Turtlerock Forum

I just downloaded Barnestorming from iTunes to listen to while I work and was wondering if anyone here knew anything about the post production. Did Jimmy overdub his vocals or is that what was recorded on the night. His pitch is really good.

Haven't heard Barnestorming, but I worked on Freight Train Heart back when I was an assistant and his vocal skills are really impressive. Vocals in the control room with a handheld (It was a Beyer from memory) and the monitors nice an louuuud. Possibly the most energetic studio performer I've ever encountered, and a very nice person to even the underlings like me.

I was the keyboard tech on that tour.

Who was the band Steve? It's a great vibe on the record.

while we are giving self pats on the back
i was the mastering engineer !
and on freightrain heart as well , were you at rhino in those days andy ? we must have met

i was there one night when jim cut the vocals to the title track (actually called still on you side..)
he was in the main room , u87 into the ssl desk mic pre with a la2a on inserts, al wright engineering , niven garln assisting
mike stone producing , and rick o'neil just drooling , it was the greatest vocal track i have ever seen recorded and i do not say that lightly .. it gave me goose bumps then and still does now.

steve prestwich told me the other day now that jim is sober he can sing like that everynight !

but to answer your question kris barnstorming always sounded shit to me the vocals are real and i think the video was a AAV remix

musikwerks wrote:Who was the band Steve? It's a great vibe on the record.

Dave Amato and Robin Riley (Rose Tattoo) were playing guitar on that tour I think and Bruce Howe on bass.
Dont remember the drummer or keyboard player - was pre Jonathan Cain..

TimS wrote:

musikwerks wrote:Who was the band Steve? It's a great vibe on the record.

Dave Amato and Robin Riley (Rose Tattoo) were playing guitar on that tour I think and Bruce Howe on bass.
Dont remember the drummer or keyboard player - was pre Jonathan Cain..

I correct myself..
Johnny Diesel and Dave Amato - guitars
Chris Bailey - bass
Tony Brock - drums
Peter Kekell - keys..

good old Google eh!!

I must correct myself - I was on the tour that was called Barnstorming, that came after the album was released. It was the promotional tour for the album. It was Jim's biggest tour of his career. Nor sure where the actual album was recorded, I started working for him a few months after the record came out.

[quote="rick"] were you at rhino in those days andy ? we must have met
[/quote]

Rick, I was at Metropolis in Melbourne. Al and Mike came down for a while to mix, then Jimmy came down for vocal o'dubbs. Mike was doing that mastering to half inch thing at like +12 or thereabouts. I'd never seen anyone do it before, it was freaky. Those two were heaps of fun to work with, but man they mixed loooouuuud. I think Alan smoke 2 pairs of JBL's in those sessions...

ahh .. hmm should i tell you ...
well ...the bad news andy is in the wash up they did not use any of those sessions !
and i promise you i am the only person on the planet who would know that !

jim came in with 10 road cases full of two years work and they said lets listen to every mix from every session ( which we did !)
three or four days later , i cut together a set of "final" mixes all rhino tapes some mark opitz versions some mike stone versions but no metro ones ..and then because jim egged me on i had "a go" at mastering a vinyl cut for the boys to listen to
when they went home
then they sent the compiled 1/2" tape i made to bob ludwig at masterdisc NYC to master .

to my total amazement , jim and mike rejected bobs cut and insisted on going with my version (mike said hell that kid cut "too much love" for us and thats a huge hit .. his lp version sounds great i dont care how young he is - lets go with his album version.. jim said yeah lets go aussie f@#$ the yanks "

i think i was 18 or 19 at the very start of my career , bob was maybe 40 and at the peak of his.
its one of the proudest moments of my working life life (ie outcutting the "master")

now if the bastards had put my name on the record instead of Bob ludwigs i could just stop work and roll around in the glory :).
it did keep me working solidly for ten years though
i should add i have out cut bob a few times since and recently in fact :)
err i should also add he has outcut me so many times i have lost count :(

yeah i know .... i am like a gambler ..you never hear about the losses :)

Cool story, I remember road cases full of tapes from studios all over the globe. I got paid either way :)
I have one of the test pressings Mike gave me, I think it's of Too Much.

white label ..?
if you dig it out , i am sure i wrote something about a "BLT sandwich" in the runout groove
mike had me write some porn filth in the grooves but the QC ladies got really offended and i had to
swap it over .

mike had asked for some food one day , i said sure what to you want , he said "a BLT and a cherri pepsi"
i said " this is festival records you can have a sausage roll and a drink of water"
he fell over laughing

did he tell you he mixed double platnium for kiss ?
...i told him he would be better off sticking to the led zepplin credits -
he fell over laughing

for years i thought it was me .. i am such a funny guy
but it was only him who falls over laughing at my jokes

i think it may have been the coke

kris did you set this post up so i could tell war stories ?
...falls over laughing

rick wrote:now if the bastards had put my name on the record instead of Bob ludwigs i could just stop work and roll around in the glory :)

i wouldn't believe that this sort of thing could happen except that it's happened to me more than once... often comes down to politics. or a sly re-do when the artist doesn't want to upset the original engineer... or the artwork has already been done... or my favourite... "well we prefer your version but we've paid shite-loads for this big name US guy to do it" (not to mention having his name on it looks more serious than mine!) "so we'd better use that one... thanks though."

but hey that's the biz... if we were in it for the glory... ummm not sure how to finish that thought.

