Tom Rhodes: The Honky Motherland
After working on Tom’s epic 2019 release “Around The World”, I was thrilled to be back on the subsequent project. This recording added a new and wonderful twist to the workflow… and the resulting project sounds fantastic!
For those that follow his work, it’s widely known that Tom Rhodes is a world-traveler and comedian. He’s been doing shows in clubs all over the world since the 1990’s, and he never does a show without dropping a small portable recorder into the venue somewhere. And much to his credit, he’s learned how to pick decent spots to tuck his portable mics, so that the show is captured reasonably well. Despite Tom’s skillful placement, any guerrilla-style recording is likely to require a lot of manipulation to get to the point at which they’re “release-ready”.
On his 2019 tour of the UK, Tom was on the road with Reginald D. Hunter, playing some of the most beautiful and historically-significant venues in the British Isles. Not only was tom dropping his portable recorder in every venue, they also recorded the stage mic directly from the in-house PA systems… so Tom provided me with a “clean” direct mic recording, as well as his “audience” mics which, depending on the venue, had anything from the tight ambience of a small club to the massive echo of 3-tiered opera house.
Working back and forth via email and drop-box, Tom and I worked through the hours of material to whittle it down to just the most choice bits. Over the course of the last several months, I lovingly married up the “stage” mic recordings with the “audience” audio, and was much more able to massage the sound than I was on his previous album (which was comprised, solely, of “audience” mics.)
This was a really fun project — and it would have happened much quicker, but I also added my own twist to the process, by having a daughter. We welcomed our new family member into the world just a few weeks after Tom and I started the project… So I’ve been working from home (thanks, COVID-19!) / taking care of our little one / and editing Tom’s project for the last several months… there are worse pandemic pass-times 😉
Now that this is wrapped up, we’re going to reconvene in the coming months to assemble some of Tom’s next projects.
Click the following links to check it out: iTunes / Google Play / Spotify / Amazon Music or visit Tom’s Homepage to learn more.