The Incontinentals, my band for 20 years or so, came to an end with the sudden death in September of our bassist, Michael Mueller. He was a fabulous bassist, who I was lucky to have played with. Prior to his death, I had been working on a “best of” album of our recordings. We often recorded our rehearsals, and in 2016 and 2017, we had a pretty good lineup. This album represents the best takes of our recordings in those years, edited, mixed, and mastered in Cubase (and Ozone) by me. On a couple of tracks, I added parts, but for the most part, they are live in one take.
There are three covers in the album, and I got licenses for them. The remaining eight are our original compositions, one by the keyboardist (Obama Mambo) and the other seven are mine. I used TuneCore to get it on Spotify, also Pandora, iTunes, and pretty much every other service, and TuneLicensing to get the licenses for the three covers.
Leon, very sorry to hear about your bassist. This is a brilliant tribute to him and the band. Superbly mixed, great tunes and lovely playing all round. I’ll give them all a proper listen; I love the groove of Wind Cries Mary. And the guitar on Obama Mambo.
I’ve listened to the first 6 by now and they are phenomenal. You could tell years of micro tweaking every song till it’s perfect or so I presume. out of curiosity, which one are you bruh?
Hi Masoomi, I guess I forgot to say I played guitar on all of these!
I wouldn’t say we micro-tweaked very much. For the ones I wrote and for which I made recordings of my own (from my album Incontinental Breakfast and earlier efforts), I micro-tweaked until I was satisfied, which was forever. In a few cases the band liked my compositions, and adopted them.
The drummer on these recordings just listened a few times and got it. He was pretty amazing. I cannot say enough how fortunate the rest of us were that this young guy wanted to play with us. He is struggling to make a living during the COVID era, and he’s an incredible player. None of the odd meters I threw at him caused him to blink.
The bassist (Michael) loved grooving with the drummer; he felt quite free to go off score, really, to our benefit. Yes, I often printed score parts for the bassist and the keyboardist. But never for drums or percussion.
The arrangement of Wind Cries Mary came out of a one-on-one session that I had with the keyboardist one random night. We are nearby neighbors, as was the bassist.
Thanks for listening, and glad you enjoyed. I’m very sad that this collaboration is over after so many years, but life goes on.