My collaborator in this game is Zsolt. He lives in Serbia. For now. More on that later. Zsolt takes my stems and turns them into sound sculptures to reflect the visions inside the song. I engineer and produce here, and I send him the individual stems. He takes them and uses his incredible ears, his genius mind, and his irreplaceable training from a master, to turn those into polished recordings that sound like they were recorded somewhere more optimal than my living room, with better (and much older) microphones than I use. He is a master of his craft, and he is still evolving, which makes our collaboration exciting.
One way you will be able to track our process in this game we’re playing is by listening to the difference between the single mixes and the mixes on the LP. Our sound together keeps evolving, and we keep shooting for new heights. If you listen to the version of Chief Inspector circulating now, and then compare it with the mix that will be released on the album, you will get a good overall sense of how far we’ve come.
I think of Zsolt as my George Martin. Watching the Get Back documentary gives you a really good sense of how the best of the best collaborations work, and how those collaborations require that multiple layers of thinking go on at once all the time. You’re collaborating with songwriters and band mates, you’re collaborating with the engineers that are helping you build a sound as well as a song, and you are collaborating with the people who help you get your songs heard. And all of those collaborations require a different state of mind, and a different kind of patience, and a unique set of skills, and a separate language that you know so well that you can communicate a lot between the words. A singer/songwriter’s life can get complex. You look at Paul trying to keep the ship in flight while John goes through his midlife crisis and starts becoming his own mother, and you feel for him. It’s hard enough to do it alone. Collaborations help. But collaborations that become complicated can then be poison.
I pray Zsolt and I never taste that poison. Because it’s so fucking fun to work with this motorcycle-racing ADHD genius who understands music at such a deep level. As you probably might have gathered at this point, I like people who are the real deal. Sometimes people have incredible skills and it’s fun to work with them but you also have to manage them because they haven’t grown up yet. Zsolt’s a grownup man. With a pair of ears that I would insure for 100 billion dollars if I could.
We are working on getting Zsolt to the states. It’s an organic process, and it’s hard to control. Serbia isn’t part of the EU, so he’s one step back from the starting line already. But he’s a genius, like I said, so he learned Hungarian, one of the fucking hardest languages in the whole world to learn. Then he went to Hungary and proved his lineage and he’s on the cusp of getting Hungarian citizenship. Hungary’s in the EU. So after that, things will be a little easier. Maybe one of the magical things that are guaranteed to take in place in 2025 will be me and Zsolt meeting in person. Stay tuned for that.
Until then, we write back and forth like friends in the 19th century. The technology of the 21st century allows us to work together, but his being over there makes the relationship feel very old-fashioned, and I think we both get a kick out of that. We both have an appreciation for the finer things in life that aren’t material, and here’s a guy who loves music, and English and American music in particular, so much so that he’s completely fluent in English. So we can appreciate the philosophical together as well as the music, and I don’t have to do the work of learning Serbian. Sometime it’s like I’m corresponding with a fellow scientific colleague, but it’s 150 years ago, and he’s exploring in the Galapagos, sending back samples and results of experiments, and I keep sending him my feedback and the raw material to keep his explorations going.
The last thing we were talking about was the ultimate sound for the King Jaymes LP. It got us talking about modern sound and classic sound, the DIY feel of indie that has become a (sometimes trustworthy) symbol of good songwriting, and the beauty of the old school. That got us talking about Gordon Lightfoot, which is why one of my next posts will be about Gord. But this one was about Zsolt, my brother in musical arms, my rhythm twin, the guy whose particles are currently making the most impact on the particles you hear from my sound. So here’s to fucking Zsolt, the beast of mixing who helped me achieve a sonic dream that I never imagined possible. You never know who you’re gonna meet. You never know when the particles will collide just the right way. That’s why we keep making them.