From 'Free Appreciation Society' magazine. Issue 71. Jan 1997

Studio Jones – The Return of Cry of Love

The nice thing about flying to Raleigh, North Carolina is that it’s what I call a low level flight. What I mean is that you’re not stuck in some huge flying city about 75,000 feet up where really a window seat just allows you to view the aeroplane wing and the clouds. Okay, I’ll admit that being right up there can be pretty enough but when you’re at around 35,000 in a smaller aircraft and you can see all those fantastic cloud shapes and the ground too, now that really is something else entirely. So flying over England at around midday and looking down I swear it’s so pretty it’s overwhelming and although it’s early November the ground looks so lush and green you just wouldn’t believe. Quite simply, it’s beautiful and from down there you’d never know how amazing the whole picture looks. So flying for around eight hours I can look out of the window and watch Greenland pass underneath as a wonderful landmass of white and green and soon enough America is passing below as we fly down the shore past Maine and New York. The coast looks fantastic, a huge ever flowing mass of beach! And then finally North Carolina is directly down there. It’s amazing how similar to England it looks. The season is pretty much the same. Autumn – the fall, and the colours in the trees give it a rich texture to the ground. It’s not that different to the South of England. It’s just as pretty and it feels like home.

I’m over here again to check out Cry of Love, who are finally in the studio recording the long awaited and much delayed 2nd album. About time you might say but it really has been a rough ride for these guys and it’s good to finally see things getting back on the tracks and moving along. Since Kelly’s departure the whole delay has really centred around, not just finding A singer but THE RIGHT singer. Everyone has been amazed by how difficult this has been, and by how long it’s taken. There have been a few false starts too. At one point the whole package looked like it was getting ready to roll with Sass Jordon taking on the vocal duties. I thought that would work and by all accounts from those who heard the material that was ready it sounded amazing but at the last minute Sass Jordon seemed to get cold feet and backed out. Bad news and back to square one. So the new singer is now confirmed as Robert Mason. While on holiday in Florida we all flew over to Raleigh for a weekend and hung out for a while checking out the new Kiss show and eating out. Robert is quiet but with an almost English sense of humour. He’s quietly confident and while I’m sure he does feel like the new boy right now I thought he fitted into the band picture very well. On that visit it was also good to see everyone in high spirits and ready to go make a killer record. That was around the end of September – now it’s November and the album is well under way.

I’m met off the plane by Bob Davies (tour manger) and after dropping off my luggage at Audley and Jen’s I’m straight into the studio, jet lag and all. In fact things are going very well indeed. Jason has already laid down all the drum tracks and has apparently been smiling from ear to ear ever since. I arrive to find Robert Kearns putting down the end section of the second to last bass track. The studio is a magical Aladdin’s cave to those who don’t spend much time in them. A dream world of flashing lights, expensive gear and hardware, right now though for Robert it’s a sweat shop and he’s being made to work real hard. John Custer is handling the production again and he’s riding Rob to get the best performance from him. It’s all about mind games and Robert can be an easy catch as he swallows every piece of bait thrown at him. He soon gets wound up but is playing his ass off and his voice gets higher and higher pitched as Custer continually ribs him and laughs at his mistakes. Now this might sound quite nasty and cruel but Robert and Custer are old friends and it’s in no way a malicious thing. In fact it’s actually very funny, to everyone that is except Robert, who might not like it too much now but will be laughing about it later (in a week or so maybe!). This end section is only about three minutes long but it’s a new piece and it’s not only necessary for Robert to play the part perfectly but also to make it groove. The whole rhythm section thing has to be right in the pocket and that’s why this piece takes just about all night. It’s easy to see why people who’ve never been in a studio have no understanding of why it takes a couple of months to record a dozen or so basic tracks, or why it takes four hours to get the right tone. You really do have to be in there to see the amount of work, and that’s W.O.R.K that goes in to make a project happen. It’s easy to be lazy about it but in the end your album will suffer and no one here is willing to sit back and let that happen to this album. The patience involved is infinite.

