Dehlia Low arrives at the studio for a session.

Dehlia Low

Bryan Clendenin lays down a mandolin part in the studio while recording

Dehlia Low listens to a take in the control room during the sessions for

Photos Courtesy of Dehlia Low

If you missed part 1 of this four part series with Anya Hinkle from Dehlia Low you can read “Dehlia Low: The Making of “Tellico” – Part 1.”

Hi there, this is the second installment of Dehlia Low’s “how to make a cd” travelogue.

If you’re just tuning in, basically everything we decided to do originally has been altered slightly. If there is one thing the studio does, it is to break up everything you planned. However, I think this is to be expected since we simply have little experience with recording and we learn as we go.

Studio Here we Come

Coming into the studio, we made a CD of all the songs we planned to record, either live recordings or recordings from practice, just to hear them all in one place. We also practiced with a metronome as a band to get used to using a “click,” which we planned to use in the studio. This also gave us the opportunity to establish the tempo for each song so that we could start right away with recording at that tempo.

Probably the most important thing we tried to establish was our goal to have a good time with the CD, be supportive and positive both to ourselves and each other, and to have a lot of faith that everything was going to turn out great. This seems to be working out for the most part.

We hired a producer for the album, Jon Stickley, former Biscuit Burner and current sideman for Shannon Whitworth with a new excellent solo project just out called “Lions.” We discussed a few different ways to lay down the songs with Jon. You always hear people comparing the “live feel” of a “live” recording with separation among the musicians versus the hyper-accurate and adjustable, but potentially sterile, tracked recording.

We tried the former scenario since we are so settled in as a band, but because we couldn’t control our own levels in our headphones, it became a real challenge to all play along with the click track, despite all our work with the metronome. We simply couldn’t hear well enough.

What seemed to work best, considering our schedules and how things were working in the studio, was to get the rhythm section down first. Stacy (guitar) and Stig (bass) were actually placed close to each other back to back in front of mics that almost completely separated their parts while retaining the overtones of the other’s instrument. Ideally, it also captures the live feel of our rhythm section.

They laid down seven songs in a row. I sat in a separate room and recorded scratch vocals, while Aaron (dobro) and Bryan (mandolin) sat in the control room and jumped up and down enthusiastically with thumbs up (the cheerleading section). This strategy frees us up to come in as our schedules allow to lay down our respective parts.

For a band that primarily does live performances, the process of recording is incredibly educational. I think we’ve all taken a lot of time to really listen carefully to our playing and singing to think about things such as: Am I putting too many notes in my break/backup? Am I overplaying/oversinging and sacrificing tone, intonation, and phrasing for volume? Why do certain moments of a song feel slightly out-of-tune or off-tempo?

Having a producer is also incredibly helpful in that regard. Jon hears things that we may have stopped noticing and can give suggestions on how to fix them—and also the reverse: when we (OK, it’s mostly me!) begin obsessing about minute details, he can say “Enough! It’s great!” We did have to stop recording of one song due to some strange sound my throat makes when I say “take me back.”

Although it is incredibly embarrassing to admit this, the way my tongue and palatte and mouth are structured,it somehow makes this weird sound when I say all those consonants together. The “fabulous mics” I mentioned earlier pick this up and now we are all fixated on this, alternating between doubling over in shrieks of laughter and getting frustrated (OK, just me again) trying to figure out how to NOT make the noises (Sudafed?)! So, this is a proverbial “pickle” (ahhh! I HATE the letter K! AND the letter C!).

We are paying the studio from a private loan (someone’s cash) that we’re paying them 2 percent on. This was just a better rate than the credit card (at 6 percent) and the money was there. Otherwise we would have opted for that.

But the hours roll by and somehow it gets easier and easier to forget the dollars also rolling by like at the gas station pump. We’re at about four to five hours hours per song for recording all instruments and vocals, so we’re hoping to keep our costs well below $4,000. As soon as we get three or four tracks, we’ll have our engineer mix them so our manager can begin to shop them around, ideally resulting in a contract with Rounder Records.

What’s in a Name?

Back in the real world, we are collectively obsessing about the title of the CD. We tried our best to avoid having a title track sort of arrangement, mostly because there are so many good songs on the disk (in our opinion!) that we wouldn’t want someone to think that “if you just listen to one song on the disk, just listen to the title track.”

Our original idea was to find a line or tidbit within a song to call the disk, but it just ended up sounding too cheesy or too weird and somehow the choice came down to the titles of two of my songs: “Tellico” or “Bide My Time.” We’ve been running around asking everyone’s opinion and avoiding making a decision. I think it’s going to be Tellico (yes even though it rhymes with Dehlia Low and even though it’s not in North Carolina and … more reasons we haven’t thought of yet).

How do we wrap this up?

We’ve also been moving ahead with the packaging design. We decided on a four- or six- panel Digipak from Diskmakers and have made “reservations” with the designer of our first disk, Blue Barnhouse in Asheville. We are deciding “drawing” versus “photograph” (votes on each side from the band), but want to emphasize a sense of place (don’t know exactly what that means yet). We have some images and ideas that we’ll take to the designer, along with the live versions of all the songs that will be on the disk, so he can work his magic. We scheduled a photo-shoot for next week for a good band photo for the back of the disk.

In sum, we’re overall feeling really positive but taking turns having our setbacks. Sidetracked with strep throat (how did that happen to me?), a funeral, out-of-town visitors, childrens birthdays, low-paying gigs and other dramas, we’re striding ahead.

By next weekend we should have a few complete songs ready for mixing. Until then, thanks for reading!