C.A. Moon and Kyle Ragan of Weatherly

I had a great time hanging out at Weatherly Studios (Jarrettsville, MD) with Musicians/Engineers/Owners Kyle Ragan and C.A. Moon. We sat down and had a talk about their band, their production company, the recording process and more. They performed two of their originals "She's Been Seeing Me" and "Found Wanting" to finish it out, it was a great night.

Kyle is an audio Engineer with a lifetime of experience producing great music and he is a vocalist and guitar player in the band Weatherly. C.A. Moon is an audio Engineer with 20+ years of production experience, he is also a guitar player in the Point Break Band, Old Man Jones and Weatherly and has countless collaborations with a lot of big names in the industry.

Head over to the Sesh & Friends YouTube Channel for two great live performances of their original songs "Found Wanting" and "She's Been Seeing Me" www.youtube.com/@seshandfriendspod 

If you're looking for a professional and fun recording experience for yourself or your band contact Weatherly Productions -

www.allthingsweatherly.com

#seshandfriendspod #allthingsweatherly #weatherlyproductions #bradcox #kislingstavern #clutch #oldmanjones #bennyclough #podcast #happyhippylife 

www.facebook.com/seshandfriendspod

www.youtube.com/@seshandfriendspod

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:09

Another public summary.

SPEAKER_00 0:13

Session friends with Weatherly Productions. All right. Welcome to another episode of Session Friends. Glad you guys can join us here tonight. We have a really, really uh I got a good exciting one tonight. We're hanging out here at Weatherly Productions Studios with the guys themselves, the masters, the ones who make everything sound perfect. We have Chris. We have Chris and Kyle here. Hey guys, how are you?

SPEAKER_01 0:46

Good. Fantastic. I forget I'm still allowed to do the banter because I do the banter in the beginning of the episode. That's right. I'm sitting over here like I'm just a guest waiting for somebody to talk to me. I don't have to wait.

SPEAKER_00 0:56

That's right. You know, it's funny. I approached this when I was like, well, do I want to take a sheet of questions like I did last time, or do I just want to go in and just just talk? I'm like, you know what? You guys obviously have uh you guys have experience with podcasts because you had the weather re-report, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:12

Yeah, how many what did we do? Like 50-some episodes? 50-some episodes. And then like the tunes and tales that we started working on that has a couple of those.

SPEAKER_02 1:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

Those were fun.

SPEAKER_02 1:21

That that whole thing evolved over time. It was it was a very interesting concept to start with because it was really just meant to document the making of our record. Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:31

Well, not even just the making of our record, the making of our company.

SPEAKER_02 1:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

Like the first seven episodes are just us talking about like, hey, we just formed this thing, this duo and this partnership. What are we gonna do?

SPEAKER_02 1:43

Yeah. Now what? Now what are we doing? That's pretty much what it was. And it, you know, it was us thinking out loud for a lot of episodes.

SPEAKER_01 1:51

Oh, most of it. And you know as we were talking before, I get made fun of a little bit when people go back and listen to the episodes because they're like, man, y'all just start talking to each other.

SPEAKER_00 1:59

I listened to them. Of course, you know, I said something to you. I'm like, you know, it's it was almost sometimes every once in a was that that awkward silence, you know. God would say something, and I would be like gotta process. Like that that's Chris is about to reboot.

SPEAKER_02 2:16

Yeah, it's either that or I went into some technical jargon about plugins and nonsense and Chris.

SPEAKER_01 2:21

Oh, I just tuned that shit out.

SPEAKER_00 2:23

Oh, you know, I gotta tell you, Chris he sometimes he blows my mind, man, especially when you know, um, when we're having band practice. Um, and he starts getting in these tangents about all this technical stuff and all this, like, I mean, the man could practically build a robot, you know. I mean, with his eyes closed. I'm just like, like, I feel like an idiot sometimes. Just like looking at him like, okay, sure. I have no idea what you're saying right now, but that's amazing.

SPEAKER_02 2:50

For me, it was just too smart for his own good. He's way worse. For me, it was interesting because I'd never had somebody that had as much live sound experience as he did when he and I started working together. I'd had some live sound experience, but most of my experience has been in the studio environment. That's where I've lived. My stepdad built a studio in our backyard when I was growing up. Like, that's that's what I cut my teeth on, not live sound. Wow. So, like it really kind of was symbiotic because when the live sound, I was his extra set of hands. You run things. You know, and the studio was in now, the studio is a hell of a lot more equal. I'm still not as good at live sound as him, but that's because I don't put in the time.

SPEAKER_00 3:29

Um, how long have you actually been recording professionally? You said you started out with you said they had a studio at 15, right?

SPEAKER_02 3:38

Yeah, so at 15, my step my stepdad's a drummer. Okay. Um, so he built a studio in our backyard when I was 15. And I started learning to record with him. Um, I we literally still record on the same program. I started learning with him when I was 15. That's incredible. That was a skate ramp.

SPEAKER_00 3:56

You guys had a entire recording studio. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 3:59

Funny enough, the reason I got into music was because I destroyed my elbow skateboarding. Oh, okay. Um so I was a baseball kid growing up before that. Um I always sang and never played anything. I always sang, but I didn't play any instruments. I played baseball and skateboarded in my spare time. And then I destroyed my elbow, which ended baseball, and then I didn't want to skateboard anymore because I was pissed. And then I picked up a guitar. That's awesome. Um, but yeah, so I I professionally recording, I I don't know where to even put that line, but I've been in a recording environment for 30 years.

SPEAKER_01 4:36

That's awesome. I would say the first Screams and Whispers album that she recorded.

SPEAKER_02 4:39

Probably.

