East Bound And Down (Solo Section Cover)

JohnnyAmato

JohnnyAmato

New member
First off, sorry I haven't been around at all lately, been super busy in my own world doing a bunch of new recordings. Vocals coming soon on a bunch of them. I have a lot of catching up to do listening to everyone's new songs/mixes, and I promise I'll get to it soon!

Anyway, two days ago a close friend who runs a SF 49er Podcast asked me to record the solo section of this tune by Jerry Reed to use as an occasional intro (he does this on his own for free so there shouldn't be any copyright issues, at least I hope not!) I said sure, thinking it was some fairly easy country tune, as I was only somewhat familiar with the chorus. Had no idea of the cool solo section in the middle.

So on day one, I did all the framework; drums, bass, rhythm guitars, etc.
Day two (yesterday) had to learn the leads and harmonies, and laid them all down. I learn new songs on the fly all the time for my guitar students, but never have I had to learn something like this to RECORD it myself that day. Whew! But what a fun song.

I did two intro bars before the lead, then two outro bars after, so it's only a little over a minute long. I have to get this to him in just a few days, so I'm trying to get the mix as good as possible, and be done. I guess it doesn't have to be perfect considering what it's for, but there's a few small issues I'm slightly concerned about, but I'll see what anyone has to say before I address anything.

How does it sound?

Eastbound And Down (Guitar Solo Cover) | Johnny Amato
 
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Hey Johnny... that's some fine pickin' there son! (my Jerry Reed impersonation)
I'm very familiar with the tune. The mix is really good. you nailed the performance.
The only thing that really jumped out at me was the guitar tone on the solo' s. You have a smooth jazzy strat front pickup guitar tone and the original is more of a chicken pickin' bridge pickup tele tone.
It dosent have that bite and spank country guitar sound the original had.
It's a hard sound to get right. There is a fine line between "bite" and "harsh, thin, and brittle". Jerry Reed was good at getting a tone that had the bite and spank while at the same time being smooth and easy on the ears.
fantastic job on this one bro!
 
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Thanks for the listen Jimi! It actually was the bridge pick-up on my Jeff Beck Strat, my Tele needs a new neck so using that was not an option. I must have went through 50 tones on my Digitech board trying to find something, and doing the first bends of the solo over and over again with different tones was frying out my fingers, so I finally just picked one and went with it. I don't even remember what it was, a Marshall something warped with a Twin something... By the time I was actually laying down the track I was tone deaf. :facepalm:

I think the mix still needs some EQ work, the chicken' pickin' stuff in the background needs some mids scooped I think, also needs to probably be turned down a tad. I did it to emulate the constant banjos throughout the song. Also I think the rhythm guitars (two electrics, one acoustic) are also a tad hot and might need some mids scooped. My drums are a little louder than the original too I think...

Probably a little too much reverb here and there. I'll visit it tonight. Thanks a bunch for the compliments and listen! :thumbs up:
 
Sounds really good, Johnny. I think Jimi brings up a good point about country tone. One I agree with even though I'm not even a huge fan of country tone, but the twang makes it all gel and this doesn't have enough twang, imo. I also think the main guitar could either go back a db or so in the mix or have some more reverb on it to sit bitter. Otherwise, it's great. Welcome back!
 
Good to see you back Johnny. All sounds very tight. Great playing as usual. I'm with the others on the guitar tone. Tele or Strat, it wants to cut through more.
 
welcome back. basically, everything robus said. but, i probably wouldn't have noticed anything about those guitar sounds if no one else mentioned them. nice work
 
Great pickin'!! I would like a little harsher edge on the guitar.. need that chicken picken' kind of sound to it.
 
My reactions were pretty much in line with the other people. Great musicianship and playing.

The guitar tones would sound better if they had just a little more bite and twang. At least the picking/lead/melody guitar.

But I loved the overall feel of it.

---------- Update ----------

Oh yeah one more thing...

Sloop? How ya been? Good to see you.
 
Been busy. Work, marriage.. eats up the time. Glad to see some familiar faces still around.


TripleM said:
My reactions were pretty much in line with the other people. Great musicianship and playing.

The guitar tones would sound better if they had just a little more bite and twang. At least the picking/lead/melody guitar.

But I loved the overall feel of it.

---------- Update ----------

Oh yeah one more thing...

Sloop? How ya been? Good to see you.
Click to expand...
 
Thanks for the listens everyone.

New mix here and in the OP. Re-did the solo with a different tone, I think it sounds much better. It's a hard mix to try and replicate, the original seems like all high mids, lows and highs to me, while his lead tone sits softly in the middle even though it has bite. The high-mids on the outsides from those banjos was especially hard to match, but what I did came out pretty good considering I had no banjos and recorded all the guitars direct. Should have just mic'd my Twin, oh well. My buddy who wanted it is super happy, so all is good :)

I also shortened it a little, by taking out the two pointless bars of just the chords/progression in the beginning. It now goes from the intro right into the solo, which is more what my buddy wanted anyway.

Been dealing with an earwax build-up from too much headphone use I think. So the hearing in my left ear is sometimes a little off. Have to go to the doc and get them cleaned, so I hope the mix doesn't have any major issues that my buddy doesn't notice...

Eastbound And Down (Guitar Solo Cover) | Johnny Amato
 
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Thanks Jimmy. It's a hard sound to get when I currently don't own a real nice Tele. I tweaked out a tone using a '62 Bassman amp sim from my Digitech board (I forget the cab I used) and used the middle position on one of my better strats, and simply re-tracked the whole solo. Then I tweaked it out a little more with the SansAmp plug-in in ProTools.
 
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