On The Record: Franz Nicolay & Jim Keller On "Luck & Courage"
DOWNTOWN BROOKLYN: At 5AM, multi-instrumentalist Franz Nicolay woke up from a dream with a full song and lyrics, newly formed, in his head. He grabbed his laptop, wrote it all out, and went back to sleep.
“Usually when you wake up later on and look at what you’ve scribbled down in the middle of the night, it reads like some kind of stoned epiphany: ‘Blue is blue,’ or something,” Nicolay relays. But not this time…
Banjo-accordion-keysman, Franz Nicolay
The keyboard/accordion/banjo, etc.-playing former keysman for The Hold Steady woke up to more than a song. What he had was the ill-fated love story of two characters named Felix and Adelita. “I don’t know anyone by those names, so I Googled them and it turns out that in Latin and Spanish the names mean Luck & Courage,” Nicolay explains. “And that’s the name of the [new] record.”
Nicolay is quick to point out that Luck & Courage is not a concept record, however. “I wrote a couple songs about these characters which are then mapped loosely against these other songs which are about a plague,” he describes. “So it’s the story of the troubled relationship of Felix and Adelita writ large on this story of a country that’s ravaged by plague.”
Now, we’re sitting in producer/engineer Jim Keller’s Brooklyn studio, sun streaming in through big windows over the mixing desk, as Keller cues up the album-opening track, “Felix and Adelita.” Freshly mixed just the day before, it’s Nicolay’s musical reverie come to life, and the church organ, banjo, slide guitar and brushed drumming set a sentimental, if not dark, tone.
“I wanted it to be a dark country record,” Nicolay describes. “One of the records I was thinking of when I was conceptualizing how I wanted this to sound is Lyle Lovett’s I Love Everybody.
“That record uses a simple drum kit with brushes, bass and Lovett playing guitar and singing. So there’s that sort of classic country rhythm section. And then a string quartet that’s playing the kind of arrangements you’d have on a big, lush 70s Nashville record, but compacted because they didn’t do it with a 50-piece orchestra they did it with 4 string players. I thought that was a really neat way of reinterpreting that sort of lushness, while retaining this really stringent, humble arrangement of the record.”
As Nicolay headed into the studio to record Luck & Courage other references he had in mind were American Music Club’s Mercury and 16 Horsepower’s Low Estate. “The banjo and accordion from 16 Horsepower, the pedal steel stuff from American Music Club and the string stuff for the Lyle Lovett record are like the three touch-points for this record,” he depicts.
WRITING & RECORDING LUCK & COURAGE: BROOKLYN to HOBOKEN AND BACK
Nicolay wrote the songs for Luck & Courage on piano and guitar, as well as banjo, which he’s taken up since his debut solo record, Major General, released in January of ‘09. “On one of the Hold Steady tours, I demo’d a half-dozen of my songs in a motel room in Boulder with the guitar tech who had Pro Tools on his laptop,” Nicolay shares. “I pitched them to The Hold Steady, but then ultimately left the band, so I took them with me.
Nicolay wrote much of “Luck & Courage” while touring his first solo record, ’09’s “Major General.”
“Then in the fall of last year, I was on a solo tour supporting Mark Eitzel of American Music Club and we were in Manchester, staying at this house that’s sort of a legendary rock crash pad that has a piano and a bunch of rooms for the bands that come through. I had a day off and the place all to myself; I spread out and had my headphones on and guitar out, and all in one day, all these lyrics came together to this collection of songs I’d been working on. That was the first day I thought ‘wow, this is what my record’s going to sound like.’ It was a really cool feeling.”
In the meantime, Nicolay had met Keller during the making of his friends’ record, the NYC rock band Demander’s album, Future Brite. “I was just blown away by how good that record sounded, and I knew I wanted to try to do something with Jim,” he notes. “So I came in here and we demo’d the vocals on those existing songs and banged out a couple more that I’d written in the meantime and lived with those for awhile before we officially started the record.”
Keller, meanwhile, set out to find the right studio in which to record Nicolay and band as a group and to capture the desired sound. They ended up at Excello Recording in Williamsburg to track basics. “It’s a great, huge live room with two or three huge windows,” says Keller of Excello. “And we came away with really good sounds. We tracked 11 songs in two days. Everyone was very well rehearsed and getting good sounds in that room was easy. The assistant, Nathan Rosborough, was also really great.”