Rather than go back to Muscle Shoals or head into a studio in L.A. Cry of Love and John Custer have opted to go for recording at home in the small but comfortable Jag Studios. It’s a far cry from somewhere like Abbey Road but it has an easy air and good vibe. Custer has worked here endlessly and Cry of Love have been cutting demo’s here since birth so everyone is relaxed and able to concentrate on the job in hand. Byron, the studio’s owner, is laid back but very efficient and he’s making sure everything runs smoothly, moving mics and re-patching hardware to the mixing desk when required. The studio is a mass of guitars, amps and microphones and taking up a huge wedge of space is the 24 track machine bought from the BBC and flown over for the recording. John Custer casts a strange shadow, wild looking with his long hair and southern beard he’s frighteningly intelligent and eloquent. He knows exactly what Cry of Love sound like – how the drums need to be, how the bass should sound and the arguments are only ever about content and performance. He’s not an ogre though, any persuasion is done with humour and a strange kind of Monty Python tack. Custer is really a performer in his own right, a fine musician and an excellent guitarist, even in the studio as a producer he’s still an entertainer and his non-stop, often bizarre humour keeps everyone on their toes. Custer genuinely cares about the band’s music, and it shows in the time he takes with everything, sounds, performances, arrangements – even John’s rough mixes kick ass!

So Robert is sweating while they run over the part again and again and Custer is throwing in ideas and generally pushing a fine piece of playing from him. It really has to be seen to be believed and the thing is that while Robert is hating it now, if Custer didn’t ride him to get a performance he’d chase him until he did! During a break, John plays me some of the stuff they’ve been working on. While some of the tracks have dummy guitar parts and scratch vocals (Robert Mason sounds really good) the drum and bass parts are superb. The drums cut through, the bass drum kicks the chest and the kit sounds big and crisp. Jason is just so good at making things move and all the cuts have a life of their own. The bass tones are great. Thick fat round tones and Robert’s playing is fantastic. He’s really been working hard and he doesn’t overplay. Instead of being just an anchor Robert makes the rhythm section groove without filling in all the breathing space. The mixes throb and I tell Custer I’ll be sending him my dental bill as I can feel the bass lifting my fillings! Anyway, eventually the tide of sleep rolls in and I grab some Zzzz’s on the couch – well okay, on the floor first – then Robert suggests the couch.

The next day they check through Robert’s work and make sure everything is okay. They re-cut one track in the afternoon and then strip the bass gear down. By the time I arrive it’s all over and Robert has gone. The rest of the evening we talk and watch Clinton sail back into the Whitehouse. I guess it didn’t raise too many eyebrows – in fact I’d have put my wages on it if I could have gotten some decent odds.

So that’s Monday and Tuesday. Today is Wednesday and it’s Audley’s turn. GUILDED HORSE is the first song. It takes a couple or three hours to get the guitar tone they’re after but once it’s there Audley rises to the occasion and in the time it’s taken for me to type up to here he’s finished one of the rhythm tracks and we’re ready to go eat. The guitar sounds great and now rather than just hearing the bass/drums rhythm section I can get an idea of how the song sounds. It’s in the line of the older material, groove orientated but it’s got more personality and identity. It’s difficult to describe actually but in the years between the Brother album and this much has happened and they’ve grown as people and musicians. This has made a difference to the state and quality of the music and having spent so long in the wilderness waiting for the right singer to come along now that the opportunity is there to move forward and they can see the light at the end of the tunnel they sound positively driven. The riff Audley has just laid down is big and chunky and the whole thing instantly makes you want to nod your head and move your feet. I like this song already, it’s got depth. After dinner however things take on a different turn and they spend the rest of the evening looking unsuccessfully for a new tone for the second guitar track. By around 2am they’ve decided to leave it until tomorrow so they can start again with fresh ears. Once at home Audley starts listening to CD’s and checking out guitar tones to try and find reference for the sound he’s after. I go to bed.

Thursday afternoon we head out to Fat Sound, one of the local music stores, and Audley spends an hour or so checking out some amps to see if any have the tone he’s looking for. After playing some amazing guitar and turning more than a few heads we leave with an amp and a combo. Back at the studio the combo is run into a 4 x 12 speaker cabinet and immediately it’s obvious that it’s very close to what they’re after. The required sound is a thick swampy ZZ Top/Stray Dog tone. Fat and sassy. It takes maybe another hour or so to tweak the EQ and then the work begins. It sounds fantastic and the song immediately takes on a whole new thing. The bass and drums are keeping the groove going while the guitar ROCKS. Oh boy it sounds good.

