By Simon Eddie
Photos by Mary Peyton Gosser
Lizzy Ross - vocals and rhythm guitar
Jock Pyle - electric guitar
Brett Hart - bass
Drew Daniel - percussion.
Many bands take their time crafting their first full-length. Chapel Hill's Lizzy Ross Band took a bit longer than they wanted. Their self-released debut Read Me Out Loud shines through a 6-month struggle of broken bones and busted budgets, tackling obstacles with rich indie soul and boundless enthusiasm. Upbeat rhythms and melodies hide more serious themes. Lyrically, Ross's sincerity cuts deep. This is an album about growing up, wanting to know others and be known yourself, about embracing the world and all of its incumbent risks.
These struggles mix perfectly with Ross' fiery pipes. She recently won the Carolina Music Award for Rock Female of 2011 and is nominated for Best Female Blues artist at the 2011 Charlotte Music Awards. It's easy to understand why. Her voice delivers a charming trill one moment, only to erupt in rough, bluesy emotion the next. It's a powerful instrument that's earned her comparisons to artists like Grace Potter and Edie Brickell among others. Backed up by sophisticated arrangements that include touches of country, '60s roots rock, and a dash of Motown, Ross stares down the uncertain future and sings it into submission.
"We started in January with four members, of whom only two would see the album through. We wanted to finish recording quickly so that we could release the album in April and tour on it the following summer - given the actual project timeline, this was a somewhat delusion idea.
Drum tracking began at Arbor Ridge with Jeff Crawford and James Wallace. We weren't used to thinking of our music outside of the confines of live performance and were intimidated by the endless possibilities of recording.
We listened to our favorite records obsessively. We picked apart the parts. We began to understand the layering and subtlety in our favorite music. We were making progress and happy with the early results of our recording. Then...
Drew broke his wrist halfway through January and recording ground to a halt. We were stymied and significantly poorer than we had started (Thanks Dr. Aldridge!), but we had to keep going. Drew recorded drum parts one-handed - tracking first the right hand part, them the left hand part.
Recording drum parts one-handed at Arbor Ridge was slow and expensive. Drew's healing was unpredictable, so this made our schedule hard to plan, and we were unable to book enough studio time to keep the project on track. We floundered.
I couldn't take the waiting and the inactivity. I wanted to get us on track and get this album made, and made well. We needed more time and space to experiment.I bought Pro Tools. I spent agonizing hours trying to set it up and tripping on idiotic technical problems where the issue existed "between the desk and chair" - i.e. operator error. We started recording on a two-channel Tascam interface from 2008.
I began to get the hang of it. We bought a $300, 8-input interface from Guitar Center so that we could track drums. We set the interface and equipment up in my attic bedroom (the best-sounding room in the house). It stayed there for three months. No AC. We sweated. Drew and I toyed with the equipment for hours. We learned it. Drew's wrist was healing. We turned on fans between takes and drank a lot of cold beer in lieu of climate control.
We finally had room to try oddball ideas. I recorded doo-wop background vocals that got deleted and re-recorded. Drew did and re-did drum parts. We piled chains and scrap mental together and recorded them as percussion on "Black River." We recorded a guitar part for Cuyahoga with a 4" by 4" by 2" portable Honeytone amp set on top of a laundry basket (little, but nice tone). Red Dog's barks bled into the background of songs. We stayed up all night and into the morning, sweating and singing and experimenting.
We expanded instrumentation beyond our usual four parts (drums, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, and bass). We added saxophone, pedal steel, fiddle, cello, keys, and trombone. We invited friends and strangers into my sauna-bedroom to work and play and drink with us.
We were staying up all night, cables and drums strewn across the bedroom floor, constantly preoccupied with recording. When my head hit the pillow, I dreamt of Pro Tools. We forgot to eat, shower, seek out human contact, and call our moms.
As the music began to come together, we went back to Arbor Ridge to seek out the superhuman keys skills of James Wallace. James gave us prodigious patience and creativity and rounded out the sound of the songs. He recorded on nearly every track, with the exceptions of Black River and Needle and Thread.
