Today’s Song of the Day is “Babylon” by Lochridge & Co.
This one may be a little selfish on my behalf, because I did produce it. But I have a great reason for making it the song of the day!
Last night I visited Tuscumbia, AL for W.C. Handy Fest and the band performed the tracks from their EP that debuted yesterday. So, fresh on my mind in the hotel room this morning, I’m thinking back over the process of creating the track.
We started with a simple phone recording demo for charting. Bobby Sudekum actually laid down the drums before Cameron and Andy Lochridge dropped by to do their acoustic and electric parts, so they were really forced to follow his lead. I remember I recorded Andy’s amp too hot, but I chose to keep it as it was and worked around the extra crunching.
There was this issue with a line in the chorus that we couldn’t fit while the song was following the established tempo. I spent an entire evening reconstructing his vocal phrases to make something fit, while still being cohesive with the chorus, and we finally settled on, “look for the end to come.” It sang better, so we went with it.
During the project I invited several session musicians and vocalists to come and add some parts throughout. In some cases, there was little to no direction, because I wanted to see what would stick and was still grasping for some inspiration. In the case of “Babylon,” I just said “let’s make it weird.”
Andrew Worley added these dreamy little phrases, and I tucked some of them away in the mix, so they’ll poke out here and there after a few listens. Third Block opted for a darker electric piano tone and dropped some phrases in the open spaces. I wanted an organ to keep a Jim Morrison vibe going, so we used one to pad the entire mix.
The real treat is the background vocals. Cameron Lochridge has a unique voice, and it’s tough for the background singers to find a niche. So I opted for a choral sing along in the choruses with Cooper Lane and Mary Maggie that seemed to fit well enough.
I thought there might be room for some more and asked Mary Maggie to do some “singing stuff,” and I referenced Pink Floyd and the vocal warm-ups that made it into “The Great Gig in the Sky.” Mary Maggie went back and added the ooh’s and aah’s and the last few phrases of the song and it magically transformed into a new song—finally hitting that vibe of a late night drive that was slightly “under duress.”
Lastly, I decided to get extra creative and used the Cascadia plugin to reverse the delay trails on her ooh’s and aah’s. This led me to reverse the reverb tail on Cameron’s lead in phrase—a nod to what I remember was done to Eddie Vedder often on Pearl Jam tracks such as “Jeremy.”
I remember the demo track—and we came a long, long way with this one. So, I’m letting it be my song of the day!
Check it out if you haven’t heard it!
