“The Strongman of North America” – the Chandler Travis Philharmonic from the new CD, “Bocce & Bourbon: the Comfortable Songs of Chandler Travis & David Greenberger“, recorded by Ducky Carlisle at Ice Station Zebra (and me, a little, here.)
So a couple weeks ago, we put up an early, unfinished mix of “Strongman“, which is basically how we played it live at that point. We all loved it, and thought we were pretty close to done, but I played it for Steve Berkowitz (longtime bud, got the Casuals’ “That’s That” put out on Rounder and Demon and managed the Cars long ago, more recently works w Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Paul Simon and many others); ANYWAY, he made a whole pile of what initially seemed like completely unlikely suggestions (including, for instance, dropping the entire band out at the “When you thought the chimney might be broken” part,, where we initially had all of them coming in strong) but because it was Steve, I started implementing them, and lo and behold, they almost all worked great!
If you listened to the earlier mix, you might not notice much difference until about 1.32, that’s when things change bigtime, all due to Steve being at least kind of a genius…
By the way, we seem to have embarked on a video for “Strongman”, so if you have any brilliant ideas or fancy equipment / production expertise, speak up!
great photoshopping. Really.. How’d you do that? I do like the sound, tho.
Bonnie Nuendel