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A Conversation with Kathy Mattea (continued)
PM: I love the three classics you've covered on this record, "Gimme Shelter," "Down On The Corner," and "Wade in the Water." Really cool.
KM: Thank you.
PM: How did they find their way into the recording?
KM: "Gimme Shelter" was the jumping off point for this record. We started messing with that one in the time period building up to the war in Iraq. We were really worried, like the rest of the world, and spent a lot of time on the bus talking about it. And you know, "Gimme Shelter" is just so relevant right now. It could have been written today. And I was agreeing, "Yeah, we should mess with that." And one day I came to sound check, and the guys had already arranged it. Bill Cooley met me at the stage door and he said, "Here are the lyrics to "Gimme Shelter."
PM: [laughs]
KM: "Forty Licks is on the bus in the CD player. I'll see you in 30 minutes."
PM: Unreal.
KM: And I just went out there and refreshed my memory. And when I walked in he had that arrangement. It sounded just like that in about 15 minutes. It brought the house down that night, because it articulated so much of what people were feeling.
And I couldn't have done the classic approach to "Gimme Shelter," but I have a certain sense of ownership because of the way we approached it. And we discovered that if we keep it acoustic, it becomes more about intensity than power or volume.
PM: Acoustic it's much more tribal.
KM: Yeah. And that was sort of a light bulb for all of us. That was when I started thinking I need to try to put that awareness in my recording life. Just turn the process around, and begin it organically with the band, and that was really what happened on this record. Then the other two classic songs were just part of that process. continue
