JD McPherson - 'The Full Session' I The Bridge 909 in Studio

909 in-studio is brought to you by 90.9 the bridge in Kansas City to find out how you can become a sustaining member or to donate go to Bridge 909 org this feels like a homecoming JD McPherson back in the studios here at the bridge thanks for coming dance we've you know we visited so many times in the past I was saying earlier I think I recognize your gear yeah yep we've got some of the same gear some of the new gear we're trying to work some of the gremlins out of the old gear and the new gear you know the everyone's well I'm reminded of how spoiled we are we've been enjoying this the new album for a few weeks and doesn't come out until October 6 it is a great great album thank you really proud and we don't even have it yet really yeah no we have it wow it's 30 seconds in I've already been fooled you can find out more about the album at JD McPherson comm and the the album cover sure has a sort of a tech savory kind of early 60s hot rod magazine kind of wolf with the eyes bugging out not to it blended through some kind of weird Japanese woodblock yeah is this there's this guy his name's florian burton mer he's a german guy and he does these like extremely meticulous little drawings but he does a lot of stuff for metal bands skulls and and goats and stuff anyway I met him and I asked him if he was into kind of Tex Avery and like Kustom Kulture stuff like Ted Roth and he was like super into it so conned him into doing that and it was a it was a really good really good job he did you know I was gonna say this for later but you sort of invoke Germany and so I'm just gonna go there right off the bat you all have done really well over in Europe and you've often sort of base yourself out of Belgium yeah and you kind of feel like you've found some places that remind you of home in Belgium yeah it's it's it's weird to say that but of all of Europe I think we could all agree that Bell is the most home-like it's a home away from home well it's people it's like the the friends from over there are our driver that lives over there he lives and turnout Belgium and he's a hoot and so that's a familiar face but there's just something sort of laid-back in Midwestern about Belgium I don't know how to explain it but the food is really accessible steak and beer you know yes so you have you know a lot of people have that thing where it's like well when I retire I'm gonna I'm gonna get a sailboat or I'm gonna do this I'm going to do that and you have often said that you were going to open a belgium steakhouse that plays hang senior so I like to get really really specific in my goals well we you know we can all say that you know whenever we go over there were with the specific group of people and go to these old old old bars by the way if you don't know Belgium is like the greatest beer culture in the world it's it's amazing like there I if you haven't ever tried more like a Trappist or something you should definitely do it but when you go over there and we're hanging with these these people you're in these like really old bars but they're playing like Wynn Stewart and all this whole hillbilly music so I had this bug in my brain for a while that one day I wanted to do that and and the friend of yours really screwed up your retirement by encouraging you to do it now yeah he jumped he jumped forward by by years by he was friend of mine who was a restaurateur in st. Louis moved back to Oklahoma where we were from we were we were buddies back in college and we opened a small Belgian food restaurant in downtown Tulsa Oklahoma that plays old hillbilly music and it's like waffles and fries and stuff like you can get over there but then other stuff that you would never find in Belgium like fried Brussels sprouts and stuff like that but it's a it's a weird it's been a weird it's been a weird year and this restaurant has made it like it's a the place that it's and is actually made of old shipping containers yeah it's a little shipping container mall so all the all the stores are sort of in these little metal boxes and if people want to go to Tulsa which is just not really that far we should just go let's just go right now okay I'm down with it it's called we're we're war where war we're war in the box yard yeah there's a we're war in Belgium and that's sort of what it's our sister bar it's where it's what it's named after it means hodgepodge it's like a mix of things and I was really gratified I was checking out the menu and you all serve Boulevard beer yeah so yep that's our favorite well I know that's a big deal here we work a lot with Ommegang brewery brewery Ommegang up in Cooperstown and they're in cahoots now so it's a big happy family all right well the new record is spectacular it's called undivided heart and soul JD McPherson gonna be playing tonight at knuckleheads of new CD out Friday October 6 we'd love to hear a song okay let's do that let's uh this is called crying just a thing you do [Music] you're at the widest wedding and their Black is very slimming but everybody staring at you you're simply not achieving go staring at the ceiling you dream my bad split in two and every time the wind blows you open up the windows the China crashes down on the floor it's really gotten out rambling and cursing but I'm right up all the ever before you say there's nothing I can do to ever satisfy you that you do I try to keep my head down for most of the ride slimming Dubrow said here for I never felt the spinning up this machine up any and I never saw that ice on the road and every time the Thunder you always hit and wonder should we climb the looping watch it told me I'm feeling phone I think I'm thinking under it's really getting under my skin you say there's nothing I can do to ever satisfy you cuz fries is the thing that you do is the thing that you [Music] [Applause] [Music] you never be the danger in telling us education application a cousin but I'm single mother ever before you say there's nothing I can do ever satisfy you