POSTCARD

October 10 was the release date for Might as Well: The Persuasions Sing Grateful Dead, which I had the privilege of co-producing along with lead singer Jerry Lawson.

My friend Rip Rense has been working with The Persuasions ( www.thepersuasions.com), a legendary and brilliant a cappella band nearly 40 years old. He helped them get two record deals, for a children's CD titled "The Good Ship Lollipop" and a collection of Zappa songs titled "Frankly A Cappella" (both released in 1999).

A couple of years ago, Rip asked me if I thought there was a chance anyone would be interested in a CD of the Persuasions doing Grateful Dead songs. At the time, I was working on Stolen Roses, a compilation of other artists' recordings of Dead songs (released August 8 by Grateful Dead Records). I invited the Persuasions to record a Dead song on spec. Everyone loved the Persuasions' rendition of "Black Muddy River" (from the Dead's 1987 Big Huge Hit "In the Dark") -- most notably the lyricist, Robert Hunter -- and at the start of this year, Grateful Dead Records agreed to record and release a full album of Dead songs by The Persuasions. To my surprise, Rip wrote me into his proposal as co-producer.

It proved to be a life-changing experience. Here are some excerpts from my journal.

Friday, May 19, Brooklyn NY

Today the Persuasions were rehearsing at the Dance Studio of Park Slope in Brooklyn. I walked in through a sea of little girls in tights and leg warmers to find the band hard at work in a small mirrored room with great big acoustics. I just sat there for an hour or so, listening to them as they found their way into the songs. After hearing their rendition of "Brokedown Palace," I did feel compelled to pipe up, "I have loved that song for thirty years, but never as much as I do at this moment."

I went out to get coffee for everybody, and we hung out in the lobby (again, surrounded by energetic little kids and their pram-pushing parents), yakking about this and that. When I told them I was playing a gig in Brooklyn tonight, they asked me if I do any of these songs. "Yes, I do," I replied. "In fact, 'Brokedown Palace' is one of my favorites.'" The next thing I knew, we were back in the rehearsal room and I was singing "Brokedown Palace" with all five Persuasions backing me up and Jerry Lawson's eyes locked on mine, as if he were reaching into my head to extract the essence of my knowledge and phrasing of the song.

It was an ecstatic experience, and I was still pumped about it more than an hour later.

Tuesday, May 30 - Bay Records, Berkeley, California

The Persuasions really get it about this material. These songs go a lot deeper than the Zappa stuff -- tons more heart and soul, and these singers have an excellent grasp of the references contained in Hunter's lyrics. "Night the chariot swung down low," they sing in "Might as Well," and they know where that chariot comes from. Every one of these guys has made comments to me about the personal connections they're making with the songs.

I heard myself explaining to the Persuasions -- all of whom have expressed great admiration for Garcia's soulful vocal qualities -- that Garcia was a lifelong smoker who never had the lung capacity to hold notes. So to hear someone like Lawson combine Garcia's phrasing with the power and smoothness of a Sam Cooke is a wonderful thing indeed.

At the end of the evening, just before the band left for the night, they were taking turns going in to fix their parts on one particular line. I was out in the lounge area being regaled by Jayotis and Ray with stories of leaping from rooftop to rooftop in Harlem. "And fuckin' in the tar," someone said. "What do you think they were talkin' about in 'Up on the Roof,' anyway?" And someone else added, "That was in our repertoire..."

A few minutes later, I was sitting in the lounge with Rip going over a few notes for tomorrow morning when the five Persuasions emerged from the control room, walked over and surrounded us, and sang "Up on the Roof" all the way through, all of them addressing it right to me. I just grinned as my heart swelled, and when they were finished I said, "I feel like it's my birthday."

Wednesday, May 31

The first four hours were spent on "Lazy River Road," complete except for a mandolin solo which will be added by Eric Thompson later in the week.

This verse appears twice:

Way down upon Seminole Square
Belly of the river tide
Call for me and I will be there
For the price of the taxi ride
Night time double-clutches into today
Like a truck downshifting its load
Way down
Down along
Lazy River Road

The second time, it's sung by Jimmy in the lowest register I've ever heard a human sing. We worked on that part for a while, getting it just right -- intonation was spotty here and there, and there was a brassiness on certain words that didn't feel quite right. Jim was patient and good-humored throughout the process. And when he was finished, we had a remarkable interlude that, uh, peaked when he sang "like a truck downshifting its lo-oad," reaching even farther down on the second half of the last word.

This man's voice is a powerful and versatile instrument. Yesterday I was hearing it as a bassoon, but today I was searching my mind for a way to describe the sound. At times in "Lazy River Road" -- not in the solo passage, but in the regular bass line -- I heard a slightly flatulent brass sound similar to something in the beloved "Earth Dances" of Harrison Birtwistle. I finally put my finger on it: in this particular song, Jimmy's broad vibrato makes it sound like a deep brass section from the back of the orchestra. How it is possible for one man making "bohm-bohm" sounds to evoke a rank of tubas and trombones is a marvel worth contemplating.

