OOPS! I made a record ...

In February of 2001, I found a Trident Series 80 console on the east coast that I thought was do-able for my studio. I bought the console and had the modules shipped to my pal Dave Latto, chief tech at Quad Studios here in Nashville. Dave was gonna do a complete re-cap and dip the modules, which had been sitting unused in storage (we think) for about 10 years, in an ultrasonic solution. The frame was supposed to follow, but, as in most cases where a large item is shipped, there were delays. That delay put my studio back online 5 weeks late. And there I sat. Studio unplugged, my Soundcraft Ghost long gone to a guy in Washington state, my gear in little piles all around the control room with NOTHING to do!

Rather than get hooked on prescription painkillers (I'd had a ton of dental work done) or start drinking whilst I twiddled my thumbs, I pulled out an acoustic guitar. In the course of 5 days I had 17 or so really good songs. Songs in a rootsy vein, the likes of which I had really never written before. At least not since my folkie days in the early '70s. I write music for a living, with my main thrust being corporate event music for Wal-Mart and Sam's Club worldwide, but I had long since given up on the idea of getting a deal and making a record and rock stardom. I had not sat down and written for the sake of art very much in recent years. My wife Margaret suggested that since I had this here fancy studio I should make a record. I thought that would be a fun little summer project, so with the help of session guitar ace Kenny Vaughan, we assembled a band for the tracking sessions.

I was lucky enough to get Kenny on guitar, Paul Griffith on drums, Dave Jaques on bass and Steve Conn on keyboards. We tracked for three days at my studio, and had nine killer rythmn tracks with some overdubs when it was all said and done (rather than get into what gear we used, go to www.guidotoons.com.) I was extremly pleased with all of them, and we were off and running! I sat down and wrote another batch of six songs and just had to get the gang back in the studio! This time we used Joey Spampinato from NRBQ on bass, because Dave was on the road with John Prine, and both Jerry Dale McFadden from the Mavericks and my secret weapon, Jeff Armstrong on keys. The dual keyboard attack got my blood all worked up, and I had both guys go in and overdub their parts as soon as the basics were cut. We kept a LOT of one-pass first takes, including overdubs, and all that was left was (ugh!) my vocals and overdubs. Or so I thought.

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Kenny had to come back for some clean up parts and a few stunt guitar parts and solos. While we were listening to "Kickin' My Heart Around" for anything we needed to clean up, I mentioned that in a perfect world, Bobby Keys would play a sax solo on this track. Kenny told me Bobby lives in Nashville, so I just HAD to run him down! I started with the obvious, the phone book.

I found a Bobby Keys and called. The man informed me he wasn't that Bobby Keys, but he could give me his number. I thanked him and hung up to call the real Mr. Keys. Bobby answered and said he'd love to do it! He came by and blew a KILLER sax solo and outro fills, and we had a ball. He's a great guy and simply the classic rock tenor sound. Bobby played the sax he used for the solo from "Brown Sugar," and later, using the same bari sax he used on Exile On Main Street, he added a wall o' saxes to the track and a couple of honks on two others. I asked Bobby at the later session why he came over and played for what, I promise you, was a way cheaper rate than, say, The Stones or Sheryl Crow would pay for his services. He told me he thought I was a good guy, the songs were rockin', he was in and out pretty quick, and he got treated like a king. Then I asked him why he'd come over the first time. Bobby told me nobody had ever really called him cold, to do a session that cheap, with an artist nobody had heard of and he just "had to meet me." That – and the studio's near a golf course if he needed to bail out. Bobby listened to the rest of the tracks over a couple of Heinekens and dug 'em all, calling the record "adult music." He said to make sure he gets a couple of copies. Not a problem, Bobby. And give a couple to your buddies Mick and Keith, would ya?

At this point, I was tooling along quite nicely, when I got the bug to run down a goofy old Lowrey Festival organ. The kind Garth Hudson used on the early Dylan and The Band and Hawks stuff. I found one via the internet in, of all the places on earth, upstate New York (coincidence?). After getting that big sucker here (thanks, Biggs) and having a few repair issues dealt with, I had Jeff and Jerry Dale come in and mess with it. We got some pretty groovy sounds out of it and were still moving forward.

