Hittin' the Road...

(Sunrise in NW Indiana, Oct 2009)

Touring season for 2010 will wind down beginning this week, and carrying through next week. We'll be pulling out of Chicago this Wednesday to wind up through Madison, WI - Minneapolis, MN - Duluth, MN - La Crosse, Wi landing back home for a couple of days and then rolling out for a couple of shows in Kearney, NE and Des Moines, IA. This will also mark the end of any major touring behind my current album, "Starin' at a Green Light". That album was released in March of 2009, and in the last year and a half we've covered over half the country touring behind it.

Over the course of the tour we've made new fans and friends, seen new parts of the country, been inspired for more songs, had one good solid blown alternator in the middle-of-nowhere Wamsutter, WY, consumed copious amounts of terrible (but cheap) food....and played a hell of a lot of shows. And as this album's tour crosses the finish line, the whole process starts to put out the next one...title and official release date TBA.

For those interested, you can follow me on these last tours of 2010 via my Facebook artist page (http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/Dan-Tedesco/176304244465) or Twitter (http://www.Twitter.com/Dan_Tedesco). See ya on the road....Rock on.

- Dan

Making the New Album...

Ok....so for the better part of September I had extremely limited internet access, and for that I apologize that I was not able to post many blogs. However, that issue has been rectified and I'm back at it. I figure the best spot to pick back up is with last week's recording of my new album!



Above is a picture showing my setup during the main tracking with the band. You can see my keyboard and several guitars in the background. I brought the Les Paul back out and it sounded perfect. With this new arrangement of my band it really helps keep things full and warm, given the lack of a bass. Surprisingly enough, I only played electric on one song for this album.

A lot of people often ask me what the order/process of recording is like. I can give you a general breakdown of how these tunes were put together:

1) Live take of each song with myself on vocals or guitar/keyboard, Brad on guitar/lap steel and Rio on drums. Multiple takes are done to try and capture the best performance of each song. Slight changes to arrangements are made in between takes. My producer on this album was crucial for bouncing ideas and having suggestions to help enhance the original arrangments, and the tracks are all that much stronger as a result.

2) Once the general tracking is taken care of, it's time for the overdubs. With this album, I went through a re-recorded all of the piano parts with a real piano vs the initial tracking done with my keyboard. The difference in sound is pretty stunning. It's a bit tedious to go back through everything but absolutely worth it. In addition to the piano overdubs, a few organ parts, guitar parts and vocal harmonies were added in.

3) After putting together the full arrangements of each track I go back through and lay down final vocal tracks where needed. Here's a photo of what my setup looked like while tracking the final vocals.



That big, round black mic behind the pop screen was on loan from the guys in My Morning Jacket, and it sounded unbelievable. Hands down the best vocal sound I've ever had during a recording.

4) By this point we had basically every track arranged and recorded as seen fit. There was one last thing to do. I put together an on-the-spot arrangement of a song I've never played on piano before. Some of you might know it. It's called "Whiskey Roads". We miked up the piano, threw up a vocal mic and I cut the tune live in one take. It was one of my favorite moments of the entire 4 days of recording and I think will be a very powerful track on the album.

And that as they say...is a wrap.