SPEAKER_01 4:40

That was a one that you had the most knowledge to actually successfully complete a project, and it still sounds great. I still listen to those songs a lot.

SPEAKER_02 4:48

That was a fun record, and that was a like two different dudes' studios compiled together to make enough of a studio to record the record. Right. That makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 4:58

Just put it all in one room, we'll piece it, we'll piece it together, see what happens.

SPEAKER_02 5:02

Everybody bring your shit over. Let's figure this out. Keep your fingers crossed, guys. That's basically what that record was. That's awesome. Um but yeah, so yeah, I for better or for worse, about 30 years worth of recording. Oh, that's incredible. How about you, Chris?

SPEAKER_01 5:15

Uh, I did a lot of uh splicing of real to real back in the days when uh later years of high school and early years of college, and then mostly ADAT, but like he said, the majority of my recording was not studio recording, it was live recording, it was running live sound, making sure that I was blending everything the right way to be able to project great quality and also capture the same quality. Right. So um that was probably I would say uh around the same as Kyle, about 25. Well, 25 years-ish.

SPEAKER_02 5:50

Yeah, I'm curious.

SPEAKER_00 5:51

I'm not as old as you know, yeah. That's awesome. I um, you know, I um never really had that type of knowledge as far as outside of just standing there and singing. I mean, the first band I was in back in the early 2000s, which was high of all, um I did all the booking and did all I wrote the I wrote all the the the uh words and the guys wrote all the music to it, but then we just handed it over to somebody and you know we let somebody take care of that. I I want to say we used Right Way Studio back then. Oh, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:22

Good guys, and they're they've are they still around?

SPEAKER_00 6:25

In Baltimore, yeah, they're still around because I want to say a friend of mine, um, Scott Painter from JawWorks. You guys familiar with Jaw Works? I want to say he was just there recording some stuff the other day.

SPEAKER_02 6:36

Okay, yeah, I I'm sure they're still around. There's a couple legacy studios that have survived in Baltimore. Yeah. Um, not a lot, a lot of several have gone extinct in the last 10 years. But um there's I mean we saw a lot go five years ago. Well, that or they closed down in the city and moved out into the county.

SPEAKER_01 6:54

Oh, yeah. There was one really good one that was uh down by Bill's, and they're out in Frederick now.

SPEAKER_02 6:58

Mm-hmm. And Evan Cornblom have a studio in the city, but he's at stages out in Timonium or wherever that is now. Yeah. Um, so yeah, it's everything kind of moved out of the city or shut down.

SPEAKER_00 7:08

Sure. Yeah, it's a shame though. I mean, it would actually kind of a lost art, like the old style of recording. Real like you mentioned, real to real. I have a real to real at home, as a matter of fact. Yeah, yeah. Um I'm I I'll have to show you some of my vintage uh stereo clips. Yeah, absolutely. I'm a big Macintosh guy, so I have a lot of old uh 1950s uh Macintosh receivers and I got the old tube amps and all kinds of stuff.

SPEAKER_01 7:34

Yeah, oh that's fun. Yeah, see, like even with uh the whole digitization of everything, you know, the going from a dat or going from dat up to what we're recording now is like like Kyle said, me and him have been using Reaper forever. It's probably one of the most versatile ones, and it's free for starting out.

SPEAKER_02 7:53

Starting out, you pay a license fee if you're gonna use a professional.

SPEAKER_01 7:55

Obviously, if you're gonna run a business with it, you should pay the license fee or do something that generates money or anything like that. Right. But even with the digitization, me and Kyle still try to hold to you know, doing whatever we can to keep as much organics in the music as possible. So when you hear certain like artifacts and things like that that the mics are picking up, a lot of the times we leave those things if they're not like mistakes or noises. We'll get rid of the noises, but you know, certain levels of you know, uh finger rub, like the screech on a guitar, which is a good thing. It makes it more real. We have all the programs in the world that we can remove that.

SPEAKER_00 8:33

Right, but it makes them more real, it makes them more organic.

SPEAKER_01 8:36

It 100%. That's where we're saying that's where we say we don't we don't record. We we're here to capture moments. As cliche and generic and cheesy as it sounds, that is literally what we do. We have uh faded blue on our first album, the making of Yeah, I'll record these scratch vocals over top of like just our scratch guitar parts that we were still going to re-record. It was basically just a demo version to write with, and then he did his final guitar parts. I did my final, I think I did bass on found one in. Yeah, you did. And then you cleaned up the drum track, and then when it came time, he was like, All right, well, I'll track my vocals next week. And I'm like, No, you're not. Those are staying. It is the most just raw earnest and genuine and raw performance that you've ever done of faded blue. Like it was and it was a throwaway. There was no thought, there was no worry about making the perfect take or anything, it was just him and his element.

SPEAKER_00 9:32

I've always been about live recording. Always. I th I always found, I mean, of course, you know, anybody go to studio and the guy behind the board can you know push this and pull that and make whoever it is sound amazing.

SPEAKER_01 9:45

Copy paste, sure.

SPEAKER_00 9:47

But at the end of the day, if you put a microphone in front of a stage while the band is playing, well, obviously more so than a microphone, but you get the point. Yeah, and you get that raw emotion, the sweat pouring off of these guys, and just yeah, their interaction with the audience, that's freaking music.

SPEAKER_01 10:04

Oh, yeah, that's fucking music. You can you can hear it coming through. Yeah, uh, there's a funny picture. Uh, when we were recording the first album and a couple singles, I always had the same like posture and position that I would do, and I would always have my back towards him, and I would always it was at the old studio, but I always had I went like on the other side of the column into the like the open area just by myself. Right. And my back to him, and he would just sit there. And if I stopped, he would control alt delete, hit record, and we would just keep going. And because that was like it was like I called it my zen posture. Anytime I had to play some solos where I needed some of the some of the emotion, I'd just I would isolate myself in that little position, crop my feet up and just play until I poured it out. I get it.