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I thought I was nearing completion when I found a guy, also on the internet, who put me in touch with ... gulp ... GARTH HUDSON! One of my favorite keyboardists of all time and a Rock & Roll Hall Of Famer! Garth was more than happy to do some overdubs and somewhat excited (if you could EVER describe Garth as excited) about the old Lowrey. He came over and made such glorius noises on that puppy it literally made me weep. He also made my engineer, Chriss Biggs, weep over his style of working.

In a nutshell, I will attempt to describe the Garth Hudson method of working. Lemme get a deep breath ...

What he did for my song, "A Place Where I'll Be Free," was the most surrealistic experience I have ever had in a recording studio. Garth spent quite a while listening to the track and making a very precise chart with notation before he went down to fire up the Lowrey. He was very pleased the thing worked fully, and we got started. My good friend Brent Hoad, another Garth freak, flew down from Kansas City to be a fly on the wall during the session. Garth did his first pass and we all just sat with our jaws on the ground! What a glorius noise! Half of his first pass was brilliant, but the other half wasn't quite there. Garth came up to the control room and for the next hour, to the amazement of all, pulled out (erased! from 2" tape! that's the great big tape, for you ProToolers) a note or two here, three bars there, a phrase here. He pulled out three notes of the piano track Steve Conn recorded (Garth evidently thought those three notes were not making it) and then wanted to do another pass. We asked if wanted to hear the first pass while he was making a second pass, and he said no. He then proceeded – again – to play the whole track. Again, one half was God-like, and one half was from Mars. He came to the control room again, pulled out three notes here, a measure there – and wanted to make one more pass. By now we were all getting nervous,thinking that perhaps Mr. Hudson, 64 years young, might have lost some of his famous luster. Garth asked to do this pass in mono, summing all three Leslie mics to one track, with about 500 milliseconds of echo with repeats. Again, he didn't want to hear either of his other previous passes. All of us sat while he recorded pass three. This was mostly from Mars. Needless to say I was really worried now.

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Garth came in and repeated his process; erasing a note here, a phrase there – and the most peculiar thing happened. Garth had us put all three of his passes, the echo, and Jerry Dale's comp organ (which he refused to lose; we only cut it knowing Garth would eventually record on this toon) all at the same fader level and listen to the track. We did this and, well ... I cried. It was the most awesome thing I had ever heard. This organ part sounded like a movie score! Every part wove in and out, without ever doing the same thing twice. What do I know about anything anyway – Garth is THE MAN! We took a break and came back to do another song, but I think Garth had spent so much of his attention on the last track, I just didn't think we were getting anywhere with the song "Real Life."

We hung a bit, and Garth honored me with what I'm told is his highest compliment: An improvised piano piece! He sat at my Yamaha grand and played for about six minutes, calling the piece "Airplane Landing In Cricket!" If you happen to buy this record, you'll find it as a bonus track, along with the organ parts from "A Place Where I'll Be Free," hidden at the end of the disc.

Having a cat like Garth, alongside with all the other fabulous players involved so far, was truly a dream come true. Garth was involved in a project which I had fantasized would be loosely based around the brown The Band album. We were trying to make each song its own little piece of music as opposed to just having twelve songs in a similar style.

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The brown Band LP vibe running through this project was also not over ...

Via the internet, I got ahold of Butch Dener, road manager for Levon Helm. Butch put me in touch with Levon. I had already cut all the songs I had written for this but considered re-cutting a few of them with Levon. But Paul had ruled on them, and after talking with Levon and seeing that he truly wanted to be involved, I sat down and wrote two new ones in styles I thought Levon could dig. Originally, we were gonna cut those two in a day, and he'd be gone. Levon stayed for a week, and we cut six! I wrote a couple more while he was here, one with him (it will be on another disc later this year), and we cut those the next day! For Levon's first tracking day, Dave Jaques was again not available due to a gig with Prine, so I asked Kenny to think of someone. I jokingly suggested that Kenny try and get Garry Tallent, also a Nashville resident, to play bass for free. Garry called and asked if Levon was really gonna be there – and were we serving lunch? He came over, and we got three tunes with this dream rythmn section.