that you I insist the thing that you do where's the Sega Tootie [Music] that's a tremendous amount of fun it's one of the tracks from undivided heart and soul and you can actually find the studio version online it's one of the teaser tracks mm-hmm for the record big changes for you since the Lasser do you moved to nashville yeah like everybody else but you found some you knows like just add water make friends they kind of came out of the woodwork yeah there's a few towns in the United States that are real kind of known as music towns obviously Nashville is one I've always kind of heard some of these music towns I won't speak their name to disperse them at all but that I heard that it's kind of a competition or so of sorts like when you get there but I haven't felt that way at all about that town it's been very welcoming and people that you just meet or are just as likely to help you out as people that you've known for a long time and man there's just you can get egg shakers at 3:00 in the morning in Nashville if you need a mic you can you can get so much done there and so it's been really fun so Jimmy and Jason and I currently lived there now trying to con ray and Doug and to make him I don't think we're gonna get them but at this point you know most of the team lives there now and it's it's a really yeah you know you just sort of rattled off everybody's names this is a really stable band well stable is yeah I know but this is the this is the band yeah we you know been going for with with the band now for six years so the project started I guess like maybe a little over seven years ago if I'm not wrong but okay yeah you'll have to do the math yourself I'm no good at that I failed but the but this this five is the is the one you know after you've moved to Nashville and you know you I actually wanted to compliment you on you did it the production on the the cactus blossoms fracker yeah that was really good well I mostly just made coffee and cooked him a pot of beans once in a while but now they're really really great Minneapolis boys they're they're they're you know very easily to kind of align them with like brother acts like Everly and Leuven and but they really write wonderful songs and they really have their own kind of spin on on things and they're just really good they're really really good so when you were doing that work some of these songs started arriving one did I wrote a song for them called undivided heart and soul which you may notice is the title track of this record because I stole it back well you know we were on on that cactus blossoms record it was like everything was last-minute and there was no budget but recorded it in the living room and you know there were like bus tickets involved that so we had this one song left over that I had written for them to sing and didn't do it and yeah just a few few months later I was like I think I'm trying too soon try to steal that one back so we did we we started the record it didn't really have didn't have a lot of songs ready to go and so you know sometimes you can't you can't ignore some things that are kind of rattling around in the closet you know my impression is that this record like your first stab at it you weren't happy I think maybe even the point we were losing sleep maybe well I lose sleep all over a lot of things but actually I would say that just getting it started was difficult in in all kinds of ways logistically we had a producer lined up that didn't work out and you know we were all like we actually can like got together in Nashville and we had you know hotels booked the whole the whole nine yard for for a week or two a recording and then it went away so we had to kind of figure out what to do next your you know we talked about some of the friends that you've made and and one of them is Josh Homme II from Queens of the Stone Age and I'm just gonna read something a quote from him this cat JD McPherson is just the real deal it's totally for real and I think to myself where has this been my whole life so when it got like that to something like that I'll say this about about Joshua is that he is a you know the Queens of Stone Age were he actually he said this this is their one of the last bands through the door like they were like one of the last bands that were like a big big huge rock star band you know and he is definitely that but he only is interested in what he's interested in he's not interested in anything that is gonna be like the flavor of the month or whatever if he likes something he will do everything he can to try to help out and you know the first time I met him was in airport he asked our band to open up for them at the Forum in Los Angeles really something that many people would have seen coming right no not at all but he's just such a he's a positive guy he's a he's a big help and you know I just really appreciate him so the the new record the Queens of the Stone Age or you know put out it's called villains it's awesome and and that yeah yeah and and and the villains seem to be inspired by like 50s renegades like Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry and Little Richard and I'm thinking okay there's you know some of that commonality mm-hmm well he loves he loves rock and roll and he actually we had a really weird conversation about Lemmy because he was really close to Lemmy from Motorhead and we talked about how Lemmy was like Eddie Cochran was like his favorite favorite guy and he like I think soaked up a lot of stuff from Lemmy like let me turned him on to a lot of cool old rock and roll stuff yeah so Josh knew you were unhappy with the way things were going I invited you to come out to California and just sort of blow some music out the at the windows yeah well you can just kind of tell it I was in a rut and I was a little down and yeah so I just went out for a couple days and hang out with hit with with Josh Dean pink duck studios which is his place in Burbank ate chili at chili John's and just played with well he's got like one of everything in the