james mckone – Adam Crowe

The Second Echo – Leavin’ You (Live)

Adam Crowe — Sun, 21 Jun 2015 09:23:30 +0000

Back in February this year, we hire Nambucca on Holloway Road for a special night celebrating the launch of Rouge‘s new single Myself and celebrating my birthday. Supported by the talented Jesse Wong, Rouge and The Second Echo played full sets to a packed room of wonderful people. Assisted by dear friends, the night was a great success and everybody had a brilliant time.

With the FOH mixing desk at our control we thought to take the opportunity and record the performances. Then we thought, if we’re recording the audio then we might as well video the show as well! This superb performance if The Second Echo‘s new single Leavin’ You was filmed by Alex Cantouris and Louis Marsh, and edited by yours truly.

Listen, enjoy and share!

Leavin’ You is available for exclusive download at http://secondecho.bandcamp.com

Discover The Second Echo at http://www.secondecho.co.uk
Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheSecondEcho
Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thesecondecho
Follow on Instagram: https://instagram.com/thesecondecho/

Joe Foster – Vocals, Guitar
Oliver Marks – Guitar
James McKone – Bass
Ben McKome – Drums

Video filming by Alex Cantouris and Louis Marsh
Audio recorded live at Nambucca, London by Adam Crowe
Mixing and mastering by Adam Crowe (http://www.adamcrowe.net)
Video editing by Adam Crowe

The Second Echo – Sugar Mama

Adam Crowe — Sat, 06 Sep 2014 12:00:03 +0000

For the past few months, I’ve been working on pre-production, recording and mixing the debut album of The Second Echo – an incredible band of four top notch young musicians with an exceptional affinity for rock ‘n’ roll, blues, melody and groove. Described as a mix between Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and King Crimson, the group are the rehashed next generation of everything that I’ve grown to love about the guitar rock music of the 70’s with a young twist augmented by foot-thumping rhythms and groove.

Armed with theory, strong musical background and already years of experience despite their young carbon footprint, this amazing ensamble of four seasoned musicians features strong performances on every instrument, catchy hooks and melodies with stellar guitar riffs and licks. Co-written by frontman and guitarist, Joe Foster, and lead guitarist, Oliver (Ollie) Marks, the lyrics deal with women, love, relationships, politics, government, life and redemption. Complex yet approachable chord progressions, signature changes and crazy solos are only a small part of the tricks The Second Echo have up their sleeve, as the rhythm section of brothers Ben McKone and James McKone will have you dancing, jumping and head bobbing.

Over a period of about three months, the band and I have been meeting up at band rehearsals to go over the songs, discuss arrangements, vision and sound. By the time we got to Snap Studios to record the songs, we had a pretty clear idea of our agenda and a plan of attack. I have prepared printouts with lyrics and a chart of parts that needed to be recorded for each song, so that I’d have a good overview of the session progress and nothing gets forgotten. The band played live together with the drums setup in the live room, bass amp in the vocal booth and guitar amps in the studio lounge. Guide vocals were sung in the control room live and later overdubbed. No click was used throughout. The performance relied entirely on the band’s natural feel for the song and skilful playing.

With awe I watched these musical geniuses deploy the kind of skills one only gets to hear stories of from ageing colleagues who got to witness something so spectacular on a session once that the memory was permanently inscribed into their consciousness to be told and repeated over and over again to the younger and less fortunate generations. How lucky am I?

With little tile to spare, we cramped eight songs into four days – all including rhythm guitars, solo guitars, drums, bass, vocals and BVs where necessary. We simply could not have done this if the guys didn’t practice their brains off in the months leading up to the session and if they simply weren’t as skilled and hard working as they are!

Taking a few days break after the exhausting session, I opened the files which had no effects on them, just the levels from the tracking session, I pressed play and smiled. “They really do sound good” I thought. I immediately started working on the first track which was decided by the band and I to be the first single that would introduce the band to the world. The song is called Sugar Mama and I am very proud to be able to share it with you. It is available for free as a SoundCloud stream and on Spotify, but please support the band and purchase the track on iTunes if you like it.

