead guitar. Gordon walked in and said “hey," wearing jeans and sneakers and looking very relaxed. And handsome (of course). He had three guitars all set in front of him, a 6-string and two 12-strings. I don’t know the names of the guitars, but my guess is that they were all Martin guitars (out of Nazareth, Pennsylvania).

The set, kindly provided to me by Amy King of Grant Avenue Studio:
1. Sweet Guinevere
2. The Watchman’s Gone
3. Waiting for You
4. Now and Then
5. Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald
6. Restless
7. Drifters
8. Let it Ride
9. If You Could Read My Mind
10. Shadows
11. Ribbon of Darkness
12. Sundown
13. Early Morning Rain

Gordon thanked us for supporting the studio. [Note: It is a great little studio. I didn’t really get much of a tour, but could have if I had had my wits about me. I was in dreamland and somewhat dissociated from reality, if you know what I mean. But as the studio is set-up, the recording room is up front, then the actual room where the performance took place was next down the hall (see, I don’t know what these rooms are called), and then after that was a smaller room (which they used for refreshments (finger food and very nice wines), and last, in the rear, was the drum room. To think of the wonderful sounds that have come out of these rooms over the years, I am just amazed. Kudos to everyone at Grant Avenue Studio. By the way, the building is 100 years old!]

Gordon’s voice was great. If you’ve seen him in concert over the years, you are aware of how his voice has changed. He can’t hit the high notes (I’m almost 60, used to sing tenor, and I can’t hit them either). But the incredible quality is there. Even though he was using a mic for the actual recording aspect, I was sitting 8 feet away and it was clear and incredibly beautiful. It was like sitting with your buddies in a garage band and being able to just parse out the non-amplified from the amplified. But MUCH better acoustics than a garage! Hard to explain, especially since my mechanics of music sucks and is non-existent.

Gordon spoke to us after each song. He imparted some thoughts about the song, a bit of history if relevant, and some of the mechanics (which were lost on me). One thing I did find extremely interesting is that Gordon explained that he played his songs in five different keys on the guitar. He ran through the keys, and I could immediately pick up songs of his that were in the various keys. You music and guitar people out there may want to elaborate on that – I’m not doing it justice. He also explained some of his quirks, one of which has to do with the rigging of his guitars – it was very technical (to me). I am going to see if I can at least get a transcript of his remarks from Grant Avenue Studio – I will share with you all if I can get the details.

It was probably midway through the set, during one of the songs, when Gordon turned around to the recording room and asked for some water. Amy ran up a bottle, as did Rick after the song. Gordon explained that he was still getting over his recent illness, which he made very clear was not due to food poisoning. He had an intestinal occlusion, and I guess he was trying to tell us he was not 100% better. That’s okay Gordon – you sounded great!

On one of the songs, it may have been “If You Could Read My Mind,” Carter was doing some weird kind of reverb during the song’s refrain. He was catching some strange glances from the other band members, and I was thinking “is he trying to CHANGE this song!?!” Well, after the session was over, and after almost everyone left, a small group of us were sitting and drinking wine and Amy/Bob explained that the battery on his pedal was dying and thus the funky sound. Phew.

Gordon played the full version of most of songs in the set, but we all got a chuckle when he said he was going to play a shortened version of “Ribbon of Darkness” and then segue right into “Sundown.” As you all recall the last line of Ribbon is “ribbon of darkness ---- over me.” So Gordon shortened it by ending right before “over me,” which I thought was a great joke. Everyone laughed, I commented “big time saver,” and then they went right into “Sundown.”


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