A few years ago I got a lovely Han Chi gong as a Christmas present from my family. I love this thing and I always wanted one. At the time, I was putting together a band to play a bunch of Led Zeppelin tunes for a benefit concert with my dear friend Jo Ann “Mama” Pacho. What self-respecting drummer playing Zep tunes would perform sans gong? I used the gong on stage with that band and I have since used it on stage with a few other bands, but have also used it many times on different recording sessions. It’s on two Felsen albums--Breaking Up With Loneliness and I Don’t Know How to Talk Anymore.
Ear buds in now please. And while you're at it, turn the lights down low. You can hear Han Chi especially in the intro and also the very last sound at the end of Gimme Shelter for the Devil from our new album. This is how i like to use the gong. Kind of shimmering quietly and slowly not really bugging anyone. No big clang "dinner is served!". Subtle, spacey, spooky perhaps. Polite, charming, decent, lovely. Ambiance I say!
Recording the gong was a beautiful moment for me and Felsen bassist alumni Cristian Hernandez. Cris was kind enough to masterfully record and mix the entire album (at no cost to us, thankyouverymuchdearfriend) this past spring at his old house in San Lorenzo, CA. Recording in his house was a real pleasure, a dream come true really as we weren’t constantly staring at the clock wondering how much time and money we were spending and therefore could allow ourselves the luxury of experimenting and fooling around with interesting sounds, mic choices and instrumentation. When you’re on a tight budget at a bigger studio, you often end up taking the Henry Ford assembly line approach to recording and the creativity can get really squashed. With the freedom of experimentation, I played Han Chi real lightly throughout the entire song. It kinda ebbs and flows, beautifully shimmering in the background, like ocean waves breaking around you.
Work on the album began last Christmas with me sending out demos to Cris, Art and Dylan. No real songs were written at that point. Some of the songs were just little embryos, some more song like, but none were really "done" per se. The first time we all played Gimme Shelter for the Devil was at the Felsen hurt locker (rehearsal space) in West Oakland in January. As we did with all of the new tunes I wrote for the album, we huddled together with just acoustic guitars and a snare drum with brushes. Everyone played real quiet. We knew we had something really special. It's quiet, like non violence. America: lay down your arms, surrender to the void, relax and float downstream. We kept at it and by May 31 we had a recorded and mixed album of 12 new Felsen songs. We had copies in hand around July 1. We pulled that one out of thin air!
We’ll be playing Gimme Shelter for the Devil on stage at our CD release party on January 3, 2014 at the Rickshaw Stop in SF. Please join us and sing along at the end of Gimme Shelter for the Devil. It's easy. You'll know what to do.
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