America: Still Inspired
“It’s a fertile period we’re enjoying immensely,” says Gerry Beckley, of America’s work on its new album.
Diamonds in the Rough
That instinct is based not just on decades of collaboration, but also on a long-standing acquaintance with do-it-yourself recording. Beckley has had some sort of home studio ever since he moved from England to Los Angeles in the early 1970s. “Those reel-to-reels we made back in the day?” he remembers. “I’m sure there were kernels of first-rate writing and little gems of improvisation — great fodder, no doubt, if we could’ve crafted it ourselves. Whereas now, I can just wander into my Mac home studio, open up the mikes, fire up Logic Pro and see what transpires.”
“You end up saving more of those inspired takes,” says Bunnell. But can the Mac really embrace their music’s homespun roots, based on close vocal harmonies and acoustic instruments? “Look, you can open Logic Pro and be overwhelmed by the possibilities,” he says. “Or you can be overjoyed that you have this tool at your disposal, and just get down to making music the way you’ve always made music.”
Entirely on a Mac
“The thing is, maybe the Rolling Stones can afford to noodle for weeks in a major recording facility,” adds Beckley. “But these days, we — or anybody with a Mac — can easily do that and get excellent sound quality without spending astronomical rates on a big studio. It frees you to concentrate on the creative task at hand instead of the time it’s taking to complete it. Whether you’re going for complete spontaneity or sweating over the mix of a specific chorus.
“Our last live recording for XM Radio was captured and mixed entirely on a Mac with the aid of our engineering genius and sonic jack-of-all-trades Jeff Worrell [see sidebar]. And when we needed to do some vocal overdubs later on, he brought his PowerBook into my hotel room in Tulsa and had us up and recording in 10 minutes.
“That’s the power and flexibility of this system. It puts us in command of a huge portion of the creative and production process that was not in our hands previously. So ultimately your PowerBook, your Mac home studio, can become just as much a real musical instrument as it is a recording and mixing tool. And learning a new instrument can inspire you to write some new stuff.”
Sweet Inspiration
So how often is inspiration striking these days? It’s a question that evokes a chuckle from both of them. “Granted,” says Bunnell, “when you’re older, with grown kids and mortgages, it’s really hard to say, ‘Hey honey, I’m just going to, like, lay around on some pillows with Gerry until we utterly nail this bridge.’ I don’t know if that’s going to happen anymore.”
“But if PowerBooks and Macs inspire us to be more productive, then more power to them,” adds Beckley. “Having this marvelous tool, this nimble machine that somehow conspires to make me be both creative and efficient, well, that’s a blessing.
“Technology or no technology, at the end of the day it still comes down to: How good is the tune? Our long partnership, and our living as musicians, has always grown out of that.”
