Studio Campfire Stories: 'Tales From The Land Of Milk And Honey' Edition - The Making Of 'Asking For A Friend'

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Nicolay sat down and began to program the drum track. In the final version, listen to the way the intro for "Asking For A Friend" comes in piece by piece. It's perfect because that's damn near how I heard him make the drums. First, was the four-to-the-floor kick with the open hi-hats, then, the toms -- percussion pieces, the snare -- and finally the claps to round it all out. As he was getting everything together drum-wise, I sat down on the Rhodes just to see what would happen and the very first thing that came out was the melody line you hear (right as Phonte's vocals begin in the final version). I then hopped on one of my favorite weapons in the studio -- the Moog Little Phatty keyboard -- to work the bassline out until finding something that we both agreed with and from there it was back to the Rhodes to knock out the chord progression for what was to become the hook. Once the hook progression came THAT'S when things seemed to tie together, musically. By this time, Nic had the drums KNOCKING along with all of the intricacies placed and polished. Once we layered that hook up nicely with synths and strings, we added a fully extended vamp out and called it a night. While sipping coffee at damn near midnight we ran the song on repeat, satisfied with the new nod to old school house music we had just created. Shit felt like a party in there. Meanwhile, two hours west in Raleigh, NC, Phonte and Carmen were getting ready to set up shop in the studio as well. With two spots running simultaneously for three to four days, we KNEW there was gonna be something special to coming out of this. So we sent the music to them to hear and write to if that's what they felt. Honestly, I really just wanted to hear their initial responses.

The next day, when Nic and I got back in the studio, Phonte had already called, excited about this new record. BUT, with the music that we already had for the album, he was thinking that it may have been too "hard" of a house record to include in the album batch. No problem. Hell, I knew we would use it somewhere down the line, the joint jammed too hard. We then moved on to start creating the next piece, which we would also send to Phonte and Carmen along with a third joint later on at the end of that day. In total, we ended up creating and sending 5 or 6 new ones to Raleigh, NC that week. But they kept going back to listen to that first one.

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