SPEAKER_02 10:49

That's honestly that's that's half of working with any performer I have found is how do you make them comfortable in the studio so that they can be natural.

SPEAKER_00 10:58

Right.

SPEAKER_02 10:59

Um I'm and I'll be the first to say this. Could I? Probably, maybe close, but I'm not making Katy Perry records in here. That's not the goal of the studio. I don't want to make auto-tuned super polished crazy pop records. That's just it's not interesting to me, so I don't want to spend time on it, honestly. Um, nothing against the genre, it is what it is, but that's not what I want to do in here. I want to capture there's a reason the sign on the wall behind you says microphones hear emotion. It's up there for a reason. I will point at it when I'm working with singers because I'm like every insecurity that's running through your own head, the microphone hears it. So get out of your head. Yeah. You know, you if you put if that is there when you were putting that on your record, I agree. It's gonna sound like an insecure sound recording. I agree. So you have to kind of rein in, do whatever you do, hype people up. You know, I've I I had somebody in here just slap themselves a bunch of times and then sang, and it was great. Sure. You know, different things happen, but you have to work on how do I make somebody comfortable.

SPEAKER_00 12:07

Yeah, I um I remember the first time I recorded, and like I said, it was it um it was it right way. And um I remember he taking me into the separate room and he had he gave me some throat clearing exercises, and I did some bars and humming bars and hitting different different octaves on this little meter. And uh I came back and I'm like, I feel like I'm really nice and clear and I'm ready. And he goes, No, you're not ready. He says about 15 minutes. He goes, just go down there, sit down, he goes, turn the light out, hang out, and just chill. He goes, think about what you're gonna be singing tonight. Think about what these songs mean. You're the one that wrote them. There's gotta be a story behind them. He goes, This is your opportunity to express it. And I to this day, I still remember that. Like, that was like the most awesome thing somebody could have told me, you know, in a studio. And it was like, this is your opportunity right here to express it. You wrote it, you feel it, do it. Yeah, so yeah, I get what you're saying, brother. I really do.

SPEAKER_02 13:11

And it's also you're gonna live with this recording, yeah, right? For better or for worse. And we all as performers pick apart our own shit incessantly. You know, I there are things that I have to con uh particularly just not listen to of myself. And not that I won't listen to the song, I'll just ignore myself in the song to an extent. Um, but you're gonna have to live with that recording long term. Sure. Right? And if you want to be proud of it and want to put it in front of people and want to say, no, you really should listen to this because I think you're gonna engage with it. But again, if you're insecure about what you're putting down, you're also gonna be insecure about putting that in somebody's hands.

SPEAKER_00 13:50

If you're already questioning it, then you might as well go back in and start from scratch. Yeah. You really should.

SPEAKER_02 13:55

Or just figure out another approach. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:57

You know, I'm a big I'm a firm believer in transference, like with the story hour EP that I wrote. The the idea was to put the listener in the position and the feeling and the the emotive state that I was in when I wrote the song. Right. And that's where I mean that song, that album took almost 15 years, 16 years to finalize. Like they were all songs from different stages of my life.

SPEAKER_02 14:23

Wow. This is also why I loved working with Chris and why he and I immediately melded because Chris does what he just said musically, right? He'll take a piece of music but not a lyric in sight, and his intent is to evoke an emotion. I do that with lyrics, not necessarily with the music itself, it can be. But usually the music's to support the message of the lyric for me. So having somebody create the emotional backdrop for me then to then put lyrics on top of and put that thing, it would like it completed it. Yeah. And that wasn't something me too. That's the way to do it. You guys been together way too long.

SPEAKER_01 15:06

We have we've been together almost 10 years.

SPEAKER_02 15:08

Yeah. Awesome.

SPEAKER_01 15:09

We're gonna be coming up on 10 years next year in February.

SPEAKER_02 15:12

But that was something I hadn't had in a musical partner in a long time. I had a lot of people that wrote similarly to I did, uh, the way I did, whether it was lyric forward and then maybe hooky guitar lines and everything else is supporting, right? Um never had that through line of letting the next melody line in the guitar part carry the emotion of the line rather than another lyric. Right. You know, I was always trying to fill space with lyrics and you know, oohs and ahs and yes and whatever else needed to go in there um to do that. I didn't have to do that with Chris. Those extraneous lyrics are sort of not writing.

SPEAKER_01 15:49

Well, towards our towards our later writing, we started kind of pretty much using those auxiliary parts in between transitions to more like emphasize each other. So there are still like a lot of oohs and and yes in there, but they're the guitar part is either mimicking those or they're harmonizing each other, playing off of each other. Yep. We started doing that in a lot of our later writing.

SPEAKER_00 16:10

You know, it's funny. I I've I've talked to a lot of guys in the industry and I've asked the same question before. Do you find it easier to have somebody hand you already written music, everything, all the chords, everything, and then you have to put your words to it. Or is it easier for you to write all your words and then hand it to your guys and tell them put the music to it? And I've gotten almost a 50-50 on that. It's not like, you know, where somebody's like, no man, you know, I'd I'd much prefer to be able to write the lyrics and then sing it to the band and say, This is what I'm thinking in my head, because that's the way I used I did it years ago. But then there, then there's other guys that are like, absolutely not. Well, I want to start, we're gonna, it's gonna be music first. You're gonna sit down, you're gonna listen to this music over and over again, you're gonna get that feeling, you're gonna you're gonna find that story in your head and you're gonna put it on paper.