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Buy Sugar Mama on iTunes

Credits

Joe Foster – Lead Vocals and Guitar
Oliver Marks – Guitar
James McKone – Bass
Ben McKone – Drums, BVs and Percussion

Written by Joe Foster and Oliver Marks
Recorded at Snap Studios. Assisted by Ben Mclusky.
Engineered and Mixed by Adam Crowe
Mastered by John Webber at AIR Studios

Recording General Roots

Adam Crowe — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 00:29:36 +0000

I have to admit, I’ve never done reggae before in my life! Not to mention a cross between reggae and dub! I was getting a bit nervous as the weekend approached but as soon as the musicians started playing, I’ll be alright. These guys are seriously good, and I don’t think I have the right words to do their energy and musicianship justice. You’ll just have to attend one of their gigs or wait for the EP release.

We started early Saturday morning (10am!!!) at the magnificent Snap Studios in North London. The homely and welcoming atmosphere of the studio make any engineer and musician feel at ease with the recording space very quickly. After a short set up of the drums in the most dead corner of the live room, we started working on the drum sound with Ben McKone at the kit and with the supervising help of Ernie McKone – a king of the bass and an accomplished producer. It didn’t take long before the drums were quite dead sounding thanks to plenty of toilet paper and gaffer tape

James McKone‘s Stingray bass was naturally sounded like it was made for this style of music! A bit of top-end roll-off and we’re cooking! Already, the drums and bass sounded a lot like a proper reggae track!

The melody was provided by the mind-blowing and talented King Solomon. This guy has one hell of a feel for the piano and Hammond! I’ve been fortunate enough to see some very good piano players and a lot of them have amazing technique, but it’s very special, in my humble opinion, to see the feel that Solomon has. Watch out for this guy – he’ll be making headlines one day! Snap’s Bosendorfer Imperial Grand and Hammond C3 were the perfect tools for the job for Solomon and it was a pleasure to watch and hear him play them.

On guitar, the very skillful Joe Price. He hasn’t missed a beat the whole two days!

The talent was oozing from the horn players! Each more amazing than the other one. Malthe Milthers from Denmark on sax and Joe Carter from England on trumpet provided the perfect phrases while recording in Snap’s Studio 1 lounge.

The soul of the band coming from the unique vocal arrangements which are more or less a conversation between Freddie Bado and The Minister — Yes, The Minister! Freddie is a natural. With no formal training, he swims like a fish through this music and is a force of nature on stage. The Minister provides a sort of inspiration and is the symbol of what the band is, but it would take a far more articulate man than me to explain it.

We recorded three songs in two versions each – a live version with the whole band playing live in various rooms of Snap Studios; and a more multitracked version with each instrument properly isolated from the rest and recorded more or less separately. We were lucky to have the band’s manager, Daniel Rose-Weir, present throughout the sessions who also took the following awesome photos:

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All players were absolutely wonderful to work with. I could not have asked to work with a more professional bunch than these guys. All players several instruments, they could very easily decide to switch and play different parts one day. It was a pleasure to watch them play and would love to work with them again!

You can follow General Roots on Facebook and if you get a chance, do go see them live. It’s quite an experience!

Recording King Lizard

Adam Crowe — Mon, 30 May 2011 14:20:45 +0000

King Lizard delivered raw power and were a pleasure to work with. We only had two days to do the track at Snap Studios in North London so there was little time to take proper photos but the Lizards took some video shots of the process which I’m sure they’ll post somewhere.

I did the engineering, recording and mixing of the track and it was mastered by the talented John Webber at Blue Pro Mastering. The track and the album are released on the Psycho DeVito label.

Johnny B. Goode is available on iTunes and is the whole Viva La Decadence album!

Also, if you get a chance, try to catch King Lizard live. They put up a hell of a show!

Gecko

Adam Crowe — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 21:16:13 +0000

We had a very long session but I had a great time. We spent a whole day at Snap Studios tracking three songs, and they have just shot the video for their first single called Pigeon. Check it out below and don’t forget to follow them on Facebook, Twitter or MySpace!

Gecko are currently on tour throughout the UK. Check out their Facebook page for latest updates but the scheduled gigs are:

1st Feb @The Globe, Cardiff
3rd Feb @Ride cafe, Plymouth
4th Feb @Route 2, Topsham, Exeter
5th Feb @93 Feet East, London (Will’s bday show/Single launch)
7th Feb @The Maze, Nottingham
8th Feb @Basement show, Sheffield
9th Feb @The Retro bar, Manchester
10th Feb ‘New Slang’ @The Hippodrome, Kingston (w/Man like me)
11th Feb @The Winchester gate, Salisbury
12th Feb @The Mothers ruin, Bristol (End of tour party)