Luther on drums, Joe Chiusano on bass Dan Eccles on lead guitar. As a recording engineer, you're so lucky to have a hotshot band like that. That's another Luther Russell production, and there was a preliminary session where the drummer got fired so Luther was playing drums. I remember watching Fernando making that record. You think all these things are random occurrences, but in the end, they've all been randomly predestined, right? So, years later, Pete needs somewhere to record, and he's, like, "Oh, hey, Larry." It's always really tiny, you know? We all keep bumping into each other. Related: "The Legend of Hazel: A story of bearded cupids, Christmas lights and Portland's favorite songwriter." I remember sitting around the living room listening to the first Hazel test pressing. Actually, when I first moved to town, my roommates were really good friends with Jody Bleyle. Elliott had produced Brigadier for Pete years before, and he'd been in a band called Thrillhammer that opened for my band in Chico one time. So nice to work with them, and we just had a blast. You've always got to appreciate guys like that.
John Moen was on drums Billy Kennedy, Laurelthirst regular, on guitar. Ben Shepherd from Soundgarden played bass. I think "Sweet On a Rose" is one of my favorite records-beautiful, warm, some great songs. But, you know, my rent's way more so we have to charge more for all that.
ELLIOTT SMITH EITHER OR RECORDING ISO
It's got really nice heating and cooling and really nice equipment and iso booths and special little rooms. When you're young and hungry and charging people really low rates, you make it work, and you get to work on a lot of really cool stuff because you are affordable. Everything was terrible, but, y'know, you make it work. The place was terrible acoustically-and all kinds of ways. I mean, $250 a month to split a recording space with someone? Although, then again, that was still more than I was paying for somewhere to live.Įlliott Smith (left) and Larry Crane at Jackpot in 1997. He totally knew what we were up to, no worries, and the guys next door were really supportive and let us make way too much noise and interrupt their voiceover sessions. We had this awesome landlord who owns Event Rental Communications and used to own Rose City Sound. So, I said, "If you want to come down and help me build the place up, bring your gear down, and we'll figure out a tiny little rate you can work out of here-a cover-the-bills kind of rate-because you'll be part of the infrastructure." We did that, found a place at 20th and Morrison, built the studio, and right away started recording. In this music business, you do not want partners. And, it seemed kind of silly for Elliott to have his own space since he'd be touring part of the year. The same kind of equipment, y'know? The basic gist.
Somebody said we had to talk since we were about to build the same basic studio.
I'd been friends with Joanna Bolme for a long time-those two were dating back then-and I'd recorded the "Pictures of Me" vocals on Either/Or. Willamette Week: How did the idea originally come about? He just kept going, "This is weird," and ended up using some older version, which was kinda disappointing. We couldn't get a good mix because I had the return feeding back into the console so it got all phase-y. We were trying to record, and I was doing something technically wrong that made it sound really bad. I think one of the first things we tried was "Division Day." That was going to be Elliott's Suicide Squeeze single, which is still floating around out there. "Bled White," "Waltz #2 (XO)" and "Waltz #1" were simply tracked as demos. Some basic tracks ended up being overdubbed on his next album, XO. Larry Crane: Right as we opened Jackpot, together, we began recording songs of Elliott's.