Behind The Scenes #13
Steve McQueen
  (link to video)

First, I wanted to mention that for those of you who prefer interacting on Instagram rather than Facebook or email, I'm now on Instagram. So in addition to email and Facebook notifications, I will also begin to notify my Instagram followers of upcoming song and video releases. Click the icon to follow.

It's always such a pleasure to work Suzie. She sings everything so well and she is always so happy and excited to work on recordings and video projects. She is a pure joy to work with, so I was really looking forward to do this collab project with her. Suzie gave me a short list of songs that we might do. I recognized all of them except this Sheryl Crow song called Steve McQueen. So I checked it out and I immediately loved it. It opened with a catchy riff, nice build through the verses, a strong chorus with great harmonies in the chorus, and a lot more. Since it was new to me and we both liked to song so much it was the obvious choice.

Recording this song was pretty straightforward. I listened to the Sheryl Crow version a few times, then turned on the recorder and started laying down tracks. I think the verse and chorus chords are right, I'm pretty sure the chords I chose for the bridge (the "rap" section) are different, but I think they fit the song nicely. Every instrument got a chance to do some fancy stuff here and there, which always makes a song fun to play. Sheryl Crow plays the main riff on a telecaster, but I keep my tele in the alternate open G tuning (ala Keith Richards) so I used my stratocaster instead. I also used it for most of the leads. The only other electric guitar I used was the ES335 for the stabs. No deep reason for that... as I recall I was hanging the strat back up on the wall when I realized that I had forgotten to do the stabs. The ES335 happened to be hanging right next to the strat, so I grabbed it and used it. 😀 My trusty Fender Jazz bass and my go-to Gibson SJ200 acoustic guitar rounded out the rhythm section.

I sent Suzie the basic tracks so she could rehearse the vocal. She came over one evening and recorded the vocals, but it was a warm day and I had a ceiling fan running and it totally messed up her track -- which I didn't even notice until the following day. So, she came back again to re-record them. Then I added some harmony vocals to the chorus.

This song was a lot of fun to put together. It also prompted me to rewatch the chase scene from Bullitt, which is a pretty cool watch, even 54 years after it was made.