May 1, 2004 12:00 PM, By Heather Johnson

British Folk-Rocker Delivers an Album Worth Waiting For

John Wesley Harding waited almost three years to release Adam's Apple, his 11th album overall and first for DRT Records. But the British singer-songwriter recorded the album in a matter of months, working with two different producers in two distinctly different environments: a high-end commercial facility with the large-format console and a Pro Tools — based home studio.

Rather than release the project himself after his then-label, Mammoth Records, shuttered and folded into Hollywood Records, Harding (aka Wesley Stace) delayed Adam's Apple's release until he found the optimum label offer for what he considers his best work yet. “I don't see many situations in which all the pieces fall into place so incredibly well, and with such good fortune, luck and love,” says Harding from his New York home. “The professionals that played on it, the people that worked on it…I can't see those things ever falling into place again, so I really felt that it was worth waiting for.”

For Harding's first commercial recording since The Confessions of St. Ace (2000), Mammoth president Rob Seidenberg recommended co-producers Julian Raymond, Capitol Records' senior VP of A&R, and Eric Kupper, an in-demand keyboardist, remixer and producer in the pop and dance scenes. “Basically, [Seidenberg] was less interested in me making folk music,” Harding admits. “He thinks my strong suit is my pop songs, and this album was his idea to really present me making pop music in the best possible way with the best people.”

Raymond, whose production credits include Fastball, the Cash Brothers and the Suicide Machines, brought ace musicians such as drummer Vinnie Colaiuta, bassist John Pierce and guitarist Michael Ward to Henson Studios in Los Angeles to play on six of the album's 12 tracks. Working with engineer Greg Goldman, Raymond helped polish Harding's hypnotic, acoustic-based melodies without burying his smart, witty lyrics.

“Julian really believes in paring a song down to its bare essentials,” Harding says. “It's the first time I've ever had that kind of discipline for myself. If there's not an absolute necessity for a thing to be there, it's not going to be there.”

Harding, a skilled producer in his own right, admits that his strength lies in arrangements and melodies rather than technical prowess. “We had no intro to the song ‘Nothing At All’ at first,” Harding admits. “And I thought, ‘There's got to be something,’ and I remember saying to the bass player, ‘Why don't you just go, “ba-da-da-da,” but more Motown, with these notes.’ We're all listening and Julian said to the bass player, ‘Wow, that's a fantastic intro, John.’ And I was like, ‘Great! I think so, too!’ Because I'm just humming new parts in my mind the whole time.”

Raymond may have given Harding's intro a thumbs-up, but he didn't approve of a brief guitar line played by Kirk Swan, a member of Harding's touring band, the Radical Gentleman. “It was this very big guitar riff and it's very loud and unlike anything else on the track and I really wanted it to be there,” Harding says of the part, which appears on “Nothing At All.” “Julian heard it and said, ‘Bang goes the radio. That's the end of that one! It will not be a single now.’ To him, it was one of those extraneous moments.”

In addition to keeping the songs uncluttered, Raymond also inspired some of Harding's best vocal performances, even joining in on a few. “Julian is a fantastic harmony vocalist,” Harding says, adding, “but there is nothing better than me singing with Chris von Sneidern, who I've been singing with for years. He's co-produced loads of albums with me and he's the bass player of my touring band; I'm on his records and he's on mine. Plus, he comes up with the power-pop harmonies that I don't quite have in my head. So to me, it was just a no-brainer to get him to sing [on this album].”

For the six-song, six-day Henson sessions, Harding and crew set up in Studio B, home to an SSL 6056 E/G, Vincent Van Haaff/A&M main monitors and a wide assortment of vintage outboard gear. Overdubs took place in Studio C, which houses a 96-channel Euphonix CS3000. Goldman used Pro Tools for editing, Logic for keyboard loops and Sony 3348 HR as the recording format. “As much as I love analog, we knew we wanted to be on digital eventually, and Chris Lord-Alge [who mixed several tracks at Image Recording Studios in Hollywood] likes to work off of 3348,” Goldman explains. “Plus, digital's so much better for doing vocals.”

