Jan. 11, 2012 - Issue #847: The great indoors
The end of a long road
The Crooked Brothers look back on the creation of Lawrence, Where's Your Knife?
» Winnipeg's the Crooked Brothers roll into Edmonton Thursday
Wunderbar, $5
Dusty, stomping, heartbreak folk, the Crooked Brothers' latest album Lawrence, Where's Your Knife? gets at the heart of the West. Multi-instrumentalist and album producer Darwin Baker—who sometimes goes by "Darwin Crooked"—answered some questions about the album's genesis.
VUE WEEKLY: How long did it take to make Lawrence, Where's Your Knife? from the initial songwriting through to the end of the recording?
DARWIN BAKER: The actual recording process took about a month, but it's hard to say how long the songwriting took. Several of the songs had long since been written and fleshed out on the stage or the street by the time we started recording, while "Bluebirds" was written in the studio and laid down the same day.
VW: When you were writing the songs, did you come at them in a particular way? Lyrics first? Music first?
DB: It really varies from song to song but a lot of them start with at least a lyrical idea. Then the music and words often develop together to follow the direction that idea wants to take.
VW: Did the songs come from one person fully formed, or were they sketches that were then filled out as a group?
DB: Generally one person brings the body of a song and the band works together to find the right arrangement, whether it's instrumentation or song structure. A lot of that ends up getting worked out live, as the song develops its own feel.
VW: What were the recording sessions like for this album? Is this the kind of thing you recorded live or did you piece it together one track at a time? Why?
DB: Recorded at a makeshift studio in a timber-framed cabin on Manitoba's Falcon Lake with rented gear, the album's mostly tracked. Trying to get the best possible sounds out of each instrument in that setup sometimes means there's not enough mics or space to go live. All the bass and drums were recorded together and "Winter's Come" has the three of us playing together in the same room.
VW: Were there any other songs written that were left off the album?
DB: There were a couple written and even recorded that didn't make it, either because the feel of the recording wasn't quite right or because we didn't feel they fit with the other songs in some way.
VW: How did you decide which songs to include on the album? Did you have an idea of what you wanted Lawrence, Where's Your Knife? to be when you started, or did the finished shape emerge as the writing and recording went along?
DB: We started with almost 20 songs at the preproduction stage that we had whittled down to the final 10 by the time we went to mix the record. The songs that made it were the ones we thought we'd captured the feel of—musically and sonically —and the ones we thought made the strongest album together with each other.
VW: You produced this album yourself, tell us about that process?
DB: Like the first record, we locked ourselves in a cabin during the onset of Manitoba's winter with a bunch of recording gear, as many instruments as we could find, lots of good food, and just enough whiskey, beer and wine to make it not feel like work.
VW: If you were to trace the musical map that led you to Lawrence, Where's Your Knife?, what would it look like?
DB: It would start in the heart of the city, where it's exciting and busy, blow right past the suburbs and box stores, work its way through some fertile farmland and end up in the woods, at the very end of a winding gravel road. vueweekly.com comments: powered by Disqus
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