CLICK HERE TO LISTEN: Chris Smith & Steve Sidorak: California Stars (Wilco cover)
I've decided that I want to capture some jam sessions from time to time with musician friends of mine and share them with you all here. For this entry, my good friend, Steve Sidorak, and I spent an afternoon a little while back messing around with my home studio set up. After playing him some of the tracks I was working on just before the release of my Imaginary Fears album, I take nearly full responsibility for him dropping quite a few bucks to grab a MacBook and buying the amazing Logic Pro recording software the very next week!
He and I met up for an afternoon with intentions of recording some music, but we hadn't discussed in advance what it was that we might record. We decided for purposes of getting something done quick, that we were looking for some songs that had a pretty easy arrangement and nothing too complicated. After batting around a couple of ideas, one of us suggested "California Stars" by Wilco. It is the same 1-5-4 progression repeating throughout. We found the tempo, Steve laid down a few acoustic rhythm tracks in stereo, I added the piano, bass and drums and Steve belted out one or two takes of the lead vocals. (I had since asked him about sharing it with you all, and he said that he'd prefer to do another cut of the vocals, so I ran the tracks again and sang it... will share again when we re-record him).
We had pretty much the whole thing done within a couple of hours of trying out some things. I regret that we didn't have some photos from that day to share as we were working on it. But we do have a pretty good rough recording. Check it out by clicking below! Hope you all like it!
Chris Smith & Steve Sidorak: California Stars (Wilco cover)
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~ Chris