Aug. 10, 2011 - Issue #825: The Fringe
On the Record
No room to fail
Romi Mayes's latest album was recorded live
» Winnipeg's Romi Mayes
Romi Mayes
Haven Social Club, $15
Born in Winnipeg, Romi Mayes has been performing since the age of 15. Her mix of folk, blues and tortured rock have earned her two Western Canadian Music Awards as well as glowing reviews on this side of the Atlantic and the opposite. Inspired by Neil Young's live-recorded 1973 release, Time Fades Away, Mayes recorded her latest batch of new songs live in front of an audience along with guitarist Jay Nowicki, which resulted in her latest album, Lucky Tonight.
Vue Weekly: How long did it take to write Lucky Tonight?
Romi Mayes: I actually didn't have as much written for the album as I would have liked to as the time drew nearer to get doing some pre-production. I did have a few tunes written and complete and the band was already playing 'em with me on the road but only had about half the album just a few months before the recording, so I had to really hunker down through the winter and go through bits and pieces of songs I had started in the past or try to write from scratch. It felt like a lot of pressure, but in the end it turned out and I ended up with 10 tracks that I was really happy with and that would make the cut.
VW: When you were writing the songs, did you come at them in a particular way? Lyrics first? Music first?
RM: I often write lyrics first with an idea of a groove in my head. Once I get rolling on the lyrics, I often write them pretty quickly and then tweak 'em later on. I'll find lines on pieces of napkins or receipts in my pockets in the morning after some kind of night and use some kind of quality control process to decide if I keep it or chuck it. Other times I am in the van on the road and write the lyrics to an entire song in five minutes. The music is a little trickier for me so it comes over time and sometimes with struggle. My brain really works in forms of country or blues—predictable one, four, five kind of forms—and so I have to sit and really do the best I can to think outside the box musically. It's been helpful having Jay around to bounce the shit off of. He has some really great ideas and is one hell of a guitar player.
VW: How did the idea come about for recording the album the way you did?
RM: Last October Jay and I did a leg of a tour in the US without our rhythm section. We didn't realize how bad ass the electric duo would be and how strong it would stand and rock on its own, so that was when the initial idea came up to make an electric duo album. Then we realized, taking it a step further, to keep this mad energy and balls-to-the-wall mojo we had on stage and somehow transfer that onto a record, it would be crucial to play at the same time, head to head and in front of a crowd. Then it all just seemed so obvious that we had to crank it out live and record it that way. That's how we are touring the album as well. Two guitars, head to head, no rhythm section.
VW: How do you prepare differently for a performance you know will be recorded for an album?
RM: The process was completely different. Usually you can take 15, 20 songs into the studio and lean on the producer to help develop them as they go. They can really take shape in the studio and as the songs unfold you hear parts and additions to be added and can really build the album while you adjust tones and phrases as you go. With a live, one-take album, the songs had to be produced to their maximum, album ready, before walking on the stage. Every harmony Jaxon [Haldane] did on the album was thought out for where and when and how it would be placed, every beat that Ken [McMahon] played on the kick or every beat he didn't, was already figured out, and so on ... The pressure was obviously much greater not to fuck up a thing ... but we were all on our A-game, to say the least, and I'm completely stoked with the outcome.
VW: How much higher are the stakes for a performance you know will be recorded for posterity—was there a backup plan if things didn't go well?
RM: It was really important to me to make a great album, not just a great album that was recorded live. I wanted it to be up to par with the bar that was set on my last couple of albums as far as quality of production, musicianship, performance and songwriting.
I thought that the album would also have the potential to be critiqued easier since it was recorded in this fashion and I thought perchance the media may enjoy pickin' at that ... lucky for us so far, the reviews have been really great so that alleviates that worry. As for a backup plan, we played out the songs in a soundcheck earlier that afternoon and recorded them just in case we really needed to pull something from it. Other than that, it was very Yoda-like ... 'Do or do not, there is no try.' Or like the launch of Apollo 13, failure was not an option.
The plan was to record a great album that night. And so we did.
VW: If you were to trace the musical map that led you to Lucky Tonight, what would it look like?
RM: Like a board game of Chutes and Ladders. V vueweekly.com comments: powered by Disqus
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