OUT HERE ON THE EDGE OF THE DESERT--

The whole enchilada will come down to whether or not the printer has a good day.

The next I heard from Cam was by email. Then things really began to heat up. He was in Nashville tracking Tammy Rogers and Michael Woody on fiddle and mandolin. He sent me the latest musical parts at the end of each day in email mp3s. The novel routine saved me from having to run up motel, rent car, and restaurant bills hanging out at an expensive studio in somebody else's town waiting for the keeper cuts to happen. I'm a writer and a player so when I say "expensive" I mean if it cost anything at all. Keeping this album of songs together for over 30 years has been price enough.


Keeping the pricey repertoire together.

For six months I heard from him several times a day as he progressed through the songs. After only a short while we fell into musical lockstep. The back and forth banter about each tune created a project momentum as each cut successfully rolled by. Our conversation was remarkable for how similarly we judged instruments and arrangements. The distance between us dissolved. Only a helluva good fellow with a great sense of humor could have worked a thousand miles away from the author with such effectiveness, and dispatch. And after we got warmed up we went through the music like a scythe. I'd wake up many mornings to find he had sent the last night's romp through my repertoire.

His emails read, "Call me up and lemme know what you think." And he signed them, "El Mixador." I never was disappointed to hear how he solved the accompaniment to me and my PAWLESS.


From the Tom Bean, TX concert footage photos by David Byboth that are featured on RECADO.

In doing albums it's as important to know what you don't want as what you do. He recorded himself and other musicians on several instruments, in several locations, then he would send me those mp3 files. It either worked, or it disappeared. No master, no slave, no leader, no follower. Just two musically dead-eyed hombres chasing the same star.

Back in the ranch land in the Rockies, I would hear his latest arrangements on my computer. And the order that Cam brought to the songs were now an over-arching theme to the cuts themselves. They were golden together every time I played them because of how he had arranged them to one another. Collectively they were now recognizably RECADO. My message.


Live from the stage of The REALDEAL. Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Being away from the confusion of trying to get takes and receiving mp3s instead, I found I could more easily contribute to what the tune needed, or didn't. I enjoyed a distance from the ongoing project where I could get what I had intended in the first place cut by cut. Recording has never been so creatively controllable, and writer friendly.

That was always one of the more baffling things about walling up in a studio to try and discern the myriad parts laid down by musician after musician. Everyone is giving it their best, but their best may be nowhere close to how you think you'd like your song to end up.

So a little distance from the action helped me decide the necessary from the needless. For some songs Cam sent me a half dozen different arrangements over a few weeks, only for me to sit back in the glow of my computer screen and toss the efforts and the music to the cutting room floor and go back to the basic with just me and the v2. I couldn't have made these judgment calls without him giving me a long lead in addition to him being well tempered and extremely well versed about the ins and outs of musical arrangement of all kinds. He had the confident bedside manner of a surgeon and he also seemed to know you can't tell a hard headed artist a thing.

I thought we were a good match.


Cam cutting the final tracks to RECADO.

He was every bit the capable producer I considered he could be. And, cut by cut, he played RECADO on many instruments besides the knob twisting. His knack for finding the notes us writer's live and die by make him the most tracked musician on this CD. In the studio of it all, he is nothing, but a rapidly rising star. Remember, you read it here first.

But, then I had to laugh. He bogged down on the final two cuts.

Ringing me he said, "I don't have a clue about how to proceed with these last couple of songs." My production genius threw up his hands.

I replied, "I'll be there tomorrow."

It's good to be needed. I was up at dawn in my sweats driving through 100 miles of New Mexico with six foot snow drifts lining the highways at about 4000 feet altitude. 533 miles and 2300 feet lower I jumped from my ride onto Bowie street in balmy Fredericksburg, Texas as the sun was going down. I was dressed like an eskimo a couple of degrees above the Tropic of Cancer. Cam was in a T-shirt feeding the horses out back of his brother's.


The simmering snowman is me. And Cam is Cam.

We started mixing together before I changed clothes. It probably took no more than an hour to complete the great work he had already done in close to six months. Like someone that has worked a theme to distraction, I think he just needed me to be there and help him put the local collective passion to bed.

I drove home from the studio in Austin several days later at 3:30 in the afternoon. Nonstop. I arrived at 1:30 in the morning at 7000 feet under a bright moon with the hardcopy Master that will go off to the CD manufacturer.

Here's a thought for ya. After staying on top of every jitterbug move this hot tamale of a recording has taken, through every twist, and every turn, the whole enchilada will come down to whether or not the manufacturer's printer has a good day.

¿What? Oh, never mind.


Photographic flourish from The REALDEAL.

RECADO turned into 85 files on 11 songs in a little less than 180 days. 9.23.06 to 3.4.07. Completed well were the basics at the REALDEAL in Santa Fe, the fiddle and mandolin parts in Nashville at DynaMike's studio, the Bowie Street mixes in Fredericksburg, and lastly the recording, mixes, and master in Austin at Elmos Lab. We needed, and got everyone's best to make excellent music happen. I'd start thanking people right and left, but you wouldn't have anything new to read in the list of credits on the CD.

And just when it seemed like it was all over. The cuts chosen and recorded. The cover art, the copy, complete with song titles, and the photography sent down to the designer's. The golden order of the songs fell out for us when Sarah and I heard the album after I returned home. The story the order had told back at the basics had altered with new instrumentation. The playing field had flowered.


Vince & Sarah.

So while we toasted the Master recording on the stereo, Sarah had the final, priceless insight of this recording project and suggested we change the order of the tunes ONE MORE TIME...

and have it Mastered again.
vince