I could hardly believe my eyes when I looked up. The drummer, Levon Effin' Helm, was rocking with me – starin' me down with his game face! I got all flustered and decided to groove with the bass player. I turned to my right and there was Garry Effin' Tallent! OHMYGAWD! I freaked and looked at Kenny who had the same look on his face. Jeff, Kenny, and I were just in heaven. The vibe and feel these guys bring to the table is incredible, and playbacks were almost an emotional experience for yours truly and a couple others (you know who you are!). I'm a huge rock music fan as well as a musician, and I just could not believe this was happening! The man who played and sang all that timeless stuff with The Band and one of the baddest bassists to ever roam the planet were playing with little ol' me? I can die now.

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The rest of last summer I only worked on this off and on. I had other commitments and a couple of Wal-Mart projects and shows to do ,and just didn't have the time. Part of me thought this was a really groovy record, and another part of me can't stand the sound of my own voice. I never liked singing and only ever really started singing out of neccessity.

I started putting rough mixes in some sort of sequence, listening to see if I really had a record or if I was just another mid-forties musician wasting his time and money. I decided to call my friend, guitarist and producer-deluxe Richard Bennett, and get his opinion on whether or not I should finish this thing. He liked the roughs alot and said I should definitely finish. Then the whole world changed.

Now, we all have our own thoughts and opinions regarding the 9/11 tragedies, and I don't know any type of writer who wasn't moved to write something about it. I wrote three songs expressing my feelings about the whole nightmare. I regrouped with Kenny, Paul, Dave, and Jeff (Jerry Dale was on the road with somebody) to track all three songs as I felt the new songs fit this "record" I was, by now, apparently doing. My thinking was that if I were actually to put a product out, I'd have more choices, and, shoot – these songs were as good as the other batches. We cut all three in my control room for a dead drum sound and I proceeded to the o/d stage. I thought I would see if Richard was interested in playing guitar on anything, and he came over and did some awesome layered guitar work on three songs.

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I'd heard that woodwind legend Jim Horn was also living in Nashville. I called Jim and told him what I had going on. He came by and played ... gulp ... the same alto flute he played on the solo from "California Dreamin!" That, and some bass flute fills, and we had finished "Apocalypso." He came back and wrote/played a horn chart in the classic Memphis style for the song "Set Me Free." Jim played both baritone and tenor, with brass dude Steve Patrick covering trumpet and trombone. Levon and Garry had already played on this track, and along with Richard Bennett doing a Jimmy Reed-ish guitar, I had a truly star-studded lineup.

I had what I thought was a really great bunch of tracks and started the task of finishing them up for mixing. While waiting for a .pdf manual to download off of the Internet, I started strumming that acoustic again ...

I could not believe it, but another song was squeezing its way out of me! Please! I did not need another whole song to track, overdub, and mix at this late stage, but "Blue" may be the best song I have ever written. I couldn't type the words and changes out fast enough. I once again assembled Paul, Dave, and Kenny, and we tracked it. I did a bunch of keyboards on this and a psychedelic baritone guitar against another cool track from the boys. I did a faux string part that actually was pretty groovy, and set about the task of finishing the song. I heard a chromatic harmonica solo on this when I wrote it, and everybody said to get Jim Hoke. Jim came out and nailed it on the first pass. We did two more, but you know how that story goes. Jim also did bass harmonica on two other tunes, and I was almost ready to mix!

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I was hoping to put strings on three songs and figured I would eventually be calling on the services of Carl Goredesky and his Nashville String Machine. I then started looking for a string arranger. Having balls of steel in cold-calling famous players, I looked up Jimmie Haskell on, yep ... that's right ...the web. Jimmie is probably best known for his string arrangements on "Ode To Billie Joe" and "Bridge Over Troubled Water," as well as horn and string arrangemants for Steely Dan and a gazillion others. Jimmie also was intrigued by this nobody contacting him blindly and had me send him a disc. I later heard that he called Jim Horn or Bobby Keys to see if I was a nutcase or not. Jimmie agreed to write arrangements for two songs and transcribe my little arrangement on "Blue." He also agreed to fly to Nashville from L.A. to conduct. I was thrilled!

