Limited Pain
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The toughest part of writing songs is understanding one’s limitation. Mine are vocals.
No kidding Guy? Aside from our ears bleeding, we never noticed.
When peddling a song to publishers the recording and mix don’t have to be perfect. Publishers are looking for good raw material done in styles that will make them imagine some particular singer or band performing that song. A tune for sale needs to be developed enough to ignite that ah ha moment — that spark of recognition that blah-blah-blah could record that song and sell a million copies.
But if any part of the song completely misses the mark — especially vocals where most of the emotional outlet of the song lay — then the song won’t sell because the publisher won’t hear the artist in his stable in that song.
Enter Mister Earl J. Rivard, a vocalist I recently met at a long open mic. For songwriters and working musicians open mics are rehearsal opportunities with beer and cute girls watching (or in the case of our local dive, ex biker chicks singing along off key).
Earl took to the mic and started singing like the bastard child of Bocephus and Joe Cocker. I instantly knew I wanted him to do the vocals on One Heartbreak and take the song into the next realm — to make it sound like a ruling blues master could make it their own.
One Heartbreak (Away from the Grave)
In the studio, we ran through several takes. The first was good and Earl was following my requests for placing a certain emphasis or emotion on certain phrases (Earl, more anger when you say “can’t take those lies”). The second take was a hatchet job as we kept over dubbing the parts I didn’t like. I suddenly got smart and said “Earl, on this next take sing it however it moves you.” I figured letting him place his emotions into the song might create some interesting elements I never considered.
I was right. The sounds in the player above are the unedited Earl J. Rivard additions to the song. If you have ever had your herat broken, you may just like his redition.
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