“This song came to me, straight from the heart, didn’t make up the words, cause I live the part”
Inspiration:
Many years I was intrigued by the phrase ‘lazy susan’ for the kitchen gadget that you could spin around to reach stuff in a cupboard. I would write a set of lyrics called Lazy Sue some time in the early 90s and leave them be. Hey, not all song inspiration comes from life changing occurrences!. It wasn’t until 2014, in fact it was the night of the big ice storm and subsequent 6 day power outage, that I decided to pull these lyrics out, update them, write a new chorus and create the chords and melody and thus Lazy Cat came to be.
History:
A brand new song for LBS that would get the opportunity to be recorded when we pulled the cover songs from the production fearing copyright lawsuits. The song came together fairly quickly once we finally agreed on the arrangement. Only a couple people would hear the acoustic version and liking the feel, that I was committed to seeing it through. The song had a double or triple chorus at the end and there was some irony that I start the song with “I’ll keep it short and hold the refrain” and then proceeded to refrain the hell out of it, so that ending was cut in favour of a verse 1 repeat. The first time I played the song for Rob, he thought the chorus should be the verse and that I should write a new verse. He would of course forget thinking this and at the end of production, instead say it was his 2nd favourite song.
Producer’s Note:
“The honk of the over driven Gibson guitar in the right channel, sadly it is somewhat buried in the final seconds of the outro, really need to listen for it”. Though, the harmonica solo is a close second.
Recording Notes:
Despite Lisa and Rob doing their parts efficiently, there would be 4 completely different sets of bed tracks as I could not be happy with any of the guitars or vocals and everything was sounding noisy. I brought the guitars and amps out of the darkened studio and into a sunny spot and recorded as I felt the song needed some outside sunshine to enhance the performance. Many of the recordings have both the Gibson and the Telecaster. I decided to play the Tele clean and giving that picking sound and it seemed to give some space the song needed, with the Gibby for more crunch in the chorus. Luckily, the only harmonica I own being in the key of G, decide to whip off a little harmonica solo. It is actually recorded on two separate tracks and mixed together. I liked the first half of one rendition and the 2nd half of another, the luxury of 24 track recording.
I was never really sure how the recording and mixing was going as it was around the time of Lazy Cat that my Tannoy reference speakers died and so I mixed Lazy Cat completely with the Sennheiser headphones. It was Rob who said Lazy Cat sounded great in his car and so I knew I was close. It would be Mix #4 of Lazy Cat V4 that would go to mastering.