Recording and producing “I Will” – from Doug

Following the “Download of the Month” release, members of MBG will share their thoughts about that song in subsequent blog posts. We hope it’ll give you a greater appreciation for the tune and all that went into writing and recording it. Enjoy!

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I wasn’t around for the initial writing and jamming sessions for this song. I suspect that at last one Bad Guy envisioned this as something of a Jack Johnson-type groove, and though I have no problems with that, I could hear a little more color to it. Oddly enough, given some of my “day jobs,” I don’t usually work a lot of 80’s-ish influences into my original material and studio work these days, but I heard touches of Squeeze and even Madness in this song, along with some blue-eyed soul possibilities. So I encouraged Steve to stick with a Vox Continental rather than his more typical Hammond-type sounds on the organ, for a little of that 80’s retro-60’s feel (are we starting to get a little “meta” at this point?), and I worked on angular guitar parts that were intended to be a little bit Steve Cropper, a little bit, well … in truth, there’s a bit that’s fairly well nicked from “Der Kommissar,” if I’m not mistaken. I put together a horn arrangement that definitely tipped it over into soulful territory, and to my surprise, the band went for it.

From a technical point of view, this was an easy session. We tracked the rhythm section live (two or three takes, tops, I believe), and overdubbed everyone’s parts pretty much as played live. I added a second guitar track for the solo, so I could keep the chicken-picking part going underneath; Jerry overdubbed a harp for the outro; I overdubbed a bunch of hand percussion. Steve added his tight harmonies and Jerry suggested that I beef up the vocal tags leading into the instrumental break with 3-part harmonies surrounding Les’ lead. And then, of course, we brought in Kirk Vernon and Jim Welch to do their magic with the horn arrangement.

We’re just finding our feet as an original band, but the material we’ve written so far tends at least a bit towards the more rootsy folk-rock styles that we favor in our cover set. “I Will” definitely stands out to me as something a little bit different. Only time will tell if it turns out to be indicative of our new sound or only a fun aberration, but it certainly was the obvious choice to debut with – fun, day-glo, catchy.