We squeezed finishing touches onto the album like the last toothpaste in the tube - slowly, and with great difficulty (and it always takes more than two hands. Someone has to hold the toothbrush). We sought out help for mixing and brought the album to Chris Stamey at Modern Recording in Chapel Hill. We found a stable bassist, Brett Hart, for the band. As recording work slowed to a trickle and our schedules opened up, we started touring again.
While we were recording, it had become more and more apparent that Drew and I were very compatible creative partners and were both dedicated to seeing our vision through. We had already been good friends, but we didn't realize that we made such a good team. Working with our former guitarist had been difficult, and it became clear that he didn't fit into this musical partnership. We split ways and sought out a guitarist who was on the same wavelength as us. Drew's longtime friend and former band mate Jock Pyle fit the bill.
In the meantime, Chris Stamey was loving the album and doing wonderful work on it. He
remarked that it "sounded like a hit album, so (he) started to mix it that way." He brought experience and new dimensions to the project. He was the first professional we had encountered who seemed to care about it as much as we did, and his work brought out the best in the recordings we had made. He took on additional production elements. He was exceedingly generous with his time and talent. He seemed to believe in our record like no one else had, and to us, his opinion meant something. He stuck with us and has helped with every element from finding a designer to proofreading the album copy.
We struggled with album design. After much deliberation, we chose for the cover a photo of my five-year-old self jumping thought a hula hoop (held by my older sister), about to faceplant... or maybe not. It's unclear what happens. I'm midair, on my way to something. In the world of a five-year-old, this is a wild, daring risk. Looking back now, it just seems tragically funny. Even so, I can't help thinking that we've been in a similar position recording this album. We've put everything we have into this music, and now we are baring it to the world, holding nothing back in our pursuit of... of what? Joy? Understanding? Applause at the Local 506?
The photo captures a fearless moment. I'm comforted knowing that, even if I took a horrible spill and mangled my knees and palms, I'm ok. I don't even remember what happened. It doesn't matter what happened. I did it.
This has been the overwhelming lesson behind recording, and the message that drove my songwriting on many of the tracks. Keep going. If you don't know what to do, just do your best. Try harder. We need to believe that we can make it to wherever we're headed, even if we don't know where that is.
It's an album that I wrote about growing up, wanting to know others and be known myself. Embracing the world and all of its incumbent risks. It's called Read Me Out Loud.
Days had turned into weeks had turned into months... by the end of the project, it took 6 months all in all. My mom says anything worth doing is worth doing well, and anything good is hard to make. We worked for it. We made it through broken bones, busted budgets, disregarded deadlines, and musical confusion. We made an album. We said what we meant to say. Six months of sweat boils down to 42.1 minutes of sound.
We have many people to thank. We have lots of work left to do. Making this album has been good practice at what I'm beginning to understand as two of the essential elements to survival in the music industry - dogged perseverance and belief in your work."
- Lizzy Ross
Lizzy Ross Band CD Release party w/ Big Something
Friday Sept 30 @ The Haw River Ballroom - Saxapahaw, NC
Doors: 7:00 pm / Show: 8:00 pm (event ends at 11:59 pm)
$10.00 - $12.00
Debut CD READ ME OUT LOUD to be release nationally on Oct 04, 2011.
Listen to it for Free right now!
Upcoming Shows
Sept 17 Carousel Festival - Burlington, NC
Sept 22 - Pisgah Brewing Company w/ The Broadcast - Black Mountain, NC
Sept 23 - Charlottes Festival In The Park
Sept 24 - H- Blast - Locust Hill, NC
Sept 30 - Sax Ballroom - Saxapahaw, NC w/ Big Something
Oct 01 - Private Event
Oct 02 - Club 333 - Brlington, NC
Oct 22 - Foothills Brewery - Winston-Salem, NC
Oct 29 - Shakedown Street - Raleigh, NC (HGMN Presents: Halloween Party Blowout)
Nov 11 - The Fat Frogg w/ JujuGuru - Elon, NC
Nov 12 - The Lincoln Theatre - Beerfest with Acoustic Syndicate, Acoustic Mannor, The Morning After & More
