Track 7: [Bonus] Big River (aiff)
Did you really think this story stops there? I needed to take a little break from mastering because when Mike gave me freedom to do whatever I wanted, I came inches away from mastering that last track into something that should have appeared on Atom Heart Mother. But I digress; the days before the wedding, Mike and I were rehearsing the tracks on the shore of the upper Mississippi River in St. Paul. Our cover art was taken along those tracks at river bank. Between practice songs, Mike said to me, “Sitting here on the river bank and playing guitar is like that Johnny Cash song ‘Big River.’” The more we saw the river, the more we thought of the song and how it would make a great bonus track for our album. For the musical arrangement, Mike was inspired by the Grateful Dead’s cover of the song, yet for the vocals we chose to do the Duet of Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash. Well we aren’t ‘impersonating’ but we are singing a similar melody and harmony. Between Mike’s guitar and our vocals and an egg we ended up with a pretty bright mix. To balance this, I recorded my guitar track without changing my strings first; leaving the backing guitar with more bass and boom to round out the track’s low end. Seriously, if you know me, this is something I would never normally do. Then again, neither is playing guitar during someone’s wedding ceremony. But, as I told Jeffery when he asked me, there was little chance of me turning down the opportunity at his wedding to play along side Mike. So this “bonus track” was actually only every played on the banks of the river by Mike and I with nobody else around. For the recording, we kept it as rough and scruff and click-track free as was our jamming by the river.
