Eric Siblin - Studio Grace: The Making of a Record

Also by Eric Siblin

The Cello Suites: J. S. Bach, Pablo Casals, and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece

Studio Grace

The Making of a Record

Eric Siblin

Copyright 2015 Eric Siblin

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This edition published in 2015 by
House of Anansi Press Inc.
110 Spadina Avenue, Suite 801
Toronto, ON, M5V 2K4
Tel. 416-363-4343
Fax 416-363-1017
www.houseofanansi.com

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Siblin, Eric, author
Studio Grace : the making of a record / by Eric Siblin.

Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-77089-934-6 (bound). ISBN 978-1-77089-935-3 (html)

1. Siblin, Eric, 1960. 2. Sound recordings Production and
direction. 3. Popular music Canada 20112020. I. Title.

ML410.S564A3 2015 780.92 C2015-900818-2
C2015-900819-0

Cover design: Alysia Shewchuk
Cover photo: Radius Images/Corbis

We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund.

For Herbert Elliot Siblin

TABLE OF CONTENTS

About the Music

Chorus interruptus

How long have you been gone?

Cloudburst

Mansion on the hill

Song castles in the sand

Basement session No. 1

Basement session No. 2

Interlude: Take me home

Basement session No. 3

From the sky

Unstoppable

Who is Howard Bilerman?

Basement session No. 4

Hooks

Basement bass n drums

The girl from the NextDoor Pub

Write your own No. 1 hit!

Take one with Shaharah

Perfect shell

Labyrinth of voices

This is what you should be doing

Zoom

Building a bigger better greater chorus

Are we in Funkytown yet?

How Unstoppable became Inflammable

Prelude2Hotel2Tango

H2T: Session No. 1

H2T: Session No. 2

H2T: Session No. 3

Capturing reality

Battlefield mind

Underbelly

Back to the basement

An oceanic feeling-tone

Honey from the attic

Dionysian brass parade

Zeros and ones with a human face

Cherry-picking at the hotel

Major handcuffs

Pomegranate seeds

A tuneful sigh

Chorus maximus

The sound in my head

Lyrics and liner notes

Links to dramatis personae

Acknowledgements

About the author

The songs featured in this book can be streamed or downloaded at ericsiblin.com . Enter the access code: Papyrus.

In a word, it is so powerful a thing that it ravisheth the soul, the queen of the senses, by sweet pleasure (which is an happy cure); and corporall tunes pacifie our incorporeall soul and carries it beyond it self, helps, elevates, extends it.

Robert Burton, The Secret Power of Musick (1621)

CHORUS INTERRUPTUS

Another song got away last night. It slipped through my fingers, escaped the chord structures, and made a clean break from the fretboard. Guitar strings were powerless to rein in the melody. Even now, the half-finished song dares me to pluck sound out of thin air and pin down its essence.

I was trying to finish a chorus for the song I call Grace of Love . You cant force these things. But neither can you sit on your hands waiting for the Muse to strum some strings.

It is the fault of Morey, my perfectionist mentor, forever spurring me on to greater heights, places I cannot quite reach; and Jo, my capricious sounding board, who is rarely satisfied; and the velvet-voiced singers who tried their hands at the song, from Rebecca to Shaharah; and Bilerman the producer, who led me to believe that my music was worthy; and finally, I hold my father accountable, for he, when he was at deaths door, put the idea of the song in my head.

There are many other songs. If Grace of Love is still minus its elusive chorus when I get to the studio, it will not be overly missed. But the anguish caused by this unfinished tune is typical. The songs have not come easy.

HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN GONE?

For a long time songs had been percolating in me. I dealt with them as best I could. But a new urgency had recently been brought to the equation. I wasnt sure why. A breakup had led me to struggle mightily with a song that became known as Country Mile . It was missing a chorus, but after countless attempts I figured it out and a weight was lifted. Other tunes were in various states of incompletion. I wanted to finish them all.

Then came my chance encounters with Morey Richman and Jo Simonetti. I met them both, on separate occasions, at the same Montreal caf: Morey, a face from my distant past; Jo, a new visage that I wanted to gaze upon in my immediate future.

She was wearing a red woollen cap and tapping away on a laptop. I found myself at a table nearby and struck up a conversation that grew into a long conversation. Jos face lit up when she broke into a smile. She was attractive to begin with, but it was as if all her constituent parts wide brown eyes, high cheekbones, aquiline nose, shoulder-length dark hair were lying dormant until a smile switched on their collective beauty. It was a long while before she referred to a husband.

One week later, we crossed paths again in the same Starbucks and had another caffeinated chat. My ear was tuned to the nuances of her marital status. The moment of truth came when she asked if Id ever been married.

Nope, I said. I missed that train.

Some of us were on it and jumped off, she said.

Really? I thought you said last week that you had a husband?

Ex-husband.

Oh.

Yes, theres that little ex in there.

My ears playing tricks on me, as usual.

I guess I misheard you.

I sent her an email later that afternoon: I know this is ridiculously last-minute, but seeing as youve suddenly become single would you like to have dinner tonight?

Funny, she replied, becoming single did not feel very sudden.

As things turned out, we were to remain unattached. Coupling up was just not in the cards for us, though we discovered something else that brought us very close together.

Jo was a classically trained piano player, with a mellifluous, delicate singing voice. Plus she composed a few songs.

Although I had a nice touch on guitar and could write decent songs, or so I thought, my downfall had always been my subpar vocals. On occasion, in the right key and style, I sounded passable, or at least true to the song. But I was forever on the lookout for a good singer.