As the band was warming up to record "Lazy River Road," Rip whispered that he thought it should be a little slower. I agreed. "Do you think you could make it a little, um, lazier?" I said into the talkback microphone. The funny thing is, they speeded it up a hair to get a more relaxed feel. Go figure.

Lawson's vocal is tender and flutey. It is a glorious sight, this plus-size character, coarse and bossy and utterly enslaved by his muse, emitting this angelic music. "All the others I let pass by / I only wanted you" is as romantic as Hunter gets, and Jerry Lawson colors that feeling as deeply in his universe as Jerry Garcia ever did in his. Neither Jerry has much in the way of leading-man appeal, but sexy is as sexy sings, and Lawson sings it as sweet as can be. I think it was while listening to this recording that I said to someone in the room, "this is the Ben Webster of singers." The unvoiced breath that slips out through the vibrato is a world of expression unto itself.

All of which merely set the stage for what followed: "Ripple."

The Persuasions have honored my request to track as a five-piece several times, but for this one they did it their way, building from the bass and lead: Jimmy and Jerry.

Jimmy counted, and the song began with Jerry's voice alone: "If my words did glow..." and Jimmy was there with a bass line, a sort of doo-wop oom-pah that acknowledged the Sex Mob recording while hewing to the tempo of the American Beauty original. Rip and a guest and I all sat there open-mouthed as this duet unfolded, and I thought (and maybe even said aloud), "This makes the Grateful Dead sound like a bunch of speedfreaks."

Before it was even over Rip said, "We should just put _this_ on the record." That ain't gonna happen, but we did decide to keep this arrangement as spare as could be. No other voices until the fourth verse.

I don't know what to call the "Ripple in still water" passage -- it's not a chorus, so it must be a bridge. Anyway, the Persuasions' arrangement stands those chords on their head: Instead of A minor, D, G, C, A and D, they sing over several beats of D, almost the same number of beats of C, and a G (the root) where the original plays a D. And yet, you never don't recognize it as "Ripple." The melody is similar, but the harmonic structure is radically simplified -- and that can be said of many of the Persuasions' arrangements of these songs.

In the liner notes for "Stolen Roses," which arrived by email from Richard Gehr a few days ago, Elvis Costello says: "... 'Stella Blue' and 'China Doll' have too many 'Norwegians' in them for my fallible fingers." The Persuasions eliminate the "Norwegians" without sacrificing any melodic magic: where Garcia's changes might descend a spiral staircase, the Persuasions would jump down a couple of concrete steps. This enables the band to lay down slabs of accompaniment upon which the improbably graceful Jerry Lawson executes his breathtakingly delicate vocal work.

I was on the edge of tears as we began the careful work of adding voices to "Ripple." Something very special was emerging here.

The tenors were next, Sweet Joe Russell first to the microphone. There was nothing for them to do until the fourth verse, "There is a road..."

Joe was singing a single note for every word of that line. I wanted the tenors' harmony lines to match the contour of Jerry's melody, and after a few attempts to talk Joe through it from the control room, I went into the studio and sang the line I wanted him to do. "That's Ray's line," Joe replied. Hmmm.

I asked Lawson if I could try having only Joe on top of him for those first two lines ("...between the dawn and the dark of night"), and then bring Ray in for the next two lines. "You don't have to ask me, David," he said. "Just do it. You're in the Zone, man!" Now Joe was willing to try my close-harmony approach, and we attempted it several times. He was always tentative on that first note, which told me he was unconvinced, or disagreed with my idea. He gave me a solid take of that first line with a level melody line, and I took it because the timbre of his voice, and the perfection of his vibrato, was everything the moment required.

Raymond Sanders, who had been standing by throughout this process, then stepped up and added his own impossibly sweet line on top of what we had, nailing his part in a take or two as usual. I realized that I had had a constant chill up and down my spine for a good half an hour and my eyes had teared up repeatedly as this process unfolded.

Skipping for now the "blow" underpinning the bridge, we moved to the fifth verse, "You who choose to lead..." I asked Joe to sing the first and third lines alone (on top of Lawson and Jimmy), with Ray adding his top part on the second and fourth lines. The result was as stunning as their work on the fourth verse. We quickly wrapped up the "blow" beneath the bridge, and we got a layer of Jay in there as well. Then everybody did some "La-la-la" work to wrap up the day's work on "Ripple."

