LUCINDA WILLIAMS
I met Lucinda and her husband, Tom, through my brother. They were regulars at the restaurant he ran and they had become friends over the course of a couple years. When they were going into the studio for Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone, Tom asked if I wanted to come in and get some footage for a day.
All I really knew going in was that Lucinda did not like camera’s in her face or distractions in the studio. I understood that this was her space. It wasn’t an ego thing…this was their church, and I just knew I needed to respect it as such.
I loved that they recorded live. I loved watching the creative process. I loved watching the collaborative process. I loved that, if I was in the actual studio, I couldn’t hear anything but the drums, since they’re all hearing each other over headphones, but I could tell something special was happening every day by the looks on their faces.
How do we make it
Special?
My approach was to make sure to introduce myself to anyone, so that they saw me as a human being and not just a guy with a lens pointed at them. But then I would drift into the mist and try my best to be unseen. My goal was to make sure they at least had a sense that they could trust me. After the first day, I got asked back.
And then…
It wasn’t until about day 5 that I really started to understand the people I was in that little room with. I started to realized that the guy on that guitar is often referred to as the master of steel guitar, or that the other guitar player is one of the best jazz guitarists in the world. Or that the drummer and bass player on some tracks are Elivs Costello’s Rhythm section, or that this hilarious old guy hammering away at the piano was the piano player for the Faces, and played with the Rolling stones for a while. Even something like when Tony Joe White came in. This grizzled guy with this deep voice and this gnarly bayou roll to his guitar sound, was the guys who had played some tracks that my dad had played me when i was a kid, and I still knew some of the words to.
One of the Best Opportunities Ever…
Over the next year I think i shot 11 studio days, 4 LA shows and spent a week on the road with them from Red Rocks to Kansas. A few of the songs I shot were moved to the following album, Ghosts of Highway 20.
The edits were the biggest challenge. Really, a great mix of fun and challenging. Fun because I enjoy illustrating that creative process. I love illustrating that collaborative process. I love showing the playing technique, how the musicians feed off of each other, and the joy in their faces during and after each track. Challenging because it was just me in there, with a small DSLR camera and 3 lenses.
Because they are all some of the best in the world, and their all playing off of each other in the moment, they might only do a track 2 or 3 times and get it, and because of the collaborative nature, it might be a little different each time. so if I didn’t get Lucindas vocal performance, I wouldn’t have much to work with on a track. Or, if I got the guitar player playing the solo on the take they didn’t use, you’re shit out of luck in the edit. It was a process, indeed, but it all seemed to fall into place.