SPEAKER_01 17:02

Yeah, I'm gonna defer this one to Kyle because y'all have heard my lyrics. That's why I have you two guys. So, but I can say from somebody who receives a lot of music from people, um, if I'm receiving if I'm tasked with doing the instrumental aspect of it, and it's working with a vocalist, and you know, like in your case, you send me lyrics and give me a basic melody line with no chords or no chord structure. I pretty much just have your melody line to go off of where I want. It's a blank canvas, like the sky's a limit. I love it. Yeah, but at the same time, you know if I get a lyric sheet from somebody that's being like, hey, I want to turn this into a song, then it gets passed to Kyle.

SPEAKER_00 17:48

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_01 17:49

Because I I don't when it comes to like classical and more like choral works, then yeah, I can f sit down and map out, you know, what the phrasing's supposed to be, where the syllables are supposed to land, how words are supposed to be accentuated in the writing from a theory standpoint. But to me, it it it would never I yeah, have difficulty translating it musically.

SPEAKER_02 18:11

Gotcha. For me, and I'll say this just to add on to what Chris said, Chris is a big fan of writing the music and putting it to somebody and saying right lyrics. Yeah, that's why I have that all the time.

SPEAKER_00 18:21

Yeah, he he just recently did that. We did stories to be told.

SPEAKER_02 18:26

Chris is real real good at putting people in that position. Um, but no, that's fine. I for me, it's I'm 50-50 to an extent. I'll say that when I write 90% of the time, the story in the lyric is driving the writing, but rarely do I write a lyric out without having some sort of framework of at least a chord structure like basic. Now, I may purposefully only write like a very vague skeleton of that and then write all the melodies and lyrics and then stop there because I can hand that to Chris and be like, now make this more elaborate.

SPEAKER_04 19:00

Right.

SPEAKER_02 19:01

As long as that melody line fits over the top. But I've given him just a very, very rough framework to say, here's the palette, let's go from here.

SPEAKER_01 19:10

Oh, shoe gaze was my favorite when you did. Well carry on.

SPEAKER_02 19:14

Carry on too, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:15

That's a little more personal, I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 19:16

But I've also had, you know, somebody who was a poet hand me a book of poetry and be like, I'd love for you to turn something into a song. And I flipped around and found it, and that's where C. Elimacy came from. Yeah. It wasn't even written as a lyric.

SPEAKER_01 19:35

I had to kind of like reconfake things. That's another one that when you handed that one off to me, it just had just that basic chord strum pattern of the verse, and you're like, here.

SPEAKER_02 19:46

It's a four-chord thing. It is not it, it's interesting because of lyrics and melody. That's what makes the song interesting in that for that particular parts are pretty cool, in it. Well, you make the music not boring in that song. How do I say that? Thank you. It's a good thing. But yeah, so it for me it depends. I like the challenge of both directions. Right. Um, but when I'm writing myself, most of the time it starts with lyrics. Very cool.

SPEAKER_00 20:13

So I see a bowling pin back there on the shelf. Um what's the deal with the bowling pin? Because I actually I'm a bowling guy. I bowl league every Monday at Far in Far Cell.

SPEAKER_02 20:22

I was a bowling guy when I was in high school college. The bowling alley was one of in I grew up in Georgia, right? Okay. So the bowling alley was one of the places where all the teenagers hung out, right? So it was if you were just under drinking age, but old enough to be set loose on the world, that's where everybody kind of hung out.

SPEAKER_04 20:41

Very cool.

SPEAKER_02 20:42

So we also knew a bunch of people that worked there. We drank with a lot of people that worked there when we were underage. Um, and they were throwing out a case of old pins, and we just stole some to shoot the shotguns. Very cool. And I rescued one from getting shot with a shotgun and kept it. That's pretty much how that uh ended up there. I have a lot of random.

SPEAKER_01 21:02

There is a lot of random things here, which is things that I love too, because the first thing I remember seeing when I walked into the original Weatherly Studios when I first came over to him. Um, the first thing that I noticed is that in this room, and in every room that he has where music is played, there is a red from Fraggle Rocks.

SPEAKER_00 21:21

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_01 21:22

Right up there.

SPEAKER_00 21:24

She's up there.

SPEAKER_01 21:25

Very cool. And growing up, growing up, my brother Nick always had traveling mats sitting on his floor tom.

SPEAKER_02 21:32

At one point in time in my childhood, I had all of them. There's the ones that came from Hardy's back in the day. I remember those. Um, so that's the only one that survived. Wow. Uh so it sits up there. It's it's literally just been stuck up somewhere in every studio space I've had. Nice. Um, but yeah, there's lots of random there's I mean, good lord, if I get into the nerd things in this room. Yeah, but it's cool.

SPEAKER_00 21:54

Well, I mean, I mean, you know, it's that's this is your your Zen space and thing, everything in here. There's here for a reason, makes you happy. Yeah. That's the cool thing.

SPEAKER_02 22:04

My version of a man cave, but it's also a very productive working space.

SPEAKER_00 22:08

Speaking of happy, today is March the first. Thank God. Yeah. I guess considering, you know, is what they're calling it. Uh I tell you yesterday was beautiful. 60, 64, 65 degrees in Baltimore.

SPEAKER_01 22:23

Yeah, I'm really happy the weather's finally turning. Yeah, we had uh this cold was killing me.

