Compound Studio

The making of the Ryan Bingham’s Mescalito.

Read this excerpt from a recent interview with Ryan [http://www.lonestarmusic.com/ryan_bingham_07.asp

There are a lot of singers in Texas that like to play up the whole cowboy thing, but I've heard that you're actually pretty good on a bull.

I've ridden a few in my day, I guess.

That was part of your travels early in life too, right?

That's what I always wanted to do was be a cowboy. My uncle rode bulls and my grandfathers were all ranchers. I never thought I'd ever play music. It was never a plan or a goal. For me it was rodeoing. That lifestyle of being on the road and going to rodeos, sleeping in your truck and dusty rodeo arenas ñ when music came along and the lifestyle was so similar I thought, ìShit, I can do thisî. ìWhat do you mean drive all night to play a gig? I just drove all night to get my teeth knocked out by a bullî.

A lot of the new tracks on Mescalito were recorded in a big open space and it was all live. You realize a lot of musicians would think that's absolutely insane.

Yeah. [Laughs]

There had to be bleed on every track. Is that something you were going for?

Definitely. From the get-go Marc Ford, who produced it, is really into doing things the old school way. A lot of stuff I really like from the 60′s and 70′s was recorded that way. That sound and the warmth of those old records, I think that’s what fits what we’re doing more than anything else.

To me the spontaneity really comes through on those recordings.

It’s a lot more real and you can feel it. Instead of playing to a digital signal with a pair of headphones on when you can see everybody and feel everybody it’s more real.

The vocals were cut the same way I take it.

Played live and sang it live right there on the same take. The engineer in that studio, Anthony Arvizu, he and Marc worked really good at knowing what sounds they wanted to get and knowing how to mic things in certain ways. For example they had a grand piano and they opened it up and took an electric guitar amp, a Fender amp, and plugged my acoustic into it, turned it upside down and laid it on the grand piano’s strings. They had mics in corners of the room and placed pieces of wood to reflect the sound just right.

That’s a real lost art.

A lot of guys don’t know how to do it.

To book your next recording session at the Compound call 562-335-5623.