I went looking for an affordable, well equipped mix room here in Nashville. I needed automation and decent compressors, delays and a plate reverb (because I hate digital reverb), as well as a studio equipped to handle the section Jimmie and I wanted. I looked into Omni because they had a groovy API Legacy with Neve Flying Faders and a good assortment of outboard gear. Coupled with the fact that I had tracked to 2" and dumped it into my iZ Radar 24 for overdubs – and also that we'd be needing another Radar to handle the string overdubs – and that Steve Tveit made me a great deal (he's a great guy!), I chose Omni. What I got on top of all that was the world's greatest assistant engineer, Joey Turner, a wonderful cat who knew the room and the gear inside out. I had my buddy Steve Marcantonio come in to engineer the strings at Omni, and Jimmie Haskell flew into town. He had mentioned wanting to hook up with his old friend, famed engineer Bill Halverson (CSNY/Cream/Clapton) the night before the session for dinner if it "wasn't too much trouble" for me. I told him ... duh ... jeez ... NO PROBLEM! I also called Jim Horn and, along with my wife and Steve Marcantonio, we had an incredible amount of music history sitting across the table. Needless to say, I didn't eat. Jimmie stayed with my wife and I. We cut the strings the next day at Omni. Bill Halverson had invited himself over the night before and came by. He told me a few great Brian Wilson stories as they were getting ready to cut the strings. We finished the strings, and it was time to mix.

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Wishing I had a budget (a BUDGET?) left, I decided to mix myself. Urgh. I hate to mix. I love tracking, getting sounds, working out arrangements. But mixing makes me nuts. Mixing myself is even worse. A week into mixing, I called Bill Halverson and bribed him with lunch into telling me how he got the acoustic guitar sound on CSN&Y's Carry On and what he thought of my mixes. I figured I'd feel better if a lengendary engineer/producer told me everything was groovy. It seemed to be. I asked him how he kept his hearing up after all these years and he told me "not to listen until you need to listen." If you think about it, you'll either get what he's saying or go deaf. Back to our story.

I mixed simultaneously to 1/2" analog and a Masterlink @ 24/96. We obviously picked the 1/2". Again, I couldn't have done this without Joey Turner. I also need to mention my main assistant throughout the project, Chris Biggs, who was a big help. After mastering the mixeswith Hank Williams at Mastermix here in Nashville, all that was left was the artwork. My friend Tim Toonen gathered up all the pictures taken at the various sessions and, along with my lame ideas and a ton of his great work, came up with an awesome package that fits this most serendipitous project. WE'RE DONE!!!

OK. Here's where it gets tricky.

For many years, I've been known as "Guido" (among other things). It's a long story. My real name is Joe Welsh. Although we're not too certain that that's really my name either, as we found out a year or so before my father died. Besides, Joe Welsh resembles Joe Walsh. A difference of only one letter. And I've heard about it my entire career. And (forgive me, Joe) I didn't want even a teensy bit of "Joe WALSH?" If ya know what I mean.

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Hence the name Guido. I also happened to be cursed (sorry, Elton – or, rather, thanks for nothing!) with an uncanny resemblence to Elton John. Not exactly the cat I'd most like to resemble or a sex symbol for the masses. Well, not the masses I'm interested in ...

Anyway. I could not bear to put this out under any of the monickers I've used to date, so I decided to release this as a "band" record. We're calling the "band" Lucky Man Clark. The record is called Seaworthy. The "band" members are Kenny, Dave, Paul, Jerry Dale, Jeff and yours truly. What a hoot and what the hell! It beats drywall.

I never started out to make a record, but ultimately that's what happened. I am very proud of the work, and I'm honored to have had so many rock legends involved. I'm honored to have had the great fortune to work with the fellas that became Lucky Man Clark. My goal has been achieved. I finished it, and I'm releasing it! For a good number of reasons, this type of project may never happen again. This thing was kind of a "Guido's Rock & Roll Fantasy Camp." But having these fantastic musicians consider me a peer ... man, I don't care if FIVE people buy this frickin' disc! I already got mine.

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