Classic Tracks Revisited "Crown"

Classic Tracks Revisited "Crown"  by Collective Soul

"Crown" was the last track I worked on for the Collective Soul album "Dosage". (it is also the last track on the album.) The record eventually went platinum. It was my first time working with the band and we had a great time in Miami and Atlanta doing overdubs. I drove a ton of gear from Boston in a rental van. I never trusted airlines with racks of gear. I made the trip at warp speed....about 21 hours stopping only once to sleep for a couple of hours. (pit stops for mountain dew and gas)
Driving eventually all the way to the legendary Criteria studios in Miami. 

Several weeks later, with all the other tracking for the album complete, (except for Needs and Compliment recorded later at Tree sound in Atlanta).  Ed gave me a version of the song  with just a click track, acoustic guitar and scratch vocal . I synced up with timecode and began by running the acoustic guitar through various effects including an Eventide H4000, TC electronics Fireworx, and a Lexicon Vortex. That sound actually ended up being the foundation for the song. Once in place, we set up a drum kit in the big room for me to play.  (Shane had gone back to Atlanta at this point)  We only used one or two microphones for the sound as I recall. Shawn Grove was engineer the session,(amazing cat) we used a Neumann U 67 right over the kit and dangerously low as I love to do.  We recorded several passes and i ended up using the tracking mix to edit the stereo parts in a rack of Akai S5000's. 
The edited performance is  mostly comprised of one and two bar loops with live fills. The outro has the infamous "fall off the chair" fill,  which is a sort of a three against four figure. We all laughed when I played it but it ended up in the mix. I overdubbed the synth bass, nord and moog part's in Ed's basement in Atlanta. The bass sound was actually 3 synths in tandem with midi. (Nord Lead, Roland MKS 80, and a Roland JV1080 with the vintage key's card installed). the bass sound is in stereo and has a very Pink Floyd feel to it. I overdubbed the lead synth solo with the nord lead, added some other textures including cymbal swells through a Roland Space echo. There is a signature synth sound that i made on the nord that has some very odd resonances , they sound almost like birds...... I think i added a sample of birds from vinyl and blended the two.(hence the crackle) Finally Ed and Ross added electric guitar parts and we were done. It ended being one of my all time fav collaborations with Ed Roland.
Some of my early synth melodies ended up being background vocal melodies. It  was all very exciting to be a part of because it was a radical departure from any Collective Soul song up to that time. I must add that the mixer Tom Lord- Alge was extra creative with the mix, He moved some of my sounds around to spots i wouldn't have though of . So hats off to him for that.  Below is a high quality MP3 to check out. Listen on good phones if you can ok!   Thanks for listening.


AJR