A Conversation with Peter Mulvey (continued)

PM: I like that video in your links for the Porter Case. That was an unusual endorsement.

PeterM: Oh, my God, yeah.

PM: [laughs]

PeterM: I cannot more highly endorse the Porter Case.

PM: Apparently not. I mean, you had a link with a video on the site. I love that!

PeterM: Yeah. It saved my ass. I mean, you see what it is, it folds into a little hand truck.

PM: It's incredible.

PeterM: Like very few objects, I would have to say I love that. Another example of an object like that would be the Boss guitar tuner. Just when somebody--this is the simplest thing in the world, and I'm not an industrialist, I'm not a giant fan of capitalism. But I am a huge fan of when somebody says, "Now, what are the needs of the given human being in this situation, and how can I meet them," and then builds something better.

PM: Right.

PeterM: I love that.

PM: Now, do you mean the TU 2 or do you mean the tuner pedal with all the circus lights?

PeterM: The tuner pedal with all the circus lights.

PM: Right, because when your eyesight starts fail, those lights save the day.

PeterM: Ah, yeah. They're nice and bright. They tell you exactly whether it's in tune or not. And this is beautiful, it's got a built-in mute switch.

PM: Right, totally important.

PeterM: The smartest thing. When somebody does that, it's always a good thing.

PM: So having purchased The Knuckleball Suite on iTunes, I lack credits. Can we go through some of who appears on the disc.

PeterM: You got it. I can give you the whole thing.

PM: Great.

PeterM: The core band--and we played live on every tune, so it's just us--

PM: Wow.

PeterM: --is myself on acoustic guitar and vocals; David Goodrich plays guitars and lap steel. No, not even lap. I think it was just guitars and live ambience, and I think banjo. I think he might have played banjo on one tune.

PM: Yeah, there was a banjo on one cut, yeah.

PeterM: And then Mike Piehl plays drums.

PM: And who plays bass?

PeterM: Lou Ulrich.

PM: And are these guys, aside from Goody and yourself, to whatever extent you may consider yourselves jazzers, are the session guys jazzers?

PeterM: Oh, God, yeah, yeah. I mean, all of them are marvelously educated musicians. And they play jazz and they play rock 'n' roll, they play all kinds of--they're very, very capable dudes.

PM: Right.

PeterM: And then Kris Delmhorst sings and plays a little bit of fiddle on the record.

PM: Oh, yeah, I always forget she plays fiddle.

PeterM: Yep. And Sean Staples sings and plays a little bit of banjo. A guy named Jazer Giles plays the accordion and the piano, both of which were firsts for me. I've never had accordion or piano on my records.

PM: Amazing. Never had piano on a record?

PeterM: I've never had piano on a record. This was an absolute first.

PM: Holy jeez. So let's talk about the atmosphere and the modus operandi of the actual recording session.

PeterM: The best thing in the world. We did it in like two days. We just went in, we sat down. The guys had heard the tunes, but we had not actually worked out versions of the tunes.

PM: "Here’s a CD of what we're going to take, don't chart 'em."

PeterM: Yeah, exactly.

PM: Yeah.

PeterM: And so we sat down, and then basically we would say, "Well, who wants to do what and how should this sound?" And we'd talk about it a little bit. It almost always just absolutely worked, so what we would do is go "Let's figure out how to end it, and then let's record a few," and then we'd take the first or second take. Once in a while there'd be a--like a couple of the tunes were a little difficult. But we were so done by the beginning of the third day that we could recut a few things that we thought we could do stronger, and we did. I mean, it's really the way to make a record. And then we brought the other people in on an odd day to do the overdubs of little piano parts and little fiddle parts and all that. But essentially, we had cut the record within about two days.

PM: And you cut it to Protools or--

PeterM: I don't even know.

PM: Beautiful, "I don't even know."

PeterM: I know it was cut to memory, but I don't know what system. Goody can tell you. That's the beauty of it, I mean he really--

PM: That's his thing.

PeterM: Yeah, and he understands that his job is to spare me even wondering about my any of that shit.

PM: I got to meet this guy.

PeterM: Yeah. He's great.

PM: Yeah. In fact, we got to get on this new record and cover that.

PeterM: Yeah. Go to his web page, and there's contact information there.     continue

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