Remix Project #1: Travel Analogy

Written and performed by Tommy Bateman 

Recorded in 2000 by the Kelly Bros. in Memphis, TN.  Remixed and MFI 2016. 

Fred Kelly:

Very early on in The Rockells’ recording sessions it became clear that despite the limitations of the Tascam 488 and its media (multitrack cassette tape), good recordings could be produced on it. After the release of Raise the Radio, Tommy Bateman got to talking to Jonathan about playing drums for a few of his songs, as well as using the Tascam to record them. In spring of 2000, Jonathan and Tommy (who had by then lived in Knoxville for a while) returned to Memphis to set up a recording session in the Kelly family playroom. Two tracks resulted; one was Travel Analogy.
On the two songs, Jonathan played drums and engineered, while Tommy sang and played the other instruments. The songs were eventually released as mixed on the Tascam on a release by The Passport Again, but in 2016 we decided to see if we could take the raw tracks and remix them in Pro Tools. We did, and we’re very happy with the results. We captured some good performances, but the mixing limitations of the Tascam were apparent. We think this new remixed version plays very well. 

Ah, the glorious Tascam 488.  We used the highest grade cassettes we could find, but it would work with cassettes you got at the gas station.  Love this thing.  We later upgraded to the MKII, which we'd push to its limits on mid-period Rockwells recordings.

Jonathan Kelly:

Around this time Tommy was experimenting with different, non-traditional song forms.  Travel Analogy might not be the first song he did this with, but you could call it prototypical of the work he'd go on to do with the Passport Again and Tommy Bateman and the Thunder Thieves.  Instead of a verse-chorus-verse format, he'd break songs off into larger chunks, sometimes at different tempos or in different keys, almost like shorter songs stuck together.  As someone who played drums on these songs, it could be tough to keep up with.
In the case of Travel Analogy, the structure of the song finally hit me while we were remixing it, where it's linking these two big chunks together as a sort of comparison.  Or an analogy.  One thing that helps is that I think in the remix we were able to bring his vocals more forward, so the lyrics are more heavily featured. 

Remix Project #0: An Explanation

Jonathan Kelly:

Fred never forgets.  Songs at least.  Fred never forgets a song, or a demo of a song, or an idea of a song, no matter how old.  He's like a fireman going back into a burning building again and again: no song left behind!
On its surface, the Remix Project might appear to be just a revisiting of old material that we've worked on over the years, but what it really is is a song reclamation project.  Some of our oldest stuff we were very limited in the mixing.  Some songs never made it to a CD (as quaint as that sounds), and were stuck in half-finished limbo.  Some songs we radically stripped down before their release, only to have the specter of the original arrangement hanging in the air...what if?
We've acquired so much know-how and equipment over the years, and now just seemed like a good time to go back and try to remix some of these songs.  We'll try to write a little bit about the history and the process on them as we go, but ultimately we're just excited and happy to get to put them in people's ears so finally they may rest.  And the ranks of songs that Fred will lead us to save goes down by one.
Many of these are songs by clients or friends, and we've checked in with them to make sure they're cool with our doing these remixes.  So far, everyone is on board.  First up: Travel Analogy by Tommy Bateman.  Enjoy!

Welcome!

Fred Kelly:

We’ve had an adventurous summer! We didn’t have classes so we’ve been able to put in some extra time in at FLRS, which is good, as classes have resumed for the fall, and Jonathan and Val are expecting their second child early next year. We have a lot to do, and not much time to do it in.

The first thing we did was to throw ourselves into an FLRS remix project, in which we take “odds and sods” (alternate takes, unreleased tracks, or complete from-the-ground-up remixes), mix them really really well, and post them to Soundcloud for folks to hear. We got about half a dozen tracks going from various musicians we’ve worked with over the years, with plans to do about a half dozen more. We hope to start releasing those soon, but we got held up a bit because…

…we’ve started a new website while trying to finish all these mixes, and have been working to make it presentable as soon as possible. The new mixes will be released one at a time, at regular intervals, both to showcase the studio andwebsite, and also to showcase the musicians who recorded the tracks.

We also got held up because we’ve spend the last month or so making some changes to the studio itself. Some of those changes involve selling gear we don’t use as much, but the most exciting changes have been additions to the studio: specifically, some excellent new preamps on the “front end” of the recording process, and some absolutely *fabulous* additions for the mixing/mastering processes. We’re really, really excited about these changes, as we believe that they will help us to make even better-sounding recordings more efficiently.