We started off with a fairly faithful version of one of my favourite Wilco tracks. We recorded it on ukelele and mandolin, then added my little lightning bolt guitar solos. Next comes Dave’s first choice, a warm cover of Ripple that was really elevated by the choir. I felt the Bee Gees should go next, and remember having a devil of a time nailing that guitar, but I’m glad I did because the choir once again gives the track a huge amount of personality and colour. I also experimented with having overlapping solos in that song, a technique that I was playing around with a lot in those times and continues to feel like my signature approach even today. Dave now gets his first original piece, a very cute little ukulele track written about his playful young relatives. My first original, Thoughts Were Thought, was about a misunderstanding at a party I had had in university. However, the final ending where I spit out a hard “b-word” felt mean-spirited and shameful almost as soon as I recorded it, which is why I cut it out years later and made some other arrangement updates to the track before releasing the far-better version on Atavism. I’ve included the remastered version here. Next, Dave picked this melancholy Herman’s Hermits classic that is also one of my favourites, and the choir really stepped up on this one as well. Our reverb-drenched backing track occasionally stumbles a bit but beside that it really turned out quite nicely. Next up was a track I wrote for my aunt and uncle’s anniversary, and eventually included on Vaya Con Dios. I always thought the cascading call-and-response mandolin on the chorus was quite arresting, and made the recording really shimmer. Dave’s second original is next, a gorgeous, magical uke track that feels like it ends too soon. My last cover was this eerie and shadowy Nina Simone selection that turned out just okay, and made me wish I had more vocal range to really do it justice. Lastly, a Neil Young cover with the whole choir there to support us throughout. I intentionally left the conversations picked up on the mics in the track at the end to remind us of the warmth and laughter that we shared in that tough-to-survive place. Like the song says, “the good times are all gone, so I’m bound to moving on”, but at least we were able to capture some of those ephemeral moments on this humble album that rises above its initial concept, because of all that love you can hear on every track.
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