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.
Our pal, Marc Bianchi of Her Space Holiday is guest editing Magnet Magazine this week. He has some nice things to say about Tape Op, and as one of our original readers we thank him for the log time support and writing about us. Plus adding the video...
Video Release: James Supercave "Burn"
What follows may be one of the best answers to the "So, how'd you guys meet?" question we have ever heard. Producer, engineer, and oft-recorded bassist (Black Keys, Ryan Adams, Norah Jones) Gus Seyffert was...
Tape Op contributor and studio owner/engineer/producer Mike Caffrey recently sent me some thoughts he had about visitors to the studio during sessions. See issue 73’s upcoming end rant for the origins of this piece. -LC
I always tell...
So here it is. The fateful letter that relentless talent scout and A&R honcho John Baccigaluppi sent to my band Vomit Launch back in 1988. Little did we know that soon we'd be holed up in his studio making records, and less than a decade later...
Yup, I sit at my computer all day editing articles, writing stuff for the mag and answering the ridiculous amount of emails that always seep in over the course of a day.
illus by Eva Kihl
Seems like it's Sylvia Massy week over here at Tape Op! Here is another cool session trailer from Mix With The Masters where Sylvia records the Melvins!
Stopify.net is a newly published community base and informational resource for why Spotify is damaging to artists and to the music industry as a whole. Check out a centralized list of articles about the topic, and add your two cents to the growing...
FKA twigs has long been a semi-underground favorite, and it would seem that her goal has never been to crack the mainstream at the expense of an artistic expression. With her new album, Eusexua, the door to an even larger audience may be cracked...
James Beaudreau is a former member of the Billy Nayer Show (1998-2003) and started Workbench Recordings - a netlabel, blog, and recording studio in NYC. They release one track every Tuesday along with artwork and texts about the creative process,...