Part 8: The Todd Carey Interview Sessions.

The Whitefish Bay Sessions EP

Amos: What is the Whitefish Bay Sessions EP?

Carey: The Whitefish Bay Sessions EP was a limited EP. Actually, I’ll probably release it again, but it’s the demos for Watching, Waiting. I sent Marshall Altman three or four fully-produced demos of songs that made it onto Watching, Waiting. He listened to them and then he told me he’d really rather listen to me sing them live with an acoustic guitar.

I took my studio Whitefish Bay, which is in Northern Door County, Wisconsin. My parents have this cabin up there. I went up there with a guitar and brought a bunch stuff. I recorded 15 songs of just acoustic and live vocals and I used those as the demos when I went out to LA to record the album. After the record was out, I picked five songs from those demos and released it as a limited edition EP.

Amos: Was this digital or physical?

Carey: It was a physical CD that was available from my online record store. It’s never been released digitally. Once you put something out there digitally, it’s out there forever.

Amos: I notice that you can still get stuff from your Telepathy band through iTunes, not all of it, but some of it. You can only get the physical CDs from Amazon.

Oh, also it’s funny that you mentioned that your parents have a summer home in Wisconsin. When I was researching for this interview, I saw a mention or two of Wisconsin, and how you recorded stuff there. I was trying to figure out your connection to the area and in my notes I wrote “family summer home?” So it’s funny to see that I was right about it.

Carey: Yeah, it was just a cabin in the woods, but it’s really small. Are you familiar with Bon Iver? This whole PR campaign for his new record is that he recorded it in a cabin in the Wisconsin woods. I was so bummed when I heard that, because I said to myself, “That’s what I do!” I wish I would have used that. If you listen to the Whitefish Bay stuff you’ll hear that the songs really changed from that to the record.

Amos: How long did you do those Whitefish Bay recordings before recording Watching, Waiting?

Carey: It was basically while I was waiting to make a record. I was in Chicago, and we were building a following playing shows. I was still writing and getting stuff ready. I think we had the record date set, that I was going to go out in August and make that album. Before that, Marshall asked me to send him some demos in the summer. So I just went up to the family cabin and I spent about a week and a half there with my recording set-up. I had just met my then girlfriend. I had just fallen in love with her and she came up and visit me at the cabin and we spent a week in the woods. The whole experience for me was really cool. It was just me playing the music live in the cabin. I think it turned out well.

Amos: What kind of recording setup did you take with you?

Carey: Basically all the gear that I have here in my studio right now. I carry a lot of gear with me when I travel and when I’m on the road, because I think it’s important.

Amos: How does shipping and hauling that equipment work out for you? I remember reading something from Brendan James where he was talking about how it would cost him a ton of money to ship or check-in his keyboard because of all sorts of carry-on and luggage rules at the airport.

Carey: Yeah, that’s got to be tough for him. If I’m flying. I carry on an acoustic guitar and I check in an electric guitar. I have a pedal board, and I check that too. It just depends on baggage fees and what airline I’m flying if there is a band that’s meeting me and they have equipment… it all just depends on the logistics of travel.

Amos: Do you do a lot of flying-type touring? Is it more of the van type?

Carey: It’s mostly the van type. That’s what I prefer, because you have all the gear in the van with you. Let me put it this way, when it comes to traveling I’d rather fly, but if I was touring I’d rather drive.

Read more here!! http://bit.ly/nmhlSh

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 9th, 2011 at 7:18 pm and is filed under Todd Carey Interview. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.