Watching Custer and Audley work together is a joy. They’re both so finely tuned in that it’s like they’re twins joined at the hip Siamese style. The communication is mainly one-liners and jokes and they make a very funny team, laughing for much of the time. Audley pushes himself really hard anyway but Custer knows how to get that little bit more from him. There’s occasional frustrations, like a difficult middle section but they keep going at it until they get it right. The song is basically worked on in sections or they’ll run forward until Audley makes a mistake, or stops. Then they wind back and listen carefully for any timing errors or missed notes and string noise, dropping in any little pieces that need fixing up. What this means is that of there’s a badly phrased chord or a slight tuning discrepancy Audley will play along while John expertly flicks the 24 track machine in and out of record at the required moment. It’s precision work and Custer’s timing is critical otherwise he’s likely to clip a piece off of the guitar either side of the bit they’re trying to fix. It sounds like cheating but actually it’s an industry standard way of working. In fact this is really the old way of doing it because with today’s computers and hard disc recorders you can simply chop up a perfect verse or chorus and then paste it in however many times you need it, wherever you need it. When Audley hits a really good chord or gets the perfect piece Custer throws his arms in the air or shouts “yeah, it rocks!” Then they both laugh and get on to the next piece. Tonight we eat fast food, Audley gets the ‘all you can eat’ salad and I hit for the burger and fries. We sit down for a while but then it’s back to work. Late in the evening the second guitar is finished and it sounds fantastic.

Early in the morning they’re still playing with tones and thinking forward to the next track. We leave the studio at about 3:30am. Back at the house Custer calls and says he’s still not sure about the tone on the cut they’ve done, and that they might need to re-cut it. A long conversation ensues about amp settings and mic locations. At about 4:15 I get into bed.

Friday afternoon we’re back out and Fat Sound and pickup the all singing and dancing $3000 Bogner amp. It’s a big beast and hopefully this will provide some more variety. In the studio there’s now close to $10,000 of amps and combos, Marshalls, Fenders, Ampegs, Matchless, Naylor, it’s an impressive sight. Custer arrives and explains that it’s not so much the sound of the guitar on GUILDED HORSE that’s worrying him but more the fact that the one guitar has been cut onto two tracks. This he feels leaves too much room for error during mixing as the two mics used give different colours to the tone and having them on separate tracks means they can be mixed incorrectly whereas if the two mics went to one track there would be on room for error with the sound during the mixing. A small mic submixer is the hardware they need but this won’t arrive until Monday. With this in mind they decide to start on a new cut and go back to this when the piece of equipment arrives.

Audley is pretty sure that the sound of the Bogner amp is the thing he’s after for the opening of SUNDAY MORNING FLOOD and so they begin work on that. In the studio he goes through all the amps he thinks might have equally good tones but in the end it is the Bogner that they start working with. The sound is a big swirling swamp thing and Audley plays through his Deja-Vibe, an effect similar to that used by Jimi Hendrix and Robin Trower. I’m familiar with this riff as I was in Raleigh when Audley first started working it but the song I heard has now changed considerably. He gets the best sound he can in the studio ten we carry the amp back into the control room, running a long lead to the speaker cabinet and the final tweaking of the sound begins. This takes on a turn for the worst as the amp seems to have a nasty sizzle, first around the top end and, after much fiddling with the controls, around the bottom end too! Numerous things are tried to clear this up and Audley plays the riff over and over while he and John try to clean up the sound. The actual tone they’re after is sustain with clarity but the amp is making the whole thing too distortion buzzy. They work at it constantly until around 09:30pm – almost five hours, then Custer suggests we go and get something to eat, take a break and then come back and listen to it. Everyone Is hungry so there’s no argument there and we make the short walk to Taco Bell for a quick fix of burrito! We sit eating and talking and everyone’s energy levels are revitalised.

Back in the studio Custer suggest we got the beginning and move the amp back into the live room as just maybe all these noises were there at the start but we just didn’t notice them. So back it goes. The mics are also repositioned and a new room mic is set up some distance from the speaker cab. Unbelievably in about half an hour the sound is exactly right and everyone is smiling and jumping up and down at how cool it is – but also in this last 30 minutes one of the mic pre-amps has fallen to bits and a speaker in the control room has blown! Byron works feverishly to fix the gear and finally they’re ready to go onto get the feel he wants. Basically he’s been playing this intro now for about seven hours and he’s burnt out. Numerous takes fly by and everyone knows how frustratingly close he is every time the machine goes into record. The guitar sounds fantastic but no matter how hard he tries Audley just can’t nail the lick to his satisfaction. At around 1:45am I suggest he takes a break – Custer agrees and we eventually manage to prise the guitar from him. We all sit in the studio, Kenny Soule from Dag is there too, and we just sit round telling funny stories, and at times howling with laughter. At one point Audley is bunched up laughing uncontrollably while Kenny is lying spread out on the floor pumping his legs in a fit of hysterics. Custer is behind me on the couch holding a cushion to his chest and bent double while I’m sat on a Fender combo in tears and completely unable to stop laughing. Sure as hell I can’t remember what was said now but boy did it hurt right then!

