It was probably at least 25 or so years ago, my friend Kenny Cahn called me to record his originals. The plan was to have a demo cd and shop it around. Kenny was one of the first people I played steel with around 1990. He has since passed. Anyhow he assembled a group of people and rehearsed a few times and then went and spent a weekend at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley. We had to knock out 15 songs in two days and most of us were pretty green. Wally Buck was the engineer and has a great resume. Anyhow it was grueling and tiresome. Somehow we got through it. Vocal overdubs and a few other things were done on another session. Eventually the project was completed. He shopped it around and got a response which was something like, “ you have some good stuff here but you need to do it right and make it presentable”, which basically means to re-record it in Nashville. Since Kenny’s project was being funded they went for it. Kenny felt awkward since we worked hard on it , but we were all paid, and it hurt a little bit, but no big deal.
When the new recording was done, Kenny said the experience in the Nashville was amazing, watching these top gun pros work, and some guy named Buddy Emmons played steel and reso…I just about wet myself!
Kenny also said he talked them into keeping three of the west coast tracks on the demo…and I almost wet myself again! Of the three west coast tracks, I play on only one..I was pretty weak…luckily it’s the very last song. BTW my name is mispelled on the credits…I did listen to the other original tracks and it really wasn’t terrible, just outdated. We sounded like early 70’s west coast post hippie honkytonk players. Anyhow the Nashville tracks are super slick and polished, I think a forum member Greg Gailbraith plays lead guitar. There is no trace of this record anywhere on the internet but the original album is on Spotify. Maybe Kenny’s son put it on there.
I guess I have some good unreleased recordings of the Big E!