I've had that happen to me as well. It was just stupid politics that caused it. Someone was trying to make a name for themselves and didn't really understand that it was my work that made them sound so good. To this day I feel my track is the strongest one on the album. At least my vocal tracks were all in tune!!! Never let a singer produce themselves!

Rick, I dig these stories. It's far more interesting to me than some record company marketing spiel. I've been tossing around the idea of documenting some of these things on film. They have been touched lightly by some previous documentaries but have been so lacking in detail that they're just fluff at the end of it. We should talk.

As for Barnestorming... When I was 18 my mate had an old Ford something or other and it had a killer CD system. We used to drive around with Chisel and Jimmy cranked so loud. Barnestorming might sound crap to you in your room but at midnight on a Saturday night with a bunch of your mates in tow it's the greatest sounding record ever. The playing is real.... no cut and paste, and Lizotte/Diesel is a fiend on guitar.

And today, it's making the endless hours polishing a reality tv show a little more bearable.

[quote="rick"]kris did you set this post up so i could tell war stories ?
...falls over laughing[/quote
Hey Rick, you on the coke again?
At Metrop we could get you BLT's....

Chinagraf wrote:

rick wrote:kris did you set this post up so i could tell war stories ?
...falls over laughing[/quote
Hey Rick, you on the coke again?
At Metrop we could get you BLT's....

only coke i have ever been on comes in red cans and i have been on lots of it :)
what about a cherry pepsi , could you get one those at metrop in 1986?

Um, I was so dumb at that point that if you asked for a cherry pepsi I would have brought you a pepsi with a couple of cherries in it.

metropolis HAD cherries, damn !
i worked at the wrong place

Chinagraf wrote:Um, I was so dumb at that point that if you asked for a cherry pepsi I would have brought you a pepsi with a couple of cherries in it.

Hate to think what you have come back with if someone had asked for a dogs eye? :)

What's a dogs eye? Is that like a left handed long weight?

cold chisel played at my end of year school social.....burnside town hall 1976
I helped put up some par cans :)

Chinagraf wrote:What's a dogs eye? Is that like a left handed long weight?

Hahaha it's a meat pie, yep very lucky no-one ask for one. heh

Imagine actually dragging a dead horse into the studio.

ok,

this thread got me all keen to see barnesy, you old buggers carrying on about him and all that..

so, i scammed a ticket to see him at the tivoli in brisbane last night (not the greatest sounding venue, but about the best brizvegas has to offer).

pretty amazing show. the band were awesome. davey lane on guitar was great (i was really hoping he would still be in the band, i think he's an excellent guitarist and a lovely guy, its just a sad coincidence that you am i went off the boil when he joined).

i couldn't pick the other guy on git - one of you must know who he is. he was an older guy with a crazy 'guitar face'.

the drummer had a ridiculously massive kit - about 7 cymbals that i could see - but he was tight.

sweet keys player. and the guy who sang b/ups and mossie's part on 'ain't nobody gonna steal this heart away' was suberb.

My only complaint - and its a real slight one - was jimmy's voice wasnt a+. i would say b to b+. they had a noticable amount of long-ish delay on it, which i didn't think was needed. i'm being totally harsh here, but i really wanted to be slayed by the vocal - i was in parts, the 3 song encore was the best part of the show, the whole band tore it a new one and jimmy really got into it. but it didn't give me the chills up the spine i was hoping for. maybe i went in with my expectations slightly too high...

has anyone else seen these run of shows that are happening right now?

oh, if you're in brisbane tuesday night you should see if you can get along. all in all it was a pretty great rock n roll show.

I'm pretty sure it's Jackie Barnes on drums, Jimmy's son.

I have the live at the Enmore Theatre dvd and have to say, I feel as though Jackie has no feel. He is all over every song like a bad rash. A deft touch he most certainly does not have. Some would say that Jimmy's music requires a heavy hand and to a point I'd agree but to me it seems like Jackie was just beating the kit to death.... really distracted me from the music itself.

[quote="toddd"]ok,

this thread got me all keen to see barnesy, you old buggers carrying on about him and all that..

so, i scammed a ticket to see him at the tivoli in brisbane last night (not the greatest sounding venue, but about the best brizvegas has to offer).

pretty amazing show. the band were awesome. davey lane on guitar was great (i was really hoping he would still be in the band, i think he's an excellent guitarist and a lovely guy, its just a sad coincidence that you am i went off the boil when he joined).

the whole band tore it a new one and jimmy really got into it. but it didn't give me the chills up the spine i was hoping for. maybe i went in with my expectations slightly too high...

has anyone else seen these run of shows that are happening right now?

oh, if you're in brisbane tuesday night you should see if you can get along. all in all it was a pretty great rock n roll show.[/quote]



i am sure has had way more nights when his voice was horrible then sublime nights when its perfect
but i keep hearing he is in the best form of his life , i must find my industrial ear muffs and go and check it out