(Sorry it's a little pixelated.  Working on getting a better image.)

This is the second CD Derek did with The Michael Feldman Group. Derek has no role as a writer or producer in the band. As such, this website is not adequately structured to detail this project, but Derek will share some words about it below...

3/3/09:

This one probably does the best job of capturing the band as it was at the time. Mike's got a fondness for using studio-musicians (which is certainly no crime; done it myself), and they're very present on the other three records. On this one, though, it was pretty much just the four of us (plus a guy playing cello on a track or two, which I don't really count since he sometimes joined us live, and was the husband of the keyboardist, Ann Varwig). On this one, we went in, recorded, and left...and what you'd see live was what you got in the studio. I'm always a fan of that.

I sometimes find it hard to speak about Mike's work objectively. I find myself either going too far in one direction or another, either overly praising (as a music fan) or being overly critical (as a guy that played on the record). However, so much time has gone by since I've played these songs that I feel like I'm a little more "fair" now. That said, this is probably STILL my favorite of Mike's records. There's just a sound to it that I really dig, even though I feel like there are places where you can't hear my bass, which was a constant issue with this engineer. Overall, I don't know if this is necessarily Mike's BEST record (that honor probably goes to "Waitin' on the Rain"), but it's the one I like to pop into my CD player the most often.

One studio-story... This was the record where my case for analog recording really seemed justified. (I'm a big fan of analog, even though 9/10 of the time, I end up doing digital records.) We'd worked all morning. We had a majority of the songs done. Then we hear the engineer say, "Whoops." Not encouraging. Even less-so when he then said, "So that's what I was deleting." Sigh... Somehow the guy had deleted all of the guitar and bass tracks for everything we'd done so far. There was a brief moment of tension, then the realization that we just had to buckle-down and redo it set in, and we got to work. He said something to the effect of, "I find that when stuff like that happens, the second time was better anyway." That, of course, is complete crap, just to avoid saying, "sorry about that, it was completely my fault." I just hope he didn't charge Mike for the hours HE lost for us. (I would assume he didn't, since we continued to work with him for three more records...but that's Mike's business.)

Probably the highest compliment I can pay this record, though, is that among those who've collected everything I've worked on (and it's only a handful, but they're out there...pity them!), people STILL mention "The Remains of the Day" to me from time to time. It's a good song on a good record, and people who're MY fans seem to recognize that, even if they're not 100% Feldman-followers. That says a lot, when fans of MY music are complimenting the writing of someone else who I've worked with.

So yeah...this is a good one, studio mishaps aside, ha ha.

-db