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Endings – Jamie Schultz
Work on this album and its counterpart (Making the Machine Go
Round, which will be unleashed upon the world shortly after this
one) marks the end of Jamie Schultz, Anonymous Lead Guitarist.
It’s also, of course, the beginning of Jamie Schultz, Solo
Act and More, but it seemed more fitting to tip the hat to all
the musicians and bands that have been essential to teaching me
about the hows and whys of music. So, here’s to good endings....
This music is a collection of instrumental tunes, some of which
I’ve been puttering about with for awhile (years, in a couple
of cases), and some of which I knocked together for the occasion.
About half are acoustic instrumentals, some of which I play live
all the time. The other half are loud electric rock and roll,
more indicative of what I’d get up to if I had a band than
anything I actually perform these days.
Recorded from 9/25/04 to 2/1/05 at Gloryhole Studios, Dallas,
TX.
Mastered by Bart Rose, First Street Audio, Fort Worth, TX.
Cover photos by Mark Henry.
Cover design by Leslie Ziegler.
Personnel.
Performed, produced, and engineered by Jamie Schultz. |
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Assistant producer and recording engineer–Jon Schultz. Jon’s
help was invaluable throughout the whole process, ranging from things
as simple as pushing the record button (many, many, many times)
while I was holed up in the ‘isolation booth’ to offering
brutal critique when called for (“No more plinka plinka”,
“Quit with the meedley-meedleys”, “If you don’t
rename this song, I’m going to punch you in the face”,
“It’s perfect–don’t tell me you’re
going to make a compromised second draft”... you get the idea).
All songs copyright 2004 Jamie Schultz.
Equipment.
Guitars: Gibson J-30 acoustic. 1971 Gibson Les Paul Custom (with
Seymour Duncan Alnico II Pro humbuckers). The BOC (Epiphone Les
Paul outfitted with Gibson pickups 490R and 498T). Yamaha TRB-4
bass guitar.
1975 Music Man 130W 2x12 amp. It sounds the best with the gain at
about 8 and the master volume at 5. In the next room. You can’t
listen to it in this room with the master volume at 5. It’s
just too damn loud.
I used amp compression for lighter distortions, an Ibanez TubeScreamer
for most of the rest of the distorted guitar, and a Boss MetalZone
for the lead guitar in 1978–it just seemed like the thing
to do. I used the amp’s built-in tremolo and a Line 6 DL-4
delay for The Showdown. All other effects were software. I also
used a Morley Bad Horsie 2 wah-wah pedal extensively. I’m
firmly convinced that it’s the best wah-wah ever made.
All drum tracks were assembled, usually painfully, in Acid.
The acoustic guitar was recorded with 2 Shure SM-81's in an X-Y
configuration. A similar setup was used to mike the amp for the
electric guitars (though the -10 db switch was engaged on the mics).
Bass was recorded direct.
All recording was done through a Digidesign 002R and Pro Tools LE
on a Dell Dimension 4600. I used Mackie HR624s for studio monitors
in final mixing.
That about cover it?
Oh, yeah, and I’ve graduated from one green blanket stuck
in the nastiest corner to catch errant sound-waves to a whole host
of blankets and assorted bedspreads hung up fricking everywhere.
My current room looks like Plaid Hell.
The Songs.
1. 1978. It just sounds like a 1978 kind of song, you know? And,
as Jon pointed out, makes a good loud album opener.
2. Karen Broke A String. Performed live for the first time during
my very first solo show, when Karen, well, broke a string. That
girl is forever breaking strings. Anyway, it’s just a good
jam song, and has since become a staple of my live act, in some
form. I’ve been kicking around this chord progression since
2002 at the latest, so it’s about time I did something with
it.
3. Lake Michigan. I wrote this on one of the last days of recording,
based on some fooling about in A Lydian. It’s clearly a water-kind
of song, grey and wavy, and, though I haven’t spent a lot
of time at Lake Michigan, it seemed appropriate.
4. Endings. Another staple of my live act, this one typically comes
in a much more stripped-down, solo-acoustic form. It’s about
the ends of things–a little melancholy, but not too, since
something else must perforce come next. I’m told that every
recording project has one sticking point–a song that just
doesn’t want to be recorded–and this song was it for
this project. It was, I believe, the first song Jon and I tackled
with the new Pro Tools setup, and embodied an unbelievable host
of technical, performance, and editing problems. I came very, very
close to throwing it out entirely.
Jon says I Steve-Vai’ed one of the electric guitars in the
solo. You guess which one.
5. Lullaby. Because it is.
6. Intermission. That pretty much says it all, no?
7. Far. Inspired by Neil Young, Pink Floyd, and Joe Satriani. There’s
an unlikely combination.... If every record has a song that is just
a pain in the ass, I think it must also have a song that immediately
comes together. This would have been the one. This was pretty much
a one-take sort of deal, and it just felt right. Sometimes that
happens, I guess, but not usually.
As a weird side note, Jon played a recording of this song for a
friend of his, who said, “Hey, that’s cool–it
has a Neil Young/David Gilmour/Joe Satriani/Steve Vai kind of thing
going on.” So, I guess the inspiration was right on, or something.
8. Had a Little. I’ve been kicking this one around for a couple
years, too. I came up with an early version for an abortive recording
project with my dad, then came up with another version with lyrics
that got performed with Five Points of Venus a few times. Then I
quit that band, but the song is too cool to throw out, so I reworked
it into a strictly instrumental thing. Sadly, I’m the world’s
sloppiest bass player (several people have accused me of playing
bass like a 4-string lead guitar–what can I say? It makes
sense at the time), but it sure is fun. My amp blew a tube in the
middle of recording the lead guitar, which explains the two different
sounds present there.
9. Ants. Another song Jon named for me. He said it made him think
of ants marching along, and I could immediately visualize it, in
a sort of cheap, two-frame animation.
10. Out of Control. I do this one live, sometimes. It always feels
like it’s about to run off on me, hence the name.
11. The Showdown. Inspired by Neil Young and Roland Deschain, this
is sort of an audible painting. It sets a scene that’s almost
palpable to me, a very visual sort of song, and then all hell breaks
loose. It’s nasty, sloppy, and ugly as sin, but, as Jon likes
to say, “What did you expect? It’s a gunfight!”,
which pretty much sums it up. I only had one electric guitar planned
at the outset. However, I threw down two quick leads to get the
inspiration down, and then Jon cranked them both on playback–the
ensuing chaos was so appropriate, we ended up keeping both. It’s
impossible to pay attention to the entire mess, so I end up hearing
whatever piece demands my attention at any given point. There’s
almost a whole visual worked up in my head by now. (For example,
at about 3:44, the bartender pops up from behind the bar with a
double-barreled shotgun and ends up getting plugged half a dozen
times. It’s not pretty.)
Thanks!
Thanks go to the following:
Jon, Mark, and Leslie, for all their help with various bits of this
project (as mentioned above).
Matt Watson, Raquel Lindemann, Tyson Chenault, and Dan Galante for
putting up with me in Five Points, where I finally learned how to
play music on the electric guitar (as opposed to just stringing
a bunch of notes together).
Matt Watson (again), and Tyler Hooker, for listening to early drafts
of the album and telling me what was screwed up. Sometimes I ignored
them, so anything that’s still screwed up is entirely my fault.
Michael Earhart, for fixin’ my amp.
And, to all the nice folks who keep coming out to hear me make a
bunch of racket at various coffeehouses around DFW! |
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