The Steeldrivers

Rounder Records is featuring an exclusive interview with Mike Henderson, mandolinist for The Steeldrivers, on the labels website.

In the interview, Henderson discusses how The Steeldrivers came to be. He also touches on the recording process for the group’s new self-titled album, set to be released January 15, 2008.

Below, is an excerpt from that interview as Henderson discusses the recording process for The Steeldrivers new album.

“It was cut live in one big room. We had a few baffles around, but we were all pretty close together — I’d say within ten feet of each other. I feel like Luke Wooten did a wonderful job of getting what “some air” on it, as i call it. He close mic’d all the instruments, but he also had ambient mics that were picking up more of what you’d hear if you were listening to a band acoustically and you walked ten feet away. He got the sound as the instruments got out into the room, and a lot of that is what’s on the record.”Mike Henderson - The Steeldrivers

“Tammy and Chris sang everything as it went down. If we made a mistake, we’d just stop and start over again, like what folks did before they had the capacity to overdub and punch-in. A lot of that too had to do with our rehearsal recordings sounding so good to us. We liked them and we liked the energy and the feel we were getting as we sat and learned the songs…and we recorded our gigs, too, and we liked the energy, the feel, the dynamics — as opposed to putting everybody in a separate area using headphones so that each instrument is recorded to perfection. There’s stuff that made it to the record that’s not perfect, and we know that, but not too much music is perfect unless you contrive it and do each individual part again and again and make it perfect. Our feeling was that this is what we do on stage and people like it, so let’s put that on the record.”Mike Henderson - The Steeldrivers

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You can read part 1 of the interview on Rounder’s site here and part 2 is online here.

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The Gibson Brothers

Nashville, Tenn — Sugar Hill Records is set to release “Iron & Diamonds” with bluegrass stalwarts The Gibson Brothers on April 8, 2008. “Iron & Diamonds,” the groups fourth Sugar Hill release, showcases the brothers’ trademark harmonies. Interspersed with original songs like the title track — a snapshot of the miners’ baseball league in their upstate-NY home are carefully chosen covers like Tom Petty’s “Cabin Down Below” and others.

“Iron & Diamonds” boasts the brothers’ best vocal mix to date thanks to recording live on a single microphone, capturing the energy and closeness that concert audiences rave about. The band — Mike Barber on bass, Clayton Campbell on fiddle, and Rick Hayes on mandolin — is tighter than ever, complementing the brothers’ harmonies with adept instrumental performances.

Leigh and Eric Gibson have been performing together since encouraged in their youth by a minister in the borderlands of upstate New York, where they still reside. They received a Best Emerging Artist nod from the IBMA in 1998 and have previously recorded three albums for Sugar Hill Records — “Bona Fide,” “Long Way Back Home,” and “Red Letter Day.”

The following video is the song “I Got A Woman” from The Gibson Brothers, “Red Letter Day” record released on Sugar Hill Records.

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