Survive This Behind The Scenes Look At The Making Of

art by John Brooks / layout design by Steven Fiore

Survive With Me is the NINTH full length release of my career and in some ways I feel like I’m just now starting to figure some of it out. This is the first batch of songs I’ve actually beta-tested on tour before recording them. It was also the record where I selfishly made several creative decisions based around which friends I wanted to involve, often using guilt as a means of coercion, which probably isn’t how you’re supposed to do it but guess what, it’s my ninth record, I’m da captain now.

Not pictured: Andy Dixon, sweating behind the monitor trying to record the quietest drummer to ever drum.

I started by recruiting Stephen Johnson, a longtime friend and creative partner and the most peculiar drummer I’ve ever played with. Hard to describe except that he drums like a painter. I came to Johns Island with demos in hand and Stephen played to them beautifully while Andy Dixon engineered in Shovels & Rope’s incredible lil backyard barn studio. That became the crooked backbone upon which we hung everything else.

You can’t see them but there are microphones under all that comforter.

Most of the record was recorded at home, on a piano I didn’t even have a year ago. My buddy Todd needed someone to piano-sit this gorgeous little guy and I had just the spot.

Don’t you dare judge me on mic placement, I’m a self-taught semi-professional

One of the most inspiring people I’ve met since relocating inland is Hannah Seng, who sang and played banjo and violin like a boss. Certified badass by The Badass Institute in multiple pursuits.

Ron Wiltrout: incessantly non-plussed.

Did a remote session w Ron Wiltrout at Fairweather Studios to get that sweet sweet marimba down. Nobody more fun to make noise with.

Lots of this over the years.

Had to get my special musical soulmate on it. Kaler plays some bass and additional drums. This is what it looks like when you’re sending files back and forth and collaborating remotely, but at this point he and I only have to say like 20% of it out loud because we’re all up in each others’ heads. Ah, love.

The man. The legend. Lambchops for days.

Obviously I’m not stupid, I’m not going to make a record and leave off Jonny Gray.

There were more, too: John-Flor Sisante, my roommate from Berklee and the sweetest man alive (since Mr. Rogers died), played all the sax parts. Ward Williams played some cello. Joel Hamilton played guitar. It took a damn village to make these songs people.

Besides the music part, there’s a person I’ve always wanted to collaborate with on a project: poet and artist John Brooks. We went to C of C together and like many of the folks in this post he’s one of those people who leaves a cloud of inspiration behind him everywhere he goes. I asked him to paint something that would spread across the front and back of the vinyl cover. I was envisioning an image that somehow evoked the ‘come away with me’, crooners-looking-at-camera album covers of the 50s/60s. I told him that and the title and here’s what he made:

I mean look at this shit. Just look at it. So cool.

I’ll probably do a separate post about everything going on here but he brilliantly recognized that the 2020 version of that kind of image with that album title should be harrowing and natural, with eyes that are less ‘come hither’ and more ‘come with me if you want to live’. It stunned me, and at first I was scared/self-conscious, but the more I lived with it the more I loved it. He dragged the whole project into fresh sunlight and there was no going back.

Having done everything I could, I sent all my files to my longtime buddy Villain Lighting in LA, he mixed the shit out of it, and David Little mastered it. Steven Fiore designed the layout. The ghosts of eight albums past blessed it in a mildly-satanic ritual in the woods behind my house and BOOM! A new record was born unto the world. That’s all it took.