Just Start Over

I remember a session, 17 years ago, with the band Quasi, for the album Field Studies. We'd tracked a song, "Birds." I thought the initial take was fine, and I believe we'd started overdubbing on it. But one morning the group (Sam Coomes and Janet Weiss) arrived, and they expressed some doubts about the quality of the take. I couldn't believe it. We'd need to set mics back up for the drums and keyboards, find a new spot on a reel, as well as get all the levels and headphone mixes again. I thought we were done with basics, and I probably (stupidly) fought them on tracking the song again. Stubbornness, combined with adhering to the standard workflow (basics, overdubs, and mixing) were guiding me back then. It would be the same during the mixing process for this album, when I resisted piping all the drums and instruments back into distorted amplifiers for "It Don't Mean Nothing." In both cases, Quasi's instincts turned out to be totally correct. Just as the distorted drums helped "It Don't Mean Nothing" become more intense and messed up, in a great way, this new take of "Birds" had a more consistent tempo with a better overall feel, enabling the quirky time signature to fit in the groove in a better way. If we had labored over the old take for days, it still would not have been as good of a recording as this new version.