world except the most obvious stuff like no strats no Les Paul's no Marshalls but anything else you can think of is there and so it's like a toy box for four grown-up children so did that help did it sort of break things open it was like a musical spa yeah I got felt I felt I came home I felt you know 15 years old again and shook off some some of the fears I like I said I think I said before I worry a lot about stuff trying to not yeah then I get worried about how much I'm worrying or yeah so I'm trying to you know it really helped kind of okay this is why this is why we all do this you know there's this moment when you're 15 years old and you know there you find a guitar or somebody or you read about Van Halen and like the rock magazine and something sparked and you're like oh I might I might be interested in this and so to try to get some of that back is what that was about yeah you you grew up kind of a Tamila nowhere grocery store was an hour away so you live for a rock magazine just to give you that lifeline to the culture yes yeah there's literally nothing else to do but develop your interests or get into trouble it sure worked for us because we love your music it's a great record undivided heart and soul JD McPherson and the band in the studio would love to hear another one if we could [Music] [Music] don't pass my Boston [Music] hunting for sugar Oh I push shelter to we'll be trapped [Music] yes like the [Music] yes I get out the don't pass my dust and if your Bernsen for sure come to my window without the raishin [Music] don't be a stranger to my opening [Music] she's worse [Music] the hunting for shoes [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] 24 she [Music] don't that's my job [Music] don't as my dust your in for sure [Laughter] [Music] [Music] Jadey McPherson and the bands doing another track live here in the bridge studios from the new album that's out a week from tomorrow undivided heart and soul now on new West it's just a brilliant record so you've gone out and you'd sort of had a good weekend or whatever with Josh and you know sort of you know rattled the windows and all that but then you came back into an environment that I'm not sure completely lines up with you know because you recorded this in one of the legendary 60s recording studios in Nashville one of the last really classic studios in Nashville is RCA studio B which is even if you're not familiar with that Studios name you know the recordings there I was where Chet Atkins was set up making giant country hits all through the 50s and 60s plus on the rock-and-roll side all the Everly Brothers early stuff was done there all the early Roy Orbison stuff the post Sun monument recording stuff was all there only the lonely crying all that stuff all the Elvis post army stuff was done there tons and tons and tons of music was made there but it's not a commercial studio we were sort of like at the end of our rope a little bit we didn't we didn't cuz he you can't just get into it like a real big studio in Nashville without booking it a long time in advance cuz I don't know if you know this or not there's there's a couple of bands in Nashville anyway we were like what can we do and we're just talking amongst our friends like is there any way we can figure out how to do this can we rent a hotel room and set up in there can we do something crazy and the idea to contact the Country Music Hall of Fame came up and I don't know how it happened man some magic pixie dust got sprinkled on the email or something because they said yes originally they only said yes to three songs but once we got in there the studio crew were like you just make your whole record here we know we want to see some and happenin here other than tourists so there were still tours going on which means you had to get out every day yeah we set up every afternoon record a toll very very late in the morning early in the morning and then tore down every night and then repeat over and over again so it was like setting up for a gig every day so usually like when you're in a studio environment you've been working on a record for a while I mean there's guitars leaning up everywhere there's spaghetti cables all over the place but everything was just super Spartan all the time because it had to be like we started off with a whole bunch of amps and worked our way down to one amp like this is the amp we're gonna use you know everything was was kind of down to the wire you know the thing that surprised me a little bit when I was really listening to the record and it did take me by surprise this is like a headphone record you know there are like really cool little elements that really benefit from careful listening we did work really hard on the Sonics and you know there's there's little touches throughout and get to those but I mean you worked really hard on trying to find the drum sound that matched that studio - well we did we had well on one song there was a song on the record called Jubilee that it was like sort of the chance to try to get something that did sound like it came out of Studio B and one of the engineers there actually the guy that works on all the equipment there the original stuff is still there he he had a lot to say about what we could do to get this certain snare sound and so man we worked on that for hours but for the most part most of the other songs it was just kind of miked and work it out a little bit and then go but a Jason and I spoke beforehand we've been listening to a lot of like 60s British rock and roll and 60s kind of garage rock and I was like Jason how does the creation get this drum sound he was like plastic heads so that was a big part of why the drum sound the way they do you know the the thing about a historic studio like that is that there's often remnants like if you go to Abbey Road the upright piano that the Beatles played is still there in the corner and you know literally they'd probably rather have a better piano in there but they just like you can't nod you can't you can't I can't