Always more music! “B3 does B3″ is a project that we’ve been working on since the start of 2012.  The participating artists chose some of their favorite fellow B3nsonite’s tunes and are putting their own spin on them.

Secret Release does The Parlor
& for next week, Matthew Carefully!

Breaking News!!!
I missed my deadline for this post yesterday! Sorry!

The Parlor has just been named “Best Band” by Metroland!!
“…their new record, “Our Day In the Sun” ranks among the best to come out of this region probably ever.”

Excerpt from The Parlor’s backstory of the song “O Albany, We Hope”:
“One September evening in 2006 we were on our way to the Madison Theatre to see a film about a farmer. As it turns out the film it was only showing one night and we had missed it… A few short hours later we watched as the fellas and lady of Sgt. Dunbar and the Hobo Banned marched in the door. Looking like lumberjacks who moonlighted as art students, we were drawn to them and decided to stay.”

And B3nson as we know it began….

A few fun-filled years later B3nson had an “intern”, his name was Mike Campana. His band, Secret Release, filled with some swell fellas is now a B3 staple, and here they are full of hope and heart for Albany:

A few questions for Mike C:

WHO is on the recording?: Just me.

WHERE was the recording done?: Entirely in my living room and bedroom at 52 North Allen Street.

HOW did you make the recording?: This is a strange question, because I feel like my response may change the way a person hears the song. If I say I spent $20,000 getting Timbaland to produce it, people might hear it differently than if I said that I used GarageBand for the whole thing. In the end it’s just sound. That being said, it’s closer to the GarageBand/laptop side of things, and to properly answer the question those are the things that I have to delve into. I used a program called Peak to edit some of the audio, and used Audacity to record the audio initially. Most of the organization of the piece was done in GarageBand. I also used GarageBand for some of the loops.

Materials Used: My laptop, a few different programs, and this shitty old microphone that Dan Maddalone (from Barons in the Attic) gave me a couple years ago.

Why did you pick this song and artist to cover?: I’ve wanted to do a version of “Oh Albany We Hope” for ages now, but never really had the time to sit and think about what I wanted to do with it. When the B3nson does B3nson project got off the ground, I felt like I had the medium to do something interesting with the song. It’s just a beautiful piece of songwriting and one of my favorite songs of all-time.

WHAT was the hardest and/or most fun part or re-arranging and recording this song?: Just thinking about what I wanted to do with it. I removed a lot of the chord changes that are in the original, and stripped down some the harmonic qualities and replaced them with different timbres to add a more electronic vibe. Editing the recording to make sure that there wasn’t too much going on and that everything sounded smooth was also a process.

AND FOR NEXT WEEK!!!

Matthew Carefully needs no introduction. His song “Mysteries” might though since there is no studio recording of it, only this live version recorded on a rooftop in 2009:

Matthew’s introduction:

“Mysteries” was written in a batch of maybe five songs in the summer of 2009. I had challenged myself to play six new songs for this “Upbeat on the Roof” concert series at the Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore. I didn’t quite reach my goal, but I did get this one out of it. It features a sequenced keyboard part and a 3-bar cyclical drum loop. This song is probably the most blatant example of my fascination with the contrast between love and trouble and how they interact when sung about at the same time. “Mysteries” remains unrecorded, studio-style and it is a mystery as to when it will be recorded.

Previously:
UtC with Aaron Smith (Scientific Maps)
UtC with Matthew Carefully
UtC with Nursing Home Discoveries
UtC with Barons In the Attic
UtC with Littlefoot