Here’s a new video I hope you enjoy! I’ve been working on it for a week and have redone every single one of these parts about 187 times until I got it right. This was HARD.
A few weeks ago I was listening to the Kinks’ “Waterloo Sunset,” one of my favorite Kinks songs. That song has a melody that gets in your head and won’t leave! I was listening to it over and over again, and it struck me that even with Ray Davies’s cockney accent, the lyrics about London, and the very British 1960s production, it could have been a Beach Boys song. It has the catchy hooks, it has the vocal harmonies, it has all the unique chord progressions and arrangements that I associate with the Pet Sounds–era Beach Boys. I thought to myself, I’m going to give this song a Brian Wilson production treatment and see what it sounds like.
Every young buck with a home recording studio at one time SAYS they’re going to do a “Brian Wilson production,” but it’s not easy to replicate the sound of those fabulous big room recording studios, with the best equipment ever and the greatest studio musicians playing on them. Those 1960s Brian Wilson productions are such perfect pop masterpieces, it’s somewhat of a fool’s errand to even try! It also bummed me out that my voice doesn’t sound like a Brit OR a Californian; I have a Midwestern hillbilly twang in my voice that is just gonna be there no matter what I do.
Facing these obstacles, I had a sound in my head and I chased it for a week, redoing parts over and over (and over) again. The harmony parts were especially hard for me, because they start with high harmonies and then add even higher harmonies on top of that! It was fun, but really challenging, to try and figure out the “secrets” of those Brian Wilson productions. They didn’t have THAT many tools available to them back in those days. It was mostly “the way you played it.” The approach of the musicians was the biggest part of that sound, and I found that the best approach on most of the instruments was very careful, precise, and low-volume. But those productions also used microphone choices, equalization, plate reverb, echo chamber, delayed reverb, echoes, and compression to achieve their sound.
I tweaked and I tweaked and I feel like I got kind of close, at least in the same ballpark, even though I was recording in small room. When I filmed the parts, I tried to capture the look of those guys from the Wrecking Crew, the studio musicians who played on all those records back then. I always loved the fact that they wore plaid shirts and looked like squares, but then played on some of the best-loved rock and roll records of all time. So I pulled every plaid Penney’s Towncrest shirt I owned out of the closet to pay homage to all those great Wrecking Crew musicians of the 1960s.
When I finally got all the parts done, it was about 5:30 pm on Thursday afternoon, and I had one video “window” left to fill. I grabbed Sally Jo and we hopped in the car and chased down a section of the L.A. concrete river channel that faced westward and caught a fabulous California sunset right as the sun was disappearing behind the palm trees. In a way, “Waterloo Sunset” is about London, but the feeling in the lyrics is universal. The guy trapped in his apartment watching the rest of the world go by could be anywhere, really. It also represents many of us who have been trapped in our houses since March because of Covid.
I decided that there really wasn’t any reason why I couldn’t make a “Los Angeles” style remake of this very British song. This song grabbed me and I couldn’t get it out of my head until I did this video. As I mentioned, it was a ton of work trying to get this one right, but I think it turned out pretty darn good. I hope you all enjoy it as much as I enjoyed making it! If you’re enjoying these videos please consider leaving a tip for myself or any of the other full-time musicians who have found ourselves unemployed with no work coming in anytime soon because of the Covid pandemic. You have no idea how much your tips have helped pay the bills around here and put groceries on the table during this time. My Venmo: @Deke-Dickerson Thanks so much!! I really appreciate all the support!
