On the extremely rare occasion that I was able to return a phone call quickly, I booked a vocal o-dub and mix session for G Love’s cover of the song, “Greatest Hits.” First to arrive was engineer and co producer, Chris DiBeneditto, better known as Chris D. Right off the bat, I was tripping on how much this guy resembled our late assistant engineer, Justin Lawrence. That took awhile to get used to.
Chris spent an hour or so getting a mix started. This was the eleventh-hour session. It had to be at mastering the next day which resulted in his mixing as he went. It was fun watching another outside engineer working in our room. I hadn’t had that since Sierra Sonics. You learn so much that way. It was really nice. From him, I learned that Apple M mutes an audio region in Pro Tools. I should have known that years ago, but didn’t. I use it all the time now.
G Love showed up with the bass player, Jim “Jimi Jazz” Prescott. First thing was to get G Love on line to keep him busy while Chris was getting the song together. The topic of legal brothels in Nevada came up and I told him what to search for in Google. As so many people do, they find legalized prostitution just unbelievable and terribly interesting. Also to kill time, G Love brought in a bitchin’ 1930’s Gibson acoustic guitar he was tinkering with that sounded amazing. For his polariod, he posed with it in front of our vintage microphones. Sadly, we didn’t get to record the guitar.
When Chris was ready, he had G Love jump in and start singing. Immediately, I was amazed that G. Love was cutting vocals and harmonica at the same time!!!! G Love was quick and getting good stuff right off the bat. But he and Chris just worked it over and over again for hours.
When they finished vocals, Chris pieced together the final mix while experimenting with muting stuff all the way to the very end. That was surprising to me. They spent so long printing the mix and the stems that they missed the sound check for their gig that night at the Reno Hilton. Whoops!
I was very much an assistant engineer on this one. I sat and watched and took pictures. I really enjoyed it and was really impressed with Chris D. most of all. The album came out within weeks. I didn’t know about it until the following October!
The only rub with the gig was that we didn’t get copies of the CD. I had to buy them and we didn’t get credit. But they didn’t give credit to their own studio where they started the songs, either. Only Production credits. Wankers. But Chris did get my friend backstage for the show that night, so I guess it wasn’t all bad.