Before continuing with part 2 of our interview with Bob Crain, we have a special treat for you.
Bob teamed up with Adrian and Stuart at Incubator Studios in Melbourne, Australia to film this exclusive video of Bob performing his song “Genre Gap”. This song is currently not available anywhere else but might appear on a future release from Bob or his band.
You can watch in full below before you continue the interview. If you missed Part 1, check it out here.
About “Genre Gap” (in Bob’s words)
I have for a long time been amused by the whole “genre” thing it just seems that every new band that comes along (or their manager) dreams up a new genre to try to separate them from the pack … if it is not one thing then it must be “alternative”. It’s all BS in my humble opinion there are maybe five or six main genres and some sub genres or composites like Folk Rock or Country Rock the rest are just made up names of things which can’t accurately be described.
What really set me up to write this song was I was reading reviews of the ‘Years Best Albums” in Acoustic Guitar Magazine a couple of years ago and as I read through the reviews I was reading things like “it’s pure country with a healthy dose of bluegrass” ” the album is folk blues alternative with a Mississippi Blues beat” and so on and so on and after each review I had no idea whether it was a album I might like or just a bunch of mumbo jumbo. Thus the song was written … it was originally a bit longer in my normal ‘Dylanesque” (I made that word up for this song) style but I cut it down as I am tending to do now. It was written to be played in a band mode but it goes ok solo … it has no genre label of course.
I think I pretty much got the point across in a sorta tongue an cheek manner which I tend to do a lot rather than a direct assault on the subject. I wonder if many songwriters like myself (not the commercial production pop song constructors) ever think about what genre they are writing in when they are writing either the lyrics or music for a song or are they “just playing for fun”? There are a couple lines in the song which I really like but I think it contains one of my best “We’ll have to find The Lost Songs Home a place for songs that don’t belong”.
The song has not been recorded for release, except as this exclusive video release accompanying the interview, at this point in time but it will undoubtedly be on my next album whether it is solo or with Ashbury Medicine Show is yet to be determined. If it is a solo album the name of the album will most likely be “The Lost Songs Home” I even have a draft of the cover design. We’ll see.
About the Engineers, Adrian and Stuart
Engineer – Adrian Akkerman – Adrian has been the engineer on all of my previous recordings including 2 full CDs, he is originally from Portland, Or. and has developed his engineering, mixing and mastering skills over many many years. He is also a musician and has played bass in numerous bands and has done lots of live sound tech work around Australia. He invested in building his own purpose built studio which as you can see from the photos and his website it is a professionally designed and built studio catering for all kinds of recording. I suppose what got me in to Incubator and has kept me coming back and recommending it to others is Adrian’s people skills and his ability to draw out the best without being critical or pedantic and of course he gets great audio results as well.
This was my first professional purpose shot video and I knew little about the process, I learned a lot. The teamwork between Adrian and Stuart Jaymes, who did the camera work and all the editing to put the video footage and sound together to make this video, was just brilliant all I had to do was sit there and play. It was interesting as there was no amp on in the room as Adrian ran it through a faux amp in the booth and I didn’t want to wear headphones so I could only hear the unampped guitar while I was playing. Stuart was great with the cameras and it never distracted me from what I was doing.
I chose to do the video at Incubator Recording Studio which is in Melbourne, Australia one because it gave it that music atmosphere and two so there would be no audio interference, noise and or distraction like you would get anywhere else. Stuart and Adrian worked out how to get the best sound quality and I think they did a great job … so much of the time with live videos its the sound quality that let’s them down.
Stuart Jaymes has been working with videos for many years and is also a fantastic drummer, he was looking forward to this one and pulled out all the stops to get the best result for this video which both he and Adrian will use as a promotion tool in the future. Stuart does not have a website at the moment but he does have a FB page.
Continue to the next page to read Part 2 of our interview.