SPEAKER_00 22:28

We took advantage of it. We um we originally met some friends down at um at Kissling's down in Baltimore. Um Kisslings has been there, I don't know, probably 60 some years, but they have the most famous wings in in Maryland. So we were meeting them down there and then uh the one of the people who were with us, she said, uh, why don't we head over there to um the uh cat's eye? Um one of your buddies is playing. So we went over there, had a good time, listened to some really good live music, and uh drank probably too many Guinness. I don't know, I guess I'm getting into that uh the St. Patrick's thing right now. I don't know if you guys even acknowledge St. Patrick's thing. Yeah. I'm Irish. Yeah, well I guess all three of us are Irish. I had somebody tell me the other day, you know, Mike, at your age, and I'm getting ready to turn 54. He said, you know, at your age, you you'd think that you had already grown out of that. And I just looked at them and I'm like, it's one, it's one day. What is it to grow out of? It's just a day of excitement and just, you know, I don't know, just having a good time.

SPEAKER_02 23:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:33

Everybody has their thing.

SPEAKER_02 23:34

Yeah. I mean, I'll now I got a pile of kids and everything else. I'm more likely to uh just have my St. Patrick's Day at home. I'm not necessarily gonna go out and hit the bars very often anymore for that.

SPEAKER_01 23:46

I just booked a gig in Annapolis after the parade. Yeah, did you at sea salt at 145 on Sunday? We have old man Jones on the seventh at Tower.

SPEAKER_00 23:57

Me and the boss, we head to Ocean City every year um for three or four days before. It's usually St. Patrick's Weekend. And uh we go down there and act like idiots, have a good time. And then nothing wrong with that. It takes us a week at this point now to recover. To recover. Yeah. Yeah. I'm with I guess I guess the guy was right. I guess at some point I will have to grow out of it. Man, it's putting up and it's wear and tear on the back.

SPEAKER_01 24:24

Yeah, right. Yeah, you absolutely have to start planning those. Epsom salt battles.

SPEAKER_02 24:31

Yep, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 24:32

So, what's new? Uh what's going on with you guys? Who are you guys having a studio now recording?

SPEAKER_02 24:38

So, right at this current moment, only Benny Clow.

SPEAKER_01 24:41

Our bass player.

SPEAKER_02 24:42

Um, yeah, so Benny's recording his next record here. Um three to four songs deep into the record now. I think we're working on the fourth song now.

SPEAKER_01 24:51

You have impressed me greatly on the guitar work in that.

SPEAKER_02 24:55

This has been a very function, it's such a departure from the last record for London Fog? Yeah, yeah. It's such a departure because if you heard the single that Benny put out, the Meet Me in the Woods cover song. Yes, I did. So that was really the setup for the next record, right? So that indie ambient Americana thing is what's happening in the new record. Very cool.

SPEAKER_01 25:16

So But also trying to, you know, like his albums have themes, so like London Fog is a London-based song. And it Aria Fire, which was more of like trying to incorporate Celtic elements, yeah, but also his, you know, classical style of of approach to music, and where the new album is it definitely has a stronger Celtic.

SPEAKER_02 25:39

It's it's straight up Irish, is what it is. I mean we're we've got Irish instrumentations being mixed into the record. It's uh you know, I had to figure out how to get samples of Irish hand drums the other day, which was a whole interesting thing to figure out. Any bagpipes? Uh not yet, but that's not off the table. Uh what was the Iliad pipes? We did Alien Pipes in one of them. Um that was in London Fog, though. Yep. The easiest way to think of those is like the very beginning of My Heart Will Go On, that little whistle. That's an alien pipe. Oh, that's very cool. So it's it's that sound.

SPEAKER_00 26:12

Um was this all Benny's idea, or was this kind of like a group?

SPEAKER_02 26:17

It was mostly Benny's idea of like, you know, wanting to incorporate Irish instrumentation and then seeing what we could make work, essentially. The alien pipes, he had a very definitive, like that's what he wanted. The Irish hand drum thing, we tried out a few different things. We settled on these things called botterins, yes. Um, which are awesome. They kind of like they're like Irish timpanies, basically, is the best way to explain them. Um, so those are super fun to play with. Uh, but I mean we're doing it all in Midian samples because I'm not going out and buying barterins. Yeah. But um just keep the tag on it, you know, use it one time. Well, I'll put it in my uh save for later thing on Amazon. Um but I'll justify those. But yeah, it's given me a chance to explore because I'm I play so much bass now, which for 90% of my life I've been a guitar singer. Um, but I've wanted an opportunity to play bass on a consistent basis. So Old Man Jones has afforded me that. And recording, in and of itself, has afforded me that because I get to do it with a lot of clients, though, depending on the project, sometimes Chris is playing bass lines. It all it's who's the best fit for the project, yeah, is the way we handle that.

SPEAKER_01 27:22

Yeah, I just handed one of mine and Brad Cox songs off to him because I just everything that I was coming up was either it was just following the guitar parts too much. I was so locked into the melodies and the rhythms that I was hearing in my head. I was like, I I need a different perspective, and I can't finish the drums until Brad Cox.

SPEAKER_00 27:39

Big shout out to Brad Cox over it's mouthful of graffiti.

SPEAKER_02 27:42

Yeah, absolutely. But yeah, so it with Benny's record, it's been a lot of fun to play a lot of guitar on his record. Um, and all the ambient electric stuff is me playing around with my single cloth guitars and a lot of reverb. He's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 27:58

It just blows my mind. Um I've always been a Benny fan um since Aria Fire. Yeah. Um I've to I mean, he used to play, he he used to play. Well, he plays at the brewery that I work part-time at. And um he would come in there and just blow the place out. He I think he had his first record release there, I believe Ariel. Yeah, it's cool.

SPEAKER_01 28:20

Right next to the register, the Arias on the wall right there. And then over by the bathrooms on that side wall is London Fog.

SPEAKER_02 28:29

The second record has a song named after the brewery, correct?

SPEAKER_00 28:32

Double Groove with the Brewery. That is correct, yes. Yes, it is.

SPEAKER_02 28:36

Yeah, which is actually a fun song. It's actually my favorite song on the show.

