Laura Power
Northern News Services
Published Friday, February 8, 2008
YELLOWKNIFE - Looking back to Wednesday morning, I should have been a lot more nervous than I was. There I was, some brat who wrote a song or two in her lifetime, sitting at Dancing Sky Studios with a couple of unfinished tunes stuffed up in my little head. On the other side of the glass was Rick Poltaruk, whose experience goes way beyond the eight or nine bands he's recorded since the studio was opened in September.
This guy has been recording for decades and has been recorded for even longer. He's played on several stages with several bands in several cities. Yep. This was a big step up from recording on a tape player with a garage band.
Playing music is something I was pretty good at when I was a teenager, but admittedly, I haven't really progressed much since then. And what used to seem great now seems a wee bit silly. So I used a couple of riffs I've been tinkering around with in recent weeks and used the time with Rick as a push to finish the songs.
He asked what the first one was going to be called.
I hadn't even figured that out.
After finding a couple of drum tracks to suit my two songs, Rick had me lay down the acoustic guitar tracks. That part went pretty smoothly with the exception of my sweaty hands and a nail-cutting break.
But the next step - laying down the vocals - was another story. Through my many tries were several breaks - including the breaking of my voice. But even when I sounded like a pubescent boy, Rick didn't make me feel like a fool. God luv'im.
I scraped together a couple of bass tracks to lay down and then left him to throw some guitar over the top. By the time I came back, he had turned the songs I sing in my room to myself - and to friends at 4 a.m. when it seems like a good idea - into something that was actually tolerable. Even pretty good, I think.
"I thought, 'Oh God, she'd come in here and I'd have to figure out what to do,'" he confessed once it was all over. But he said I did fine despite his fears and that I handled several aspects of recording very well.
(Here's where I break from writing and pat myself on the back for a while).
Aside from superstars like me, Rick has recorded all kinds of bands in his time ranging in style from Azure DeGrow's acoustic tunes to Jim Taylor's East coast melodies.
"I really enjoyed working with 3-Across-Dee-Eye," he said. "I'm dying to hear what the album sounds like."
They're one of the bands he uses as an example when talking about creative control. He said he may make a suggestion here and there, but ultimately will leave stylistic decisions to the musicians. He doesn't want to be a producer.
"I don't want every CD that comes out of here sounding like Rick Poltaruk," he said. "It's their work - let it sound like them."
It's not only different styles he's dealt with in the past, but different levels of comfort.
"You'd be surprised how many artists come into a studio and don't have faith in their own talent."
He said he believes in encouraging musicians rather than trying to change their direction or criticize them. And that encouragement helps people like me - who are cock-sure on the outside and shaking on the inside - feel more at ease when laying down a song.