Back in the control room Audley tries fir a further 20 minutes or so but eventually they decide to call it a day and come back in on Saturday. This would usually be a day off but while they have this tone cranking it’s a case of making the most of it, also the amp will need to go back in a couple of days so they do need to move on with getting this piece finished. While it seems nothing has really been accomplished today, and certainly nothing worth keeping has gone onto tape Audley expresses his satisfaction with getting the guitar tone he had in his head and that seems prize enough.

Saturday is much better. A friend swings by to take me shopping (thanks Chris!) and by the time I return to the studio the intro is done and Audley has put down an awesome solo just after it too. Custer is still telling him how cool it is while they check it out over and over again. Audley isn’t too sure but if he recorded it 30 times he’d still think that he could do it better. Picking the right solos always a bit of a nightmare for any guitarist and it’s difficult to define the perfect ‘take’. The opening riff now sounds so good it’s outrageous and all the work yesterday getting that sound has really paid off big time. They work over the rest of the song ans by around 7pm it’s really starting to take shape. Every time they run the tape from the top the intro makes the room vibrate and everything sounds so goddamn good that I’m sure it must be illegal. By 8pm they’ve just about wrapped the whole ting up and they decide to call it a day. Everyone is happy and the weekend starts here. It’s time to go out and drink beer, so we head off and check out a jazz trio and then catch the end of The Backsliders (hard core honky tonk – very good) in another local club. Back at the house we surf the internet (badly and half-drunk) and get to bed sometime after 6am!

Sunday just kinda drifts past and I get to check out the new Mel Gibson movie Ransom (thanks Leslie). Josh from Columbia Records comes into town for a few days so we all eat well and get drunk! Monday afternoon we get tot do some shopping and while I’m going through all the Jazz CD’s, Audley and Josh are looking through photographic art books for album sleeve ideas. They pick up a few books with pictures of the old South in them, people and places. Some of the photographs are very cool and Audley has an idea about putting a picture with the lyrics to each song. In the evening the whole band (minus Robert Mason who’s actually at home in Pheonix), Josh, Bob and myself go out for a very good meal and start drinking. We head out later to Audley’s to check out an Elvis bio movie. Kenny Soule comes over to join us and brings a very good red wine and we continue drinking, The hazelnut beer is rather cool but you know that anything tasting that good is going to get ya. That’s why I’m sitting over at Jason’s house now with a bit of a headache trying to type this up. Today is Tuesday, my last day so it’s time to do some last minute shopping – headache or not!

Finally after rushing around all morning with Bob and Jason we head for the studio so that Josh can hear some of the work that’s been done and is in progress. I get to hear a couple of new things here and as the monitors pump the control room full of music everyone smiles. It sounds killer and Cry of Love are within site of a superb album. Josh is nodding his head and expressing his approval while Custer is almost headbanging! So far the track titles run thus:
FIRE IN THE DRY GRASS, DIAMONDS AND DEBRIS, GILDED HORSE, EMPTY CASTLE, HUNG OUT TO DRY, GEORGIA PINE, WARM RIVER PEARL, BRING ME MY BURDEN, GARDEN OF MEMORIES, SUNDAY MORNING FLOOD and one other song so far only know as FAST SONG IN G#

All too soon it’s time to head for the flight and as Audley says “Man, it seems like you only just got here” I know exactly what he means. I say my goodbyes and Jason drives me to the airport. I’m now on that plane and over an hour into the flight. All that really remains to be said is that I can’t wait for the finished album to be ready so I can hear it. Release looks likely to be March(ish) and from what I’ve heard it’s going to be outstanding. Aside from the music the band are also looking in to the possibility of having some CD rom information on the disc also. That could include photos, bio, a short movie – there are a lot of possibilities and I’m sure Audley will take the timeto look into them all. The care and attention that guy takes will surely pay off. It was nice also to see that Josh was right behind them, putting forward good ideas and listening to what the band had to say. It’s always good to see a record company that works with the band as opposed to thinking that the band works for the record company and should do whatever it’s told. So, four months to go. I can tell you this. I’m counting the days….

ADDITIONAL: I spoke to Audley a few days before Christmas and they were still hard at it with overdubs and guitars but he sounded genuinely happy with the progress they were making and very enthusiastic about the work that had been finished. I guess by the time this magazine is out Robert Mason will be putting down the vocals and they’ll be polishing the whole thing up, so a review in issue 72 maybe?