what's it all about?

i once had this friend with a groovy name who is now a doctor...  see??  this track was named as a bit of a dare i suppose.  jackie (for t'was her name) dared me when i was an angst ridden 17 yr old to name a band i was in after her.  i did, but we never gigged (that's the truth dr s).  i got the feeling that jack never believed me as i found out some years later when a cordelia thing caused us to meet again after twelve years in a hospital corridor.  jackie was one of the first people to introduce me to a wider spiritual sky and a much deeper emotional vision, and hence the poem.  she also said some very kind things about my guitar playing at a time when i was finding my voice and gave me the courage to continue.  so this is for jackie as a thank you.  just that one comment gave me the drive to steer clear of the conventional and always aim for what i feel, not what i know.

instruments & tone sources

some nice evolving synth patches from the jv1080 - horrendous to program, but sound really nice.  the guitars are all the Parker Fly through the Line 6 POD amp simulator.  that big rolling bass sound is a loaner from steve gale, a washburn headless which has a great recording pre-amp - fed into a joe-meek vc3q - which if you need a recording strip, you should just go and buy one...

the guitars are topped off by a choir of ebow guitars.  i use the ebowII which has the groovy overtone setting on it to give those really big glorious sailing notes.  all reverbs again off the 1680.

production comments

loop spotters may like to note that once i'd played the drums manually for the overture, i took the same drum audio and 4 bar looped it for this track.  it's the same loop.  manual for trk 1, looped for trk 3!  see simple!

the hardest sonic trick here was the distinction between the atmospheric guitars and getting that really middy chug to the lead guitar as it comes in after the drum loop starts.  the POD is great for making these radical changes, just dial 'em up and off you go.

i wanted the vocals to be quite sassy, and i contemplated getting a buddy of mine to do it, but time and circumstance then forced me to have a bash, and i was quite happy with the result so i kept it. the vocal was close miked using a rode nt1 capacitor mike through a joe-meek vc3v2.  again, the jm gives you great creative control over the tonal quality of the sound, and the drive control allows you to add in a bit of that analogue warmth missing from the digital domain.