move that out so the studio that you were in had Floyd Kramer's piano yep and the vibraphone that was used on the old Roy Orbison crying and the echo chamber oh my god this I forgot this story but there while we were there the studio crew was saying that Roy Orbison's family there was some kind of I don't hope I don't get this wrong too badly but there was some kind of thing going on with the Nashville Symphony where they were gonna put ro ever since original vocal tracks with like soloed with the symphony and they were going to bring it the tapes in one day and run it through the echo chamber just his voice and I'm like I will do anything do not do that without letting me be there I don't know that echo chamber or was that's a kind of a magic magic little element to that that studio did you listen to any of those songs in that studio for inspiration every night well every night we were loading out there's a there's a an iPad set up for the tours where you hit a button and Charlie pride plays but there are really good speakers you know and we'd tear down and listen to gosh we listen to crying I don't know how many times and till I kissed you by there but I don't know it's crazy you were looking for sort of a link wray sound and this one too well I bought this guitar in Austin Texas we were on tour and I found this white Supra dual tone like a 61 dual tone which is if you're a link wray fan you ever see that picture of him holding this white guitar that's the guitar and you know it sort of had this like sirens voice that was calling and I don't really buy guitars on the road I don't know I just just don't do that I'm not Billy Gibbons or somebody that buys one every day you know but this thing I like I had to have it and these guys actually I didn't buy it the first day and they were like you know you're gonna get that guitar and I did I went back the next day and got it and plugged it in and played like Rumble on it and immediately was like I want to do this for a minute you know so that guitar it's as much that guitarists fault as anything else I think the songs came out a little fuzzier you had some really great Co riders on this when Parker Millsap butch Walker Aaron Lee touched and who we play and and of course we'll give top billing to your wife how did that did that one worked out well my wife Mandy I've always everything I've ever sort of made I always she's sort of like the last edit you know she's sort of always the last one they get showed anything and there were a couple of songs that I really like on the lips was one of the first songs I wrote we were trying to make this record and it's just weird enough that I was a little uncomfortable thinking that it might go on the record and she's the one that was like yeah you need to sing this is obviously something that you wrote about yourself he's right I'm gonna sing it but I found this stash of lyrics that she had she'd been keeping on her phone for like years and I'm like why are you keeping from you see your poor husband's suffering like trying to come up with ideas that you've got this treasure trove so the song while we're young the first couple lines are Mandy's and songs kind of about us back in the early days when we were just starting out yeah it's a great song Thanks the entire album is really spectacular JD McPherson undivided heart and soul out Friday October 6th playing tonight at knuckleheads and we love the it one more song if we could cool we're gonna do this the first single called Lucky Penny but in this sort of stripped-down environment we're gonna do like the Nick Cave version [Music] joke the stern team in timeless good times I tried to beat the house what every hand was a bust another day in another begins another night sleeping on needles in peace [Music] I can't burrow and wrap the banner wind blow I keep running but to trouble follow you no telling where I'm gonna end up it's not me [Music] see all dreams are coming under rain at the seams ever mother died one another bad move another dead stop another wrong turn on the way to the top [Music] Hey [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] time to win our compassion there up without a dollar to then keep in the red between the Wyatts alone along with [Music] I keep rolling back the banner window I can't believe but to trouble you know salmon where I'm gonna end this sloppy pin has been nothing but bad [Applause] I was having fun over there hook that was really good like that a lot Lucky Penny JD McPherson and the band rave reviews for the album undivided heart and soul Friday October 6 also rave reviews for the shipping container Belgian steakhouse the plays hang senior called we're war in the box yard go to Tulsa get a good meal got a good new CD for the road trip down there man you got it all figured out thank you so much that's a good idea yeah well we we try to do right by people like JD McPherson you can find out more at JD McPherson dot-com and of course don't forget the show tonight it's a knucklehead ed knuckleheads I know this is the first day your tour and you guys are just as busy as you can be and it's a sacrifice to come in and give your time to us like this so we really appreciate you sharing no sacrifice thank you so much congratulations on the new record JD McPherson and Bands live in the bridge 909 in studio is brought to you by 90.9 the bridge in Kansas City to find out how you can become a sustaining member or to donate go to Bridge 909 org

Channel: 90.9 The Bridge

Views: 34,439

Keywords: Bridge, 90.9 FM, KCPT, 909 Session, Local 909, Radio, The Bridge, music, local music, music session, studio session, recordings, live, good music, AAA, alternative, artist, performance, studio, public radio, npr, pbs, Kansas City, MO, KS, KTBG, Interview Kansas City music rock in studio live performance alternative rock, JD McPherson, Crying's Just a Thing you do, Lucky Penny, Hunting For Sugar, Jon Hart

Id: SXwWlfej3P4

Length: 34min 41sec (2081 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 20 2017