The instruments list for “Divided We Fall” is fairly extensive and crosses from traditional country music to modern rock. The overall feel of the album was meant to be a blending of traditional and modern sounds, so that is why I tried to pick a blend of instruments and gear that would give the vibe of both worlds. I think, overall, I am satisfied with the results of this blend. The next album will probably be a little less of a blend, but “Divided We Fall” came out just fine.
I’m going to start with the drums… mainly because I feel the drums have the biggest impact on the overall feel of an album. I’ve worked with multiple projects before where the songwriting, guitars & vocals, and gear was all the same between album and we only changed the drum set… wow what a difference. For this album I went with a real hodgepodge of drum for the set. The kick was a Rogers, the snare was a Ludwig maple shell, the toms were Slingerland, and the cymbals were from Sabian. I had originally started off with a Gretsch kit… but that just didn’t cut it as I added more of the guitar tracks.
Now on to guitars… get ready! Each track on the album has at least 10 guitar/bass tracks on it, of some sorts. So as you can imagine, I’m a big fan of doubling up on parts and panning into fun spaces:) The bass I used was my ‘04 Fender Jazz Deluxe which sounded amazing in my Ampeg SVT-4 Pro. That is really what all the songs sit on. From there I tracked a stereo pair of Gibson J-200s and a stereo pair from my 1959 Fender Stratocaster going into my Mesa/Boogie Mark III. I also had single tracked guitars with my; 1966 Rickenbacker 370-12, 1935 Dobro Model 32, 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard, and 1960 Fender Telecaster Custom. They say variety is the spice of life… right… This mostly came about because each individual song seem to need a little something special, and that lead into just adding more tracks to all the songs. This is not really a great way to make your instrument selection… but it sure lead to a very full sounding album.
The vocal takes on this album were fairly straight forward. I am not the most amazing singer… so I decided to keep things real simple. I have one lead vocal and 2 backup vocals for all the songs. These were simply recorded with my Shure SM7 going into my SSL preamps and then processed with some of my Universal Audio gear and a LA-2A. This gave me a little of a raw sound and the vintage edge for the vibe.