I have a lot of experience in the studio and working with bands and artists. Come in here any time and ask me anything.

Hi Matt, thanks in advance for this forum as a tool. I really appreciate the resource, and your willingness to share what you’ve learned along the way. I’d like to start off with a charmingly abstract question…

Working with the Crows, in addition to the other work you’ve done, have you found a personal writing/composition process? Are there consistent steps, tips, tricks you find yourself taking in moving a song from an idea to a completed work? As a barely budding artist, i find myself struggling to tie my ideas and thoughts down to earth, into a tangible format.

Hi Max! Sheez what a great question! Well, the answer to the creative process, in my humble opinion, is spontaneity. Rent the movie about the Rolling Stones recording “Sympathy for the Devil” and check out how the song sounded when they first started recording in the morning…and watch what it turned into by evening. IT WAS TOTALLY DIFFERENT. They had no plan and just let the garden grow around them while in the studio. That being said, there are a couple of ways in which C. Crows made songs: Adam would bring in a complete masterpiece (A Long December is the best example) and bang it out on the piano in front of us…and I could hear the whole band IN HIS PIANO. The other would be the band jamming on some chords at soundcheck and Adam would come in and start singing ideas over the music which would turn into a song by the whole band. The way I write is with music first – then I hum melody ideas and words start to form during and after that. Words are hard for me because anything less than THE TRUTH doesn’t deserve to be in a song..in my humble opinion! That’s why Beatles and Dylan songs are so good! Thanks for stopping by Max and write again! Matt

Hi Matt, Thanks for the quick reply! I really appreciate the input. I’m looking for the Stones’ movie as we speak. It sounds like the process itself was very natural, not forced. Did it begin that way, or was it the end result of a long development? Were there any steps you needed to take in weeding out methods of writing/composition that DIDN’T work?

Once again, thanks for sharing you’re experience. I’d like to continue my barrage or questions, if it’s alright…

Regarding your work with the Crows, It’s very easy to pick out the differing sounds of each album. Each is a complete work, with it’s own sound, feel, etc. AAEA, for instance, takes you in a dramatically different direction than Hard Candy does. Are the “feelings” to each of these albums premeditated? Did you consciously make the decision to craft the albums around these particular sounds, or were they natural results of the bands developmental phases? All the songs on each album seem to mesh together so well, how?

Appreciate your Time, Max

Hi Max! C. Crows worked differently than the Stones and I believe most other rock bands: We are a band of “thinkers”. We would rent a rehearsal room for months before we went to record each of our records and we would think everything over and work out as much as we could in rehearsals, or what’s called “pre-production”. Then when it came time to record, we would take everything we worked on and bring it into the studio and try to record it. It wasn’t as spontaneous but it did work for us since Adam is more of an intellectual rock star. We weren’t as “loosey-goosey” as other bands. Regarding the different sounds on our records; C. Crows music is about 90% Adam so depending on where he was in his life at the time of a record, I think that it automatically made for a theme. Sounds little simple but I believe that it’s true. They weren’t planned, they were just the vibe of the songs Adam wrote at the time as well as which producer we had to help us in the recording process. The producer was pretty important because depending on who it was, that determined our sound for the record. T-Bone Burnett (August and Everything After) was by far my favorite producer because he stripped us of all effects and high fidelity and forced us to dig deep inside of ourselves and rely on talent as opposed to hiding behind big sounds. Also he got into the machinery of our songs with us. I was playing bass for 15 years by the time C. Crows made our first record with T-Bone, but I didn’t really know how to play bass until T-Bone showed me! I was more into Geddy Lee, John Entwhistle and Chris Squire (they’re all geniuses by the way) but I didn’t know how to play a SONG until T-Bone came along! I could play fast, have a nice clanky sound etc but T-Bone sort of taught me to think with my heart and feel with my brain if you know what I mean!

Matt. Let me run this by you. When your in the studio how do you decide what gear to use, and when (i.e. basses, amps, DI). As far bass selection on a song, or album for that matter whats you rule of thumb. Thanks man!! RJ

Hi Randall! Well, as far as the band, Adam, myself or the producer were concerned, we all just knew when we wanted either fretless, fretted or upright for a particular song and it was up to me to decide on the bass that felt and sounded best for the song after that. I’ve happily acquired some great basses over the years – both new and vintage – but in the mix, you can pretty much use any bass you want in the C. Crows’ genre of music and with some tweaking by a great engineer, it’ll probably sound really good in the end. Counting Crows is a songwriters’ band so the tone of the bass wasn’t as important when soloed as it was when in the mix. Geddy Lee, Chris Squire and someone who sounds like John Entwhistle would probably be turned away if they were to show up for a Counting Crows recording session. Clank is not welcome in their style of music and all other bands like them, (Sheryl Crow, Matchbox 20, Hootie and the Blowfish, etc). It’s about the song and the songwriters’ vision and the better you understand the songwriter and his songs, the better you’ll fit in with everything. As far as amps vs. DI’s, it was the producer and his engineer who decided on the signal chain for me. I always ended up recording with both a miked amp as well as a DI track. The amp I used on August was an SWR Redhead and I still have it. I use it to give lessons out of!

Matt. Thanks for the quick reply! I’ve played and recorded with several bands with different styles and it seems like I can draw something stlye/tone wise from all of them, but when you’re recording a track does a certain bass come to mind, or did Adam or the producer say lets try the 65 Jazz or the Lakland? I like to use a Line 6 bass POD XT what do you think of those? Thanks for your time!! RJ

Hi Randall! Adam and producers didn’t really care which bass it was that I used – they just knew if they wanted fretted or fretless – T-Bone Burnett (producer for “August and Everything After”) hated bass guitars with batteries and I believe he had a good point – the high frequencies created by those basses end up making a “clicking” sound in the mix. It’s nice to hear all those highs when playing alone but in a mix they tend to grate. PODs are cool for tonal variation and cool sounds but to accurately record a bass guitar, I don’t use POD’s because a POD doesn’t care if your fingerboard is Brazilian Rosewood or Ebony…they convert your bass into a digital signal – even BEFORE it gets converted into a digital signal in a DAW!! Once is enough for me. That being said, they are cool for unusual sounds so don’t sell it!!