LAST CALL
JOHN BOHLINGER
I had a long, interesting night. I played
an outdoor show at noon in the blistering
Tennessee heat, which makes hell not sound
all that bad. I got home in a semi-catatonic
state and wasted a few hours mindlessly
You Tubing and eating ice cream. Around 5
p.m., Taillight, a Nashville film production
company, called with a problem: CMT did a
series of spots that featured a Kid Rock song,
and although the tracks worked perfectly
and they had licensing for the music, CMT
did not have licensing for the actual Kid Rock
recording. They needed the track re-recorded
by yesterday. Suddenly I was wide awake,
pumped up on adrenaline, high on stress.
Copping Kid Rock
DR-880 for some tom and snare fills. The timing
was not perfect, but it didn’t need to be. Kid
Rock’s track wasn’t about perfection—it was
about attitude, and love him or hate him, you
have to admit that K.R. drips attitude.
I mixed it and emailed my version of the song
to the producer, Tom Forrest. Tom replied,
“Great... you nailed it. The guitars are a bit too
bright, but other than that, it’s perfect.” I wondered if I wasn’t hearing accurately, fearing that
my loud afternoon gig had robbed my hearing
of a few frequencies. I pumped up the bass
track, shaved some highs off the main mix and
sent it back. Tom replied, “Great… that’s the
sound. Now we need the other three.”
They sent me a link to a site containing four
video segments featuring the music tracks.
Assuming they were all the same, I downloaded
the first one and began studying the drums.
I wrote a crude drum chart and searched my
files of loops, luckily finding a good match on
EZdrummer about 30 minutes into my search.
I copped the guitar part—a very cool, drop-D
heavy sludge—using my HomeBrew overdrive
into my Valve Train amp for a completely nasty,
Detroit rock tone. I scooped out all the highs
and most of the lows, dimed the mids and
doubled the track, then added a bass part
recording direct into my Digi 002 board.
I had hoped that they had used the same track
for each video segment. Regrettably, that
wasn’t the case. I downloaded the other three,
opened a new Pro Tools file and began searching for the right drum groove. Once the drums
were roughly in, I laid down the guitar part, but
felt I kept missing the groove near the end of
the track. I suspected that my meter was going
south because I was beginning to feel tired. I
re-tracked... same thing.
a house on quicksand but thinking he can
fix the shoddy foundation with a good coat
of paint. I finished the track, eager to move
on to the remaining two, but plagued with a
sick feeling of guilt over a job done poorly. I
tried to sweeten the mix, but the last seven
seconds sounded like a bad high-school band
had taken over. I went back to the session
and began soloing every track where it began
to go to hell. That’s when I discovered the
classic Pro Tools voodoo. While recording in
haste, in my sleep-deprived delirium, I had
somehow bumped the tempo up 4 clicks near
the end. Four clicks was not that obvious with
drums alone, but a horribly herky jerky jump
when I added guitar. Rather than fix this track
I deleted the entire session so as not to invite
the voodoo mojo back in. Because I knew my
parts, the new recording went very quickly; it
was finished within 30 minutes.
There were a few drum variations that my
loop didn’t have, so I took out some killer
Sabian cymbals and smacked them on accents,
recording with a Shure KSM44, and then manually pounded on the keypads of my old Boss
I remembered an article I read about a guy who
had undergone a series of medical tests proving that he had no sense of rhythm. I began
to wonder if I had spontaneously developed
that anomaly. I tracked the guitar again, and
it felt off, but I reasoned that I could fix the
glitch once I added bass and a lead part. This
is the sonic equivalent of a carpenter building
Of the other two songs, one was a slight variation from the first two, while the final song
was a bigger departure featuring a big guitar
solo. I followed the guitar solo note for note at
the head and then just blew for the rest, which
was really fun. I mixed the remaining three
songs and emailed .aiff files to the producers.
I awaited their reply for half an hour on sharp
pins and needles, dreading that they hated
the tracks and were already going through
their phone book for my replacement. Then I
realized it was 3 a.m.—by now they were deep
into their third REM cycle.
The next morning I got the email thanking me
for the tracks, which felt good, but the real
reward came when I heard my guitar thundering on television two days later. I saw Kid Rock
strutting to the groove with the cool, cockiness
of a man digging his own music. I wondered
if he any idea those were my tracks cut in my
little home studio. Mr. Bob Ritchie, if you are
reading this, call me if you want to go way low
budget on your next recording. We’ll kick it
Nash-ghetto style.
John Bohlinger
John Bohlinger is a Nashville guitar slinger who works
primarily in television, and has recorded and toured with
over 30 major label artists. His songs and playing can be
heard in major motion pictures, major label releases and
literally hundreds of television drops. For more info visit
johnbohlinger.com or youtube.com/user/johnbohlinger
