Midway Fair | 1 year ago

My wife was singing this around the house today, so I decided to record a cover. The second verse contains one of my favorite couplets I've ever heard in a song, "Fairest daughter of the pharaoh's son / Dressed in gold-leaf pyramids."

I went with this recording setup after seeing a picture of Gillian Welch and David Rawlings recording Time, the Revelator of the two of them facing each other with the mics set up mirroring each other. Since I had decided I was in Welch/Rawlings mode, I also pulled out the pretty little Japanese guitar and played it with a pick, as it's the closest thing in my closest even remotely reminiscent of Rawlings's archtop. Josh Ritter does Travis picking on this song and the piano does chord melody; I didn't want to completely abandon that sound so I put the rhythm halfway between fingerstyle and Welch's clean and simple strumming but played the lead more bluegrass style.

Vocals are 251 (right) and 47 (left) builds through the ART Pro MAPII and a stereo 1176-style comp
Guitars are both miced with the 84 builds pulled from the drum overheads direct to the interface. Would have gone with ribbons if I'd had my druthers but my ribbon mics are loaned out at the moment.
Mixed in Logic X
Shot on a Sony ZV1 and edited in Final Cut X

If for some reason YouTube doesn't pick up this song in Content ID, it's on The Animal Years, which is a great album that you should find and listen to.