Spicer: For the Record
Originally published in New Texas Magazine -- May 2000

One by one, I isolate the tracks playing back: There's that hushing-whoosh sound of the piano pedal, loud really, if you want to get particular about it. And there's the sniff of the drummer on the overhead mic, that will be lost in the music somewhere. And then, I hear it on the guitar track. Is it the click track bleeding in from his headphones? I leave the console and journey into the iso booth where Patrick, my guitar player, sits on a desk chair. I inspect the chair for wobbles, the amp for levels. I am mystified that all seems quiet.

Patrick starts to talk about the chorus we just played and, as his adrenaline surges and his words quicken, I hear the noise again. As I get closer to Patrick, I realize we have a problem: The sound is coming from Patrick's heart.

The two metal valves conducting the traffic flow of blood to his heart are moving back and forth at an irregular pace. He'd had them installed a few years earlier because his own weren't working very well. Saved his life, those valves, but at the moment they are adding unwanted percussion to my tune. When he starts to play, his heart speeds up, which makes the valves move more, which makes the track sound as though there's a time bomb mysteriously planted therein. We laugh and, when we do, we drown out the sound of his ticker. We could start a rumor that there had been a bomb in the studio at the time and we managed to capture the definitive performance and get out alive, too.

His passionate playing has no such repercussions during a live gig in a club.

But here in the studio, where everything is remembered, where everything is piled up on a 2-inch tape and stored there for posterity, here his heart is not in the right place, so to speak. Which is why the recording process, in general, can be maddening, mysterious, magical.

I used to take my 35mm camera wherever I went - baseball games, art fairs. I sat on my porch and tried to capture spontaneous moments of beauty. The solo trips cross-country in my Pontiac Firebird were documented, the quirky search for tumbleweeds safely recorded. When I moved to Los Angeles, I drove downtown after the riots in that same Firebird, and cautiously hid my camera under my jacket - only to have it look like a gun. I took pictures of burned buildings and yellow police tape.

When I started performing, I noticed I cared a little less about taking pictures. But two years ago, I went to Florida to see a good friend go up in the NASA Space Shuttle, and took my camera. When the countdown began, I found myself being very torn, and not for the first time, between Living It and Recording It. Because, the minute I put the camera up to my face, between me and the action, my role in the event changes.

April, 2000: I am working on my second album at the House of Blues here in Los Angeles. I am sprawled out on the couch with my tired band, and think about how strange the process of recording is. I remember that afternoon in Florida, staring at the Space Shuttle awestruck, and knowing that the picture and the event were two different things.

High atop a note I am perched today. The note sits on a ribbon of tape, which sits in a machine, which sits in a studio, which sits in a city. I am committed to this note, will not be swayed from this note. And the magnetic tape upon which I am sailing is slowly rolling its way through reels and placing that note on its broad body.

Forever.

Forever.

And then I think, I could do that better. I could, if circumstances were ideal, sing that note louder, stronger, faster, bigger. And now that I think about it, how ideal is this day, really? I mean, I wasn't happy with my choice of breakfast cereals, to start with.

And the ride here was a little warm. How can these things not effect the feel of the track. And it's all about feel.

The fascinating thing about recording is, sometimes you can feel it so much, you forget to play it well. That goes against everything poetic, but sometimes it is true, nonetheless. And that is pure wonderment to me. The equation for success is filled with hieroglyphics and, if you stare at them too long, you will lose your vision altogether.

There is a certain tension in the studio that comes from trying to balance Feeling It with Recording It. What works in a crowded club may not necessarily translate on tape. An upbeat song may work at a frantic pace at the club, and just sound like a train wreck on playback. And that hypnotic song you play in slo-mo to a sea of flickering lighters may, when you push that record button, put you to sleep.

In the studio, you get used to not understanding things. Happy accidents occur when you aren't looking, and then the challenge becomes being able to recognize them as such. You suspend all preconceived notions. Luckily, absurdity occurs only once in a while. Most of the time, you just know whether you got it or you didn't. But there are those stellar moments of deep soul searching. And if you have been in that little cave for 12 hours, a few days in a row, you are just as likely to hear it differently the next day.

And no one is immune to the old ear-switcharoo. This goes something like:

"Yea! I think that was it! It picked up a little on the second chorus, but, you know, that just gives it energy!" (Monday, just after playing it.)

"Wow. That's kind of sloppy. It just gets going and then we all speed up at the chorus, and it completely takes me out of the vibe." (Tuesday, first listen.)

"Hey, that's alright! I thought it was a little too fast, but, now that I hear it again, it's got a nice 'live' feel." (Wednesday, second listen.)

More and more artists are recording at home or in smaller studios with more affordable digital gear. That autonomy and intimacy brings back some of the control, especially when it comes to cost. Performances in such an environment - while still beholden to technical considerations - are probably more akin to the live feel, undisturbed, with the freedom to try again later if the mood doesn't strike just then.

For my own recording, I just can't go digital, despite the advantages. I like the fat, warm sound of analog, and just don't know how to compensate for that in a digital format. Analog tape, sonically, wraps around my ears in a way that zeros and ones just don't.

If you ever watch football on television, and then see that same game's highlights on NFL films, you know what I mean. The video/live TV has an immediacy to it, but NFL films makes that same game seem important, transcendental. Yes, there's music over the action now, but it's the way it looks that changes how you feel about it. It can remind you of things, it can make you nostalgic, it has poetry somehow. It's the same thing in music. The performances may be perfect, the songs may be brilliant but, if they have that flatness that I associate with digital sound, they never quite make it to my higher lobe - and I'm never detached from the live transmission.

The drawback to this predisposition is that my recording process is necessarily separate and different than playing live. The clock is always involved, and the pace, while not frantic or uptight, is with an eye to maximizing productivity. It is difficult sometimes to feel alone, to shut out the outside and work your way in. And that what it's all about, really.

The journey in.

You start the engines when you put pen to paper, and follow the tracks that go somewhere you can't exactly see but sense.

I remember how relieved I was to finally have my first CD, so there was proof. Proof of who I was. I'd have to talk less now, because there was my story. Or some part of the evolving story. You commit something to the ether, you throw your muse into a pool of intangible waters and, when it is transformed into something tangible, you become universal. You can send it across the country, across the world. And when you hit "Record," you are trusting that it matters. Because it does.

It's a few years later now. I have a different guitar player, and Patrick has a different heart. He carries the old one in a jar to his gigs. And our friendship remains steadfast.

And I am in the studio working on album number two. As far as I know, everyone involved on this one has all their original parts. But that doesn't mean there aren't other mysterious things going on.