Sunday, June 4

Today was the day we had Mary Schmary ( www.schmary.com), a brilliant and delightful Bay Area a cappella quartet, in to add their magic to several songs. Mary Schmary are Cynsa Bonorris, Myriam Casimir, Alyn Kelley and Desiree Pointer. I've been friends with Cynsa for more than ten years, and a fan of the group since its inception in the early '90s; I've mastered their three CDs, recorded a lot of their live gigs, and evangelized them to anyone who'll listen for years.

We began with "I Bid You Good Night,"adding a wholesome feminine timbre to the spiritual; the result has a mountain-church feel that makes me think of the "Old weird America" that Greil Marcus wrote about in _Invisible Republic_. This was an easy piece and an excellent warmup. Next up was "He's Gone," and that's where the Schmaries began to do their special thing. We just played the"Ooh, nothin's gonna bring him back" (30 repetitions, several minutes' worth) ride over and over while they tried stuff, and when they were ready, we hit record and away they went. Across this pumping rhythm, pulsed by Jimmy's Motownish bass line, the men sing a sleek, punchy version of the Dead's line; in between, the Schmaries sang three variations on "nothin' gonna bring him, nothin' gonna bring him." What we have now is a solid, grooving vocal bed over which the Persuasions will testify, drop in phrases and titles from other songs on the CD, etc., during a long, slow fade.

We experimented with several approaches to "It Must Have Been the Roses." The Schmaries were part of our original plan for this song, but when we recorded it last week it was so perfect as a five-piece with the Dobro solo (and a few fills) that I was more inclined to leave it unadorned. Lawson wanted to try the additional vocals, and our default is to try stuff, so we tried stuff. We wound up with just Alyn and Desiree (the sopranos) on the very last chorus. That is definitely all the song needed.

The genius of "Might as Well" will have to be heard to be appreciated. Cynsa, Myriam, Alyn and Desiree came up with an extremely cool background line for themselves, simulating "a train going by," and developed other sterling touches that defy description. And then Alyn performed a "trumpet" solo that knocked the Persuasions and everyone else in attendance right on their asses. We made her do it again, and the second take was even more amazing than the first. And while we were listening back to it, the other Schmaries started playing "trombone" parts -- and the next thing we knew, we were recording a FIVE-PART vocal trombone backing for the trumpet solo, along with a "baritone sax" by Jimmy. Every time we heard this, performing live or listening to playback, everyone in the studio burst out in applause and laughter, so I decided we'd better record some applause for the CD. A dozen or so people gathered around the stereo microphone, listened to this human brass performance in the headphones, and contributed a heartfelt round of applause for the record.

After all that, Jerry went in to add a "choo-choo" train sound that will run through the whole song.

The great thing about this -- as Jerry reminded me at the end of our long, exhausting, magical day -- is that the title track of this CD is an astounding example of the power of the human voice. We had originally thought to have a piano solo on "Might as Well," but what we wound up with is a rocking performance full of smiles and surprises, all borne on sounds made by the unaided voices of nine great musicians.

After a break for food, we put some work into the "la-la-la" ending of "Ripple." At first the Schmaries tried a sort of call-and-response approach, singing in between the traditional lines, but everyone agreed it was a little too cutesy. So they put some effort into a four-part addition to what we had already -- which didn't work until we eliminated the tracks that Vince Welnick and I had added earlier. Once it was down to the Persuasions and the Schmaries, it sounded fine.

My description of this monumental day conveys nothing of the intense pleasure that suffused this encounter among nine brilliant colleagues from two different generations of a cappella singers. At any given moment, when something was going on in the control room -- playback, adjustments, setting up more microphones in the studio, etc -- we'd hear music erupting from another room. The Schmaries got to show off some of their stuff for the Persuasions (I made them sing "Abraham" and "Gooberoni," both from their latest CD "Hidden Agenda Items") and vice versa. They sang "Don't It Make You Want to Go Home," which the Schmaries learned from the Persuasions -- and of course, the men loved the women's rendition.

It was a huge day, and I am proud to report that a hell of a lot of that excitement made it onto the master tapes. Cynsa, Myriam, Alyn and Desiree brought a wealth of talent and inspiration to the party, and although they were in the presence of genuine heroes and role models, I am certain that the admiration and respect were one hundred percent mutual.

Monday, June 5

When we began, I had some vague fears about all the songs sounding the same. Some of the bluegrass "tributes" are hideously Procrustean, and the last thing I'd want to be involved in is the processing of these great songs through some Doo-Wop Filter. No one who knows The Persuasions would expect a half-assed job from them, and it was clear from "Black Muddy River" that they are capable of connecting with the material.

The songs are being Persuasionized, but they all still retain their individual identities, and it's been fascinating to hear how the Persuasions strike that balance. This record is doing exactly what I hoped and expected it to do: shedding new light on these great songs with thoughtful, creative arrangements and soulful, spirited performances.

For more information about Might as Well: The Persuasions Sing Grateful Dead and a gallery or photos from the sessions, please visit http://www.trufun.com/persuasions