A CONVERSATION WITH DREW EMMITT (continued)
DE: And to get him and Peter together, that was a gas. They were in Old & In The Way together, and were also Bluegrass Boys together [with Bill Monroe].
PM: Oh, I didn't know they played with him at the same time. So, "Rainmaker" is a song that Peter wrote with Nashville's Gary Nicholson, right?
DE: Yes. Peter was there to track "Memories of Mother and Dad." He happened to bump into Gary in the hallway of the studio we were working in. He came running back in and said, "Hey, you wanna record 'Rainmaker'?" And I said, "Sure."
PM: It's amazing how tunes get cut, sometimes so serendipitously.
DE: Yeah, and that's the only recorded version of that song with a band. Peter recorded it solo on Dust Bowl Children. He suggested we do it kind of honky tonk, and we had a great time with it. Ronnie McCoury's playing mandola.
PM: It's not so easy for me to pick out the mandola, because of the register, maybe.
DE: Yeah, it can be tough. It's an underlying thing that adds a lot.
PM: There's so much going on these days with the mandolin family of instruments, it seems. The octave mandolins and the mandolas, the new designs. Like Tim O'Brien, I see you're playing the Nugget mandolins of Mike Kemnitzer.
DE: Because of Tim. He was my first teacher.
PM: Really?
DE: Way back in 1980, in Boulder. I was a huge Hot Rize fan. One day at a show at the band shell, I approached him and asked if he gave any lessons. At that time, he still did. So I took three or four lessons at his house.
PM: How about a few words on Peter Rowan?
DE: Peter's voice is the closest thing to Bill Monroe's that I can think of, with his own modern twist. That's why I really wanted him on that song I mentioned. Peter came out for the week that we did some benefit shows for our banjo player Mark. We were just starting to talk about the record then, so I figured I'd ask him if he might be available. He said he'd probably be in Nashville mixing his own record at the time, so it could probably work out. We've known him about five years, from Telluride, mostly. He came out and did our Millennium New Year's at the Fillmore in Denver. We also had Sam Bush and John Cowan on that show. It was really great. We did Sam tunes, John tunes, Newgrass tunes, the whole deal. Peter and I did a duo set as well. It was really something.
Right after my son was born, about three years ago, Peter was at The Rocky Grass Festival, and I invited him up to our house in the mountains, and gave him our address. The Saturday of Rocky Grass we were sitting in the living room, it was pouring down rain. Who shows up in the driveway but Peter Rowan and his family. We had our newborn son there, and Peter and I sat in the living room and picked tunes while the storm raged outside. He played this tune that he wrote for Charles Sawtelle [the late guitar genius of Hot Rize]. As he was singing it, this huge lightning bolt lit up the sky and Peter said, "Hi, Charles." It was very powerful. Then we sang an old song of his called "Waiting for Elijah," which is my son's name.
We've shared some times. He's played with Leftover Salmon on the Telluride stage, too. There's this great picture inside our Live at Telluride CD where we're all kind of dancing in this chorus line with Peter. It's pretty funny. He's a real shaman.
PM: New subject. What do you use to get that steel drum sound with the mandolin?
DE: That is the Digitech Whammy Pedal. It does all kinds of cool things. It does different intervals, and the way I get the steel drum sound is the high octave interval. You can also set the whammy effect to go from way low to way high. It also has a chorus effect.
PM: How about [engineer] Dave Sinko? On top of being a great guy in the studio, then he contributes all those good photographs, the player shots as well as the skyscape on the inside of the CD.
DE: Dave is so great to work with, and is such a great personality. He's done Sam Bush albums, and Friday Night in America with Newgrass Revival. He did Edgar Meyer, too. When Bela and Edgar go on the road, they take him with them to do the front of house sound. He's definitely Sam's favorite. He and Sam both beat testicular cancer as well, that's another special bond between them. Dave just has such a keen sensibility for this music, how it should be mic'ed and recorded, and mixed. He really understands how to get the most out of the instruments involved.
PM: Did you pay much attention to the mics he was using?
DE: I believe he used a Neumann on the mandolin and a Rohrer on the vocals. He'd just gotten the Rohrer, it was something very special. He used Sennheisers and Shure '57s on the drums. continue
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