Kaki King recorded this year’s Junior and 2008’s Dreaming of
Revenge at Le Maison Bleu, a studio near Woodstock, New
York, that’s owned by Malcolm Burn. While Burn produced
both discs and 2008’s Dreaming was essentially a collaboration between King and him, Junior was a band project.
“I think, conceptually, Kaki felt she wanted to make a
recording that could be taken out on the road and recreated,” says Burn. “There were a few tracks on the last
record that featured a lot of orchestration. To perform them
live, Kaki had to get a little five-piece orchestra together
to get the point across. Touring is her bread-and-butter, so
this time she wanted to record music that could translate
easily from the studio to the stage. My only concern going
into this project was that her guitar remained central to her
music and didn’t get overshadowed by the drummer’s virtuosity. Her guitar is half the reason people buy and listen to
her records, so I didn’t want anything to take away from the
intricacy of her performances.”
Burn used a dual-amp rig for many of the electric-guitar
parts King tracked live with the band. “I ran a Fender Super
Reverb, set pretty loud and clean, in tandem with an old
Gibson Skylark 1x10 combo,” he details. “I plugged Kaki’s
guitar into the Skylark and then ran a jumper cord out from
the Skylark’s second input jack into the Super Reverb’s input.
For overdubs, we also used an Ampeg Gemini combo.
“I used Sennheiser MD 409 dynamic mics on the amps. To
mic Kaki’s acoustic, I’ll typically use a Neumann U 67. On
Junior, I mostly used a Neumann U 47 for her vocals, but
in the past we’ve also used a Sony C-37A. I generally favor
API and Calrec mic preamps, and I’m also a big fan of those
funky little Bellari MP105 tube preamps.
“I’m running a Pro Tools HD system, but mentally I treat
the computer like a 24-track tape machine with a dedicated
hardware channel connected to a respective Pro Tools track.
Each track’s output has a channel on my big analog console,
which was made by an offshoot of Amek. I try to stay away
from the internal processing aspect of Pro Tools—all the
plug-ins and stuff. I really don’t have the time, patience, or
energy for that—or the gullibility to believe that plug-ins will
make my record sound a whole lot better. Apart from the
occasional de-esser plug-in, I use outboard effects. I’ll use
automation when I have to, but I prefer to mix a song manually. This way, each mix becomes a performance. I think this
technique is still valid because it allows you to spontaneously
come up with something you hadn’t thought of, as opposed
to preconceiving the sonic outcome and just working toward
that inevitability. It’s a more painterly approach, I suppose.”