SPEAKER_00 28:39

It stays in play rotation. Uh, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_01 28:41

Broken arrows is mine.

SPEAKER_02 28:43

But um, but yeah, this is a very different record. Um, you know, it I mean, is this still gonna sound like Benny vocally? Yes, but we're doing a lot of treatment stuff with his voice with different reverbs and playing with distancing of vocal in places. So it's it's not gonna be a pop upfront vocal record, which is London Fall somewhat was a very upfront vocal record. This is gonna be a little more pulled back, um, which is interesting, but it's a lot of fun to work on. I would love that for you to record me one time. I would Dude, you just say like this is all available to you for just to hear, you know, what what you could do.

SPEAKER_00 29:22

That's I'm I mean, I know what Chris can do, and I I'm still in awe, you know what I mean.

SPEAKER_01 29:27

That was a fun two-hour night, and we finished a whole song and we're like, all right, let's release it. That's what's nice. I sent it to Kyle and he was like, No notes. Good song. I was like, Thanks, man. It's getting released on the yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:38

I um I'm working, I'm working on the vocals, I'm working on the uh lyrics for some of the other work that you sent me. So um I know our objective is sometime at the end of summer at least.

SPEAKER_01 29:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:49

So well, I mean there's no big badge because I have a song that I've been working on for him for like, I don't know, ten months that I haven't finished.

SPEAKER_01 29:58

Oh no, it's not yours anymore.

SPEAKER_02 30:00

It's his oh that's right. Yeah. No, wait, trains?

SPEAKER_01 30:03

Oh no, yeah. Trains different one. Trains is a different one. Trains is a different album. Trains was supposed to be story hour two. Yeah. Oh, really? Yeah. It's gonna end up being a weatherly album. We have been talking about writing another Weatherly album.

SPEAKER_02 30:15

Yeah, that one's gonna end up being a Weatherly song.

SPEAKER_01 30:17

We started and we released three singles, and that was it. We haven't written a thing together in six years. Has it been that long?

SPEAKER_02 30:27

Probably. Damn. It's been a minute. Um, but that song is one of my favorite lyrical devices. I I want to put the song out just because I want people to hear that lyric. Oh, but here comes the well, no, the whole thing is the the song is called Trains, right? The song's talking about seeing a light at the end of the tunnel, like getting to the end of something, but it's saying that light at the end of the tunnel is a train. Oh, okay. It's coming at you. Coming to hit you in the face. So that's the lyrical device. Like I'm striving towards this light at the end of the tunnel, like I could see it. Oh shit, it's a train. Gotcha. You know, like that. That's the lyrical device of the song. So I thought it was it was one of those, like, oh fuck, I'm clever moments.

SPEAKER_00 31:04

Right, right. Um very cool. But now you gotta put it on tape.

SPEAKER_02 31:09

There's a demo vocal in there. I need to actually sit down and sing it for real and finish, like he and I need to finish producing it.

SPEAKER_01 31:15

So yeah, when Kyle does vocals, I usually sit in the chair and I just hit the same three buttons over and over again until he tells me he's done. Or sometimes I'll just stop the recording and then he knows to stop and do it again because it sucked.

SPEAKER_04 31:29

Yep. Because it sucked.

SPEAKER_01 31:32

Well, me and me and Kyle are really critical of each other.

SPEAKER_04 31:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:38

And but we're unapologetically critical of each other because I'm not criticizing him as a musician. He's my business partner, he's my favorite musician to work with. Like, no offense, I love you. I love playing at a band with a lot of people. But you guys have been together 10 years. I get it. Yeah, but uh nobody has ever nobody has ever complimented me as a musician, not like giving me praise, but like been able to accentuate all the things that I've tried to be as a musician, just are naturally present when I'm playing with him.

SPEAKER_02 32:08

The fun thing about playing with Chris is we're familiar enough. Like we sat down right before you got here. Oh god, we haven't played those songs in ages. We haven't played any of the songs that we're gonna play later in for ages. He was like, uh, second chorus and the lead break of this one. We sat down and played. It was like we played it yesterday.

SPEAKER_01 32:25

I played one wrong, I played one wrong note, and I was like, Oh, nope, I go there. All right, we're good. Like riding a bike.

SPEAKER_02 32:31

But so it's stuff like that. Like it's just very natural for us to play together, which is is hard to come by sometimes. That's awesome. But yeah, I I just it's really interesting to work with Chris in those capacities.

SPEAKER_01 32:44

I will say a lot of playing with him live from like our acoustic sets to our full band stuff that we were doing with Weatherly, and not so much with Old Man Jones. Old Man Jones is very locked in. Like we play this is what we do, this is the record.

SPEAKER_00 33:00

Explain old man Jones to everybody, real quick. Everybody that does not. I I know a matter of fact, I just spoke to with John.

SPEAKER_02 33:08

Yeah, but uh explain it to everybody. Old Man Jones, uh John Amarillo, he's the impetus of Old Man Jones, right? At this point, Old Man Jones is a band, they are also a client of Weatherly Productions, even though Chris or I are part of that performance band. So it's a it's a weird symbiotic thing to an extent. But John came to us when his previous band, From Nothing, uh dissolved, you know, however that occurred. His thought was I have this pile of songs that were not heavy enough for that band because they were very metal-ish. Um these were more hard rocky kiss A C D Clutch clutch vein stuff. Yeah. And he was like, I just want to start recording these songs so I don't never do anything with them. So he's like, I'm just gonna do this solo project, call it old Man Jones thing. Came to the studio, Chris and I started working with them, put together the first record. When it came time for that record to be done, he wanted to go perform and do like a release. But now you need a band. So Weatherly, our live band, our drummer, his brother, uh, our bass player Colin, we were the backing band for John and Old Man Jones. And I played guitar, I didn't play bass those first couple shows. Right.