Tracking Luck & Courage, Nicolay’s band included Brian Viglione (The Dresden Dolls) on drums, Yula Be’eri (World/Inferno Friendship Society) on bass and Maria Sonevytsky (The Debutante Hour) on piano. Other players on the record include Ben Holmes, Jared Scott (Demander), Mark Spencer (Sun Volt), Ken Thomson (Gutbucket), Emily Hope Price and Jeremy Styles (Pearl and the Beard), and Susan Hwang among others.
Keller captured a lot of “room” in the basic tracking sessions. “I put up a lot of different room mics, which is something I usually do when tracking a band,” he explains. “You get all the close mics and the main mics on the drums sounding good, and then you add the fun mics. You never know what you’ll get — especially in a room you haven’t worked in before — so I’ll put mics up in a couple random spots.
“This time, I took Excello’s old RCA 77, ran it through their Altec tube amp and just smashed it. Sometimes you’ll get something that could be just perfect to be featured in one section of the song.”
Keller made an exciting technical discovery at Excello one night after everyone had left. “Excello has this old Calrec board from the BBC, and we didn’t use the pre’s in the board (I used their Neve sidecar and the API pre’s), but at the end of the day, when I was printing roughs of the monitor mixes, I patched a couple of the board compressors in. These Calrec DL 1656 compressors that I’d never used before are awesome. Now I’m totally on a search to find a pair that I can rack up!”
Nicolay and Jim Keller listening back to “Luck & Courage” mixes at Keller’s studio in Brooklyn.
After capturing the band sound at Excello, including drums, bar room-sounding upright piano, banjo, bass and guitar, Keller and Nicolay booked a couple days at Water Music in Hoboken to record strings, Hammond A100 organ, group vocals and grand piano. “We took the doors off of the piano booth there and put some room mics out in that big live room,” Nicolay points out.
Keller reflects on his spacious production approach: “The way sound behaves in a room is what makes a record exciting, which is what I hear when I listen to old records that I like. Spot- and close-miking things is great, but you don’t give the sound a chance to work around the room and build up its energy. When you put up a lot of mics in different places and you keep the pre’s pretty wide open, you bring those up in a mix and it’s like all of a sudden adding this energy to the track.”
“For the control and the dynamic element of the piano and drums, everything gets a spot mic, but the room mics are in almost all the way too,” he notes. “So you get the dynamic sense from the close mics and the sense of space and energy from the room mic.”
OVERDUBS & MIXING BACK IN BED-STUY
Nicolay’s commanding lead vocals were tracked at Keller’s studio back in Bed-Stuy. “We cut all the vocals, acoustic guitar, banjo, horns, cello and percussion here,” Keller explains, pointing back from the control room area to a small, glass-doored room he uses for overdubs.
On the day of our visit, Keller was mixing with hopes to finish before Nicolay left on tour with Against Me! He’d be out with the band all summer. “I’ve been a fan and friend of Against Me! for years so I’m excited to go on tour with them,” says Nicolay, who’s also been a member of the Brooklyn-based cabaret-punk collective, World/Inferno Friendship Society. “Plus, it’s coming at the right time — basically, the Against Me tour is paying for this record! (laughs)”
Keller in the zone.
Prior to mixing, Keller had been having technical problems with the automation on his Amek Big 44 console and, ultimately, decided to mix the record in Logic.
“I’d been thinking about what would be the most efficient way to mix this record,” explains Keller. “I like faders, but the last two records I’ve done, I’ve mixed in Logic to surprising (for me) results! To the point where I’m second-guessing my setup here — do I even need this console and all this stuff?”
He continues: “For me, it’s all about the workflow. And I’ve gotten this thing down to where mixing in Logic is really fast.”
As for the sonic processing palette inside Logic, Nicolay offers, “I’ve always been super impressed by the plug-ins that are bundled with Logic.” To that, Keller adds, “Yeah, and I’m using all stock plug-ins. The only thing I’m running out for is to go through my SSL clone compressor, a couple of dbx 160x’s and a 1/4″ tape machine for tape delay, but, for example, the Logic Silver compressor is great. It’s all really useable stuff, right there. I don’t need to buy thousands of dollars of plug-ins — it’s just not necessary for me.”
We’ll have to sweat out the rest of the summer before hearing anymore of Luck & Courage — Nicolay expects the record will come out sometime this Fall. After a spin of another album track, the horn-heralded lament, “My Criminal Uncle,” it seems Felix and Adelita’s star-crossed fate is sealed, and we are left captivated, wanting more.
Catch Nicolay on tour with Against Me! at a venue near you and visit him online at http://www.franznicolay.com. For more on Jim Keller and to get in touch, visit http://www.jim-keller.com.