Woodland is the name of Gillian Welch and David Rawling’s studio in Nashville, and it’s also the name of their new album. On Woodland, the duo continue to show their deep connection as collaborators. The album has a wide open sound that features their seemlessly blended and intimately recorded vocals, and the light touch of a backing band that includes drums, bass, pedal steel, banjo, and airy strings on tunes like "What We Had" and "Hashtag". "Lawman" and "The Bells and the Birds" have a lovely somberness, and the album as a whole has a "live off the floor" feeling to it that we hear less and less of these days. Woodland will stay in our "recently played" column for the forseeable future.
We interviewed Gillian and Dave back in 2001 for Tape Op #85.
Tape Op is a bi-monthly magazine devoted to the art of record making.
I received several CDs recently, notably the Monsters of Folk (Jim James, M. Ward, Conor Oberst and Mike Mogis) and Porcupine Tree's The Incident, that I really wanted to listen to but was unable to hear. Why? Because these promo discs were...
Vinnie Castaldo was in the new issue of Tape Op. Check out his reviews of his two fave educational DVDs. -LC
Trust Your Ears: The Drum Tech Explorations of Jeff Ocheltree
If you’re like me, always getting stuck tuning drums before a session,...
After reading Larry's "Eliminate Variables" End Rant from last issue, I was compelled to write a response. Don't get me wrong, I agree completely with everything he said; so before you read any further, revisit the back page of issue #92.
I...
My pal David Lowery (Cracker/Camper Van Beethoven) has been doing a cool blog called 300 Songs, telling stories of how songs came about and other crazy stories. The most recent one is about the late Don Smith, who produced and engineered a bunch of...
Years ago John Fischbach, a well-established and respected producer/engineer, came to my studio to record an album that our mutual friend, Luther Russell, was producing. [See Tape Op #21.] In those days my studio, Jackpot! Recording, was a diamond...
Now that the Tape Op iPad app is available, we've been trying to figure out the best ways to get the magazine to other digital formats. Expansion to other full-fledged tablets (Android, etc) is a fairly straightforward - if laborious - process, in...
Tape Op contributor Allen Farmelo has written a fairly in-depth post regarding his processes for capturing and processing sounds on his wonderful blog. Check it out. I bet even some experienced engineers will take note of some of the ideas Allen puts...
I was gonna run this in the letters section of issue #78 coming up, but I just felt it was too long to fit well. -LC
I just finished reading the letters section in the new issue [#77] regarding interns, and wanted to relate my experience. A couple...
I'm not actually going to review the music on this record; it's free, just go get it and listen to it yourself. Instead, I'm a bit fascinated by the mechanics of the release itself. As my wife said when I told her I had the record, "Does anybody...