SPEAKER_01 34:25

Which it was really easy for us. It was a little harder for Nick and Colin, but it was easy for us because with the first Old Man Jones album, there's still like there's songs I listened back to on Crashing Down, and I don't remember who wrote or played what parts. Because back then him and I were still trading off back and forth and being like, Oh, you go ahead and take this one, or I got a tough week, you take this one. And because it didn't matter, like our bass playing was still very similar back then. Now we've figured out you know where his elements are and where my elements are, so we know how to split apart. So it was a lot easier for us, and it was kind of a no-brainer. But at that point with the first album when we started playing, I was still very much an I was still very much a hired gun for old man Jones. I was his producer and just his guitarist for the band. Now I'm one I wear my old man Jones hat almost every day. That's awesome. I am 100% old man Jones now. So it it evolved over time.

SPEAKER_02 35:23

You know, Chris's brother ended up not being able to play for them anymore.

SPEAKER_01 35:27

Uh Nick and his damn shoulder.

SPEAKER_02 35:29

Colin has another band, and Colin lives out in Frederick, so just logistics got a little hard with that.

SPEAKER_01 35:34

So shout out to Made for Meteors. Yeah, Colin to Made for Meteors. Want to jump on the podcast one day. Yeah, absolutely. They're they're wonderful. Cool. They're so talented too. They just played a great show last week at Tower.

SPEAKER_02 35:46

Yeah, and we did their first EP. Um, but yeah, so it just evolved, and eventually it was kind of like Chris and I looked at each other, all right. So which one of us is playing bass for old man Jones? And I was pretty damn adamant I wanted to do it.

SPEAKER_01 35:59

Yeah, but I was too because I had started playing bass for Mike Newberry a lot, and I was learning like all the STP bass lines and having so much fun playing bass, and even put together a nice little bass rig. And the first album, I wrote half the bass lines on the album. So me and him went back and forth, but what it boiled down to is I'm not as good a league guitarist as him, so he needed to play a lead guitar. And John's not playing all the solos live.

SPEAKER_04 36:24

Oh Lord.

SPEAKER_01 36:25

John only John plays, I guess about half. I'd say John probably plays 30%, 35% of the solos. I play 60, 70.

SPEAKER_02 36:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:35

He has a very recognizable voice. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:38

Very recognizable.

SPEAKER_00 36:39

Very raw, but like, you know, just a straight up rock voice. Yeah, when he sings, you know it's him, man.

SPEAKER_01 36:45

He's got that.

SPEAKER_00 36:45

Big shout out to John. Yeah. He projects.

SPEAKER_02 36:47

That is that is my favorite thing. You're not gonna not hear John ever.

SPEAKER_01 36:52

Um I also would want to just say that from John was a really good guitar part player when he came to us in the first place. But watching him evolve from the first album to we just released Harko, the third studio album, his guitar playing alone has just blown me away the last, you know, the last year, year and a half. From Shine Your Light to this album, he's just he's so precise now. Yeah. Before it was just like rocking.

SPEAKER_02 37:23

The other thing that's been really good for John, I think, is that because of just the relationship with the studio, when we have other artists in here when we need a lead or somebody to come in, like John comes in, does them half the time.

SPEAKER_00 37:34

That's a session. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 37:36

So, you know, half of the leads on Benny's records are John.

SPEAKER_00 37:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:39

Very cool. I didn't know that. Very cool. Um, so you know, and those most of the time, he just shows up. What am I playing on? All right, what key are we in? All right, give me a few minutes.

SPEAKER_01 37:50

And it just put something on a loop, let him write until Benny and I are like no offense, but John does not ask what key you're in.

SPEAKER_02 37:59

He might ask what note we're starting on, okay?

SPEAKER_01 38:03

What fret are you playing on?

SPEAKER_02 38:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:05

No offense, John. So we we everybody knows you guys um are great at doing all the original work, you know, with the band your weatherly and then with old man Jones. Each one of you individually, do you do any covers? I mean, I know a lot it might be taboo for some musicians. You know, I don't do covers, but I mean, do you cover any covers? Or you have anything against doing covers? You want to go or come out? So I want to go. Uh go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 38:35

Kyle's been doing covers his entire life. As soon as he picked up an acoustic guitar, that's all he did was covers. Okay. He was the cover guy in the bar scene. That's where he met his wife. That's where he cut his teeth. Very cool. And developed bands out of it the whole nine yards. I was never a cover person. I would learn just enough of other people's songs that interested me so I could kind of absorb their influence.

SPEAKER_02 39:01

Unless it was Dave Matthews, then he learned the songs.

SPEAKER_01 39:03

That was in college. I can play every Mike hates it. I know. I can I can play every Dave Matthews song and dream theater. You know, I learned a lot of dream theater stuff, but that was still to absorb the influence and the technical capabilities of it, and you know, just to build up my toolbox. It wasn't until when me and Kyle first started playing when we first started hanging out, actually, after Normandy Wood, we booked an acoustic, a three-hour acoustic cover gig set a week.

SPEAKER_02 39:32

So the the way this happened, I'm gonna back you up on this just a hair for the story, right? So we went up to what was Black Eyed Susie's at the time. It's now Dots Bear Mike. And individually, oh yeah, he played a song, a couple songs. I got up, played a couple of songs, we're sitting at a table talking. The host of the open mic, is also the booker for the venue, right? Comes up to us and is like, so next Saturday, you guys are playing uh four hours. Can you cover that? And we just kind of looked at each other like fuck it, I guess we'll figure it out.

