The Making of Present and Accounted For -- An Interview with Eric Goetz

Eric's debut CD will be available in stores on April 2005. Read here to find out a little bit about what went into creating this album.

What made you decide to record a solo album?

Back in 2002, I was playing piano and Rhodes in a band called Lumberg where I shared writing and front-man duties with guitarist Peter Schatz. After recording four songs and playing a few shows, our drummer called it quits and Peter and I decided to put the project on hold. I was extremely disappointed. This was the third band in a row that had broken up right as we started playing out.

I decided at that point that I'd had enough of bands for awhile and I started writing my own songs and singing them at open mics. Over the next year, I played 12 solo shows and numerous open mics. The next logical step was to record this music and see how far I could take it.

But on Present and Accounted For, you went for more of a full band sound.

Yeah, I always heard a band with those songs, even when performing them solo.

Tell us about the musicians that play on your album.

I was really fortunate to get some great players. The guys I played with in Lumberg, Peter Schatz (guitar) and Colin Richey (drums) took time away from their rock project Edisyn to do this project. Bass was covered by a great local player Hans York (Jamie Laval, King Frydai, Lyquid Amber), who also produced the album for me. I also got Tom Armstrong (Quasi Nada, King Frydai) to lay down a bunch of Brazilian percussion on several songs. Carrie Wicks, a jazz singer friend of mine, came in and did some background vocals. Finally, we had Jon Hammar come in and do some bass violin work on two tracks.

Why did you decide to have Hans produce the album?

My original plan was to produce the CD myself. I have a lot of formal training in music and would love to one day produce albums. However, because this was my own stuff, I had an extremely high bar for the production quality of the CD, and wasn't confident I could pull it off. During preproduction, some songs were working great, but others weren't going so well. I knew I was in a little over my head, and the session dates were quickly approaching. Hans encouraged me to consider hiring a producer, so I asked him to do it.

What was it like to work with Hans?

It was wonderful. Hiring Hans was the most important and best decision I made on the album. Once I gave up control of the production, I immediately began to relax and enjoy the project a lot more. I was also able to focus more on performing. Hans has worked a lot in the studio and is very relaxed and confident, which made everyone involved perform better. Hans brought in a fresh perspective to the songs, and tightened up the arrangements. Hans also spent countless hours away from the studio editing, arranging and tweaking parts.

So you did the album in pro-tools?

We recorded most of the drums and bass to 2" tape and then dumped it down to Pro Tools and did all the overdubs in Pro Tools.

Where did you record the album?

Most of it was done with Mell Dettmer (Critters Buggin', Matt Chamberlain, Quasi Nada) at Aleph Studios. It's Mell's basement studio in West Seattle, just right down the hill from my house.

What was it like to work with Mell?

Brilliant. Mell works with so many great musicians. I had a great deal of trust in her from the very beginning.

Mell is great at miking drums. She was so fast that it gave us a chance to swap out drums and cymbals between most every song, and still finish all the drum tracking in three days. Credit also goes to Colin for nailing the parts quickly. Both Colin and Mell have a lot of cool vintage drums and cymbals, so we had fun experimenting.

There are a lot of interesting drums sounds on the album -- it doesn't sound like the drums were done in three days.

Yeah, that's also because of the percussion. I was very clear from the beginning that I wanted interesting drum and percussion sounds on the album. I'm a huge fan of Lenine, Zeca Baleiro, and Carlihnos Brown and the Brazilian MPB scene. They've got the most interesting percussion going on -- traditional Brazilian percussion, with cool loops and arrangements inspired by rock and hip hop. I wanted to experiment with some of that. Tom was able to come in and in half a day, put down a ton of great raw material for us to work with. Then later, Hans York would take some of his parts and manipulate them with plug-ins and make the sound like electronic loops. So the percussion is a combination of vintage drum kits, traditional Brazilian percussion, and electronic loops.

How much of the arrangements were known ahead of time?

We knew the basic drum parts, most of the Rhodes parts and about half the guitar parts. The rest was done on the fly. Mell, and Hans quickly developed a great working dynamic. Their skills were very complimentary. Hans being the excellent musician and arranger and Mell being the master engineer. The sessions all had a laid back feel and felt really inspired. I mostly just stayed out of the way, and enjoyed hearing my songs coming together.

What do you plan to do now that the CD is done?

I'm putting together a live act with some great players. We'll be playing around Seattle clubs, and as in many Northwest festivals as we can book. From the feedback I've been getting on the CD, my music appeals to a lot more people than just the club-going crowd. I'll also be pushing my music fairly hard with a few of the Northwest radio stations, seeing if I can get some airplay. Meanwhile, I'll do some solo shows in the neighboring scenes like Olympia, Bellingham and Portland, to see if I can start to build a following.

Sounds like a plan. Best of luck with that.

Thank you

Eric's CD, Present and Accounted For will be available online in April, 2005. You can find samples at http://www.ericgoetz.com.