Swampland.com

Mark Olson Interview

A Conversation with Mark Olson On the Road to Atlanta

Yesterday I interviewed Mark Olson and Gary Louris regarding their timeless CD, Ready For the Flood. They were en route to their weekend shows here in Atlanta. Tonight I'll put up my interview with Mark, and tomorrow Gary...

Mark Olson: Hey man, I was expecting your call...

James Calemine: I want to congratulate you--the record sounds great. You're on the way to Atlanta, right?

MO: Yeah, tonight and tomorrow we're in Atlanta at Criminal Records and Eddie's Attic.

JC: It's been 15 years since you and Gary last collaborated. When did these songs and this project begin coming together?

MO: Well, actually it was 2006. Gary and I did a tour with just guitars and at the end of the tour we played a place called the Show Box in Seattle. A lot of people came and it kind of dawned on me we could atleast hold a big audience with two acoustic guitars, and two vocals. We got the idea let's try and do some new material. It's good to play those songs. That was in May. Then in August of 06 I went to Minnesota and spent a week straight writing. From that we made a little tape. We got Chris (Robinson) involved and we rehearsed in January. And then we made the record.

JC: How long did the recording process take? A month or two?

MO: No, I think we were in the studio and out of the studio with the record mixed in one week. We were in and out in about two weeks I think.

JC: The album requires multiple listenings to hear everything going on.

MO: Yeah, each song has basically a number of musical ideas, lyrical ideas and it took a little bit to get it all together.

JC: How did Chris Robinson contribute to the process?

MO: Well, he was very good at helping us select the songs--and that's a big deal because the versions of the songs can be a real trial. We'll go in and do six or seven versions of a song. Then Chris pretty much chose the version instead of us listening and debating versions, because this had that or whatever. We were going for live guitars and vocals. We weren't going to overdub anything. So, there can be a lot of discussion over that. Chris put a star by the version that he really liked. We were okay with that. Then he pushed a song called "Chamberlain SD" that was really different--up tempo, real ragged, real exciting and we were not getting it. We did 18 takes on 3 different days--we finally nailed that one. Again, we were going for the guitars and vocals. We were going for the thing at the moment that we were going to put on the record.

JC: That's rare these days...

MO: It's not like we haven't done it the other way. We went to school on our first record with George Drakoulias with old-fashioned record making, which was lay down the drums--then you lay the guitars--then you go for a lot of vocal overdubbing. A lot of great records have been made that way. We wanted to go for a thing where it was live because we can generally sing good together so why not make it count--it's kind of a fun way to do it. Then you got the basics of the song done.

JC: It keeps the musicians on the top of their game. It's all instinct.

MO: It started out the two of us singing and playing a lot of those songs that are just the two of us were the first one's we cut. then we started to add the band. Some of the stuff we were just adding bits, but everyone was involved on the last song "Gospel Song For You", we cut that with Gary on guitar, an organ player, Jimmy was playing the drums, i was playing and George was playing the bass. We did that with five people recording live--no overdubs with the whole band. That's pretty unusual these days. So, we were pretty happy about it. We worked it up. We did about four or five takes and we all just zoned in and played together. I think that was because we were kind of going for that attitude. We didn't want anybody waiting around to do their part. We had that edge. So, I guess that's what Chris brought...he gave us that commitment to go for it...

Until tomorrow,

James Calemine
 

related tags

Read More...

Comments

Please login or you can to leave a comment.

If you aren't registered, Register Now to start leaving comments.