SPEAKER_01 40:02

And we hadn't played covers together yet. At all. We had we had only ever we had only ever played we had only ever played seven songs from an original band. No stress at all. I took over for him as a guitarist, and we played one overlap show. After that show, he was out of the band and I was the new guitarist.

SPEAKER_02 40:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:21

And so we sat down with this book and just had sheets of paper all over the floor, and it's like, all right, what do we know we can play? So we went ahead and, you know, like Breakfast Etiphany's cumbersome, if you could only see became like our staple. That every cover gig that we play, we always play if you could only see. There was a bunch of songs that were just like three AM four chord acoustic songs that I've been playing forever.

SPEAKER_02 40:44

That I was like, listen, I just play just noodle. Do your thing in the background.

SPEAKER_01 40:48

And a lot of those songs I already knew, like I already knew how to play the solo for If You Could Only See because I like the solo and I wanted to learn how to play it. Never learned how to play the song before. So that gig I was definitely on book.

SPEAKER_02 41:01

Yeah, I mean, we were both on book. I say on book, but for cover gigs. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:06

Am I correct in saying that you are a Pearl Jam fan?

SPEAKER_02 41:09

So here's the funny thing. I will throw this at you. I am a huge fan of the first record, 10. Okay. It is one of the top five records of all time to me, period, end of subject. It end-to-end is a fucking phenomenal record.

SPEAKER_00 41:24

Perfectly produced.

SPEAKER_02 41:25

Exactly. It is part of what really converted me to a true rock and roll fan at that point in time.

SPEAKER_00 41:32

Is that a Brandon O'Brien? I think that I think Brandon O'Brien did that. I think so.

SPEAKER_02 41:35

Yeah. I think so. Yeah. Um Vitology verses I like. They're not my favorite records, but there are really good songs on both those records. There's a handful of great songs on each of those records. Beyond that, I'm less familiar with the catalog, if I'm being honest. Sure. Um I've heard snippets of singles and things and whatnot, and I generally I love Eddie Vetter's voice. Temple of the Dog record, another one of my favorite records of all time. Now, I would I put it up there in the top five, not necessarily, but it's one of my favorite records of all time. Um so big fan of what Pearl Jam does, but I will not say I am super versed in Pearl Jam. Got you.

SPEAKER_00 42:17

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 42:17

But the 10 record, Vitalogy Versus, great, great stuff.

SPEAKER_01 42:21

And he's one of your favorite bass players.

SPEAKER_02 42:23

And yes, Jeff Ament's one of my favorite bass players. I when I started playing bass full-time with Old Man Jones and I decided I needed a five-string, I started listening to a lot of Jeff Ament stuff because he plays five string and plays five string in a rock band. And hearing somebody apply that in the correct context was somewhat hard to find in a lot of cases. Right. Yeah. So and especially somebody who actually plays bass, not just a root note rock bass player, like somebody who's really playing bass lines. So I I took a lot of tutelage off of him when I started really digging into learning to play five string. Um, the last thing I wanted to do was be that bass player that other bass players laughed at. Like you have five string, you never touch fifth string. Like I I didn't want to be that guy. Right. Um, so I was like, I'm gonna apply myself here and actually do this.

SPEAKER_01 43:13

Yeah. Um so I mean, nowadays when it comes to cover stuff, um we'll still do cover sets for charity events. And so we'll do like, you know, a bunch of covers and then we'll do a bunch of originals because we want people to know our originals and be known more as a singer-songwriter-duo than a cover duo. Right.

SPEAKER_02 43:33

The the way I look at it for me personally, right, is you know, to augment the story at the very beginning of this, I also played with my stepdad playing country and classic rock covers all the way through high school and college. I played every Friday and Saturday night four and five hour gigs with them. So I was very burnt on playing covers at a point. Right. And that's why I kind of took the stance, just for me personally, if I'm gonna do cover.

SPEAKER_01 44:35

But uh when I started after Kyle and Mike Newberry gave me a lot of encouragement a couple years ago. Um right after the pandemic uh when everything started opening back up and start doing my own cover game. Um but there's a lot of times where I'll book a cover game and I'll be like, alright, I'll play with you. So he'll play guitar and sing and do the weatherly song. Other than that, it's my cover set, and he sits his ass on like a honey and just smiles and just beats away.

SPEAKER_02 45:11

Like I will show up to the end of your Christmas cover gun if I get to sit there and play the whole name like a time. Like that is so funny. That sounds like so funny.

SPEAKER_01 45:25

We need we have some uh some dialing in that we need to do on some new drum configurations that we're doing with micing and capture over there. I need him to come over and sit and just play for two hours. I brought it up to him uh last a couple weeks ago.

SPEAKER_00 45:44

He'll need a couple of edibles before he gets here, man. He'll be in that he'll be there all day.

SPEAKER_01 45:51

It doesn't matter what he played, we just need to know. And then hold our hand up and then tell him to go again.

SPEAKER_00 45:57

When I got here, you guys said you had to sit down, and we're going over some old songs. You guys want to play some music tonight? Absolutely. All right, guys, hang out with us, and we're gonna hear some live music from Weatherly.

SPEAKER_01 46:14

Thanks for having us.

SPEAKER_04 46:45

Trying not to think so much about you. I shouldn't care. I knew my place from the start, but I couldn't help open that find my way to new heart. But she's been seeing me tells me something. Time again to know me, time to bring me all while knowing them that's not fair. She's been seeing me all for the right. I can see the end. Maybe it's that look in your eyes, maybe it's that special something you have inside. She's been seeking me, tells me something can't know me all the while home in that's not fair. She's been seeking me. Up to enough around this time, she's still not. But she's been seeing me and feel of he's time that she's giving me the best thing I can. Time that she helps me to send me all the hair.