I had wanted to do an acoustic album for some time. I talked to Kerry Kearney, my good friend and a great slide guitar player, about it. He had just taken over a music store in Brooklyn called King James Music. There is an empty flat upstairs from the store with two great-sounding rooms in it. We thought that this might be a good place to record. Originally I wanted to keep it simple and just record as a duo with him, but one thing led to another and before long we had assembled our usual cast of characters to record. Still, I wanted to record “old school” with a bunch of musicians in a room playing live at the same time, and I wanted to keep it acoustic – so that’s what we did.
I called up my friend, Danny Sheehan, who has a mobile recording setup (The Mobile Loft). He came down from Woodstock, set his gear up in one room, and we set up in the other. We filled the bathtub full of beer, soda and juice, and over the two nights of October 20th and 21st under a full moon we recorded a bunch of songs I'd