With the exception of Harding, who was isolated in one of Studio B's two booths, Goldman positioned the band in the 13×9-foot main room. He used a Neumann U47 FET on the bass drum, Shure SM57s for the snare, Neumann KM84s on the hi-hat and ride, AKG C12s on the overheads and Sennheiser 421s on toms. Miking guitars involved simply “sticking a 57 in front of the amp and running it through a Neve module and an 1176. Nothing fancy,” Goldman explains. “If you have really great players, good instruments and good amps, you get great sounds.”

Working in one of L.A.'s finest facilities was admittedly a refreshing change for Harding, who tends to record “on the cheap.” “To me, it was great luxury, having somebody there with printed-out copies of the lyrics, all the vocal takes in order,” Harding says, complimenting Goldman's organizational skills. “And there was a very nice scene around the barbecue where I met Rupert Hine. It was a very good experience.”

Harding later enjoyed the luxury of time at Kupper's Weston, Conn. — based home studio, Hysteria Recording, “where the only wildlife is Keith Richards walking down the road every now and then,” Harding jokingly says. “I would go up there for just two days at a time, every couple of weeks. [Kupper's] work [ethic] is he just goes. Once he started, I was not offered a cup of tea, water…you're lucky to eat a sandwich at the beginning of the day!”

The focused Kupper works on a Pro Tools Mix|24 — equipped Macintosh G4 computer, sans control surface. Though he records and mixes inside the box, Kupper's studio is “stuffed to the gills” with vintage equipment and instruments.

“My drum kit's always miked up and the guitar amps are always ready to go,” Kupper says. “It's set up for complete creativity. All the guitars — like 30-something guitars — are hanging on the walls like a guitar shop.”

The band, which at Hysteria included Fairport Convention drummer Dave Mattacks, guitarist Gary Burnette (who produced Harding's last album) and Kupper, who contributed keyboards, bass and drum programming, nailed most tracks on the first take. “A lot of people use Pro Tools to get absolute perfection, but for me, it's about capturing that raw performance, and it's very often on the first take. You can clean something up later. Sometimes, it's more natural to do it electronically than have someone sit there and sing a part 20 times till they just completely lose the vibe.

“For me, the challenge here was to capture that raw emotion and try to add technological elements to Wes' music that he hasn't used before,” Kupper continues. “We both wanted to push the envelope a little bit, and we did. I think we got some quirky, interesting tunes going on.”

For example, on “Monkey and His Cat,” Kupper incorporated loops with a '60s drum sound. “It's not lo-fi, but it's not superglossy hi-fi either,” he says. “Sort of like if you got an old hi-fi version of a Kinks record.”

Kupper also relied on such plug-ins as McDSP and DUI and choice pieces of vintage gear. For vocals, Kupper chose the Neumann CMV-563 microphone running into a Tube-Tech MP1A preamp, through either a Joe Meek SC-2 compressor or Summit TLA-100A tube-leveling amplifier, and then into Pro Tools. “If I needed a little EQ along the way, I'd put a vintage Calrec or Neve EQ in-line,” Kupper adds. To record Mattacks' drums, Kupper used TL Audio and Millennia Media mic pre's, and dbx 160X and UREI 1176 compressors to complement an assortment of Sennheiser, Audio-Technica, Shure and AKG microphones.

Kupper used a Shure SM57 to mike Burnette's guitar amp. “Or if I was feeling adventurous, I'd use what I call my ‘Beatles channel,’ which is an old AKG D19 going into a Telefunken B72 preamp into an Altec 438-C compressor.”

With both Hysteria and Henson sessions under wraps, Harding jetted to London to record “Sussex Ghost Story,” which features string arrangements by modern classical composer Gavin Bryars. “It was a pretty left-field idea, but it was just the kind of centerpiece the album needed,” he says of the song, which was recorded at Electric Earth East by engineers Martin Terefe and Gavin Olsson. Neil Perry mixed the track, along with a few Raymond-produced cuts, at Chung King in New York City. The album was later delivered to Bernie Grundman Mastering, where Grundman and Brian Gardner added their finishing touches.

Despite the big studio/small studio dichotomy, Harding's latest and, arguably, his strongest album to date flows seamlessly from acoustic to electric, and from arty folk to melodic pop with consistent sonic integrity. Kupper sums it up best, noting, “It ain't about the gear; it's about the ear.”

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