lost tracks – steely dan, jai uttal, shawn colvin

i’ve recently come across some musicological finds… one on the web, and a couple buried deep in the pile that was my home recording studio (which might live again some day).

‘the lost gaucho’ is a collection of steely dan songs from the ‘gaucho’ sessions. most of them didn’t make it onto the album, but there’s an early version of ‘third world man’ (with very sketchy early lyrics but final guitar parts), an instrumental version of ‘gaucho’, and an early version of ‘time out of mind’… an interesting window into the steely dan process. i also have a copy of the schlitz commercial they recorded back in the days of denny diaz.

i used to record and play with shawn colvin, way back when. we would play at la val’s subterranean, on the north side of the berkeley campus, and record at my home studio. at the time, the bulk of shawn’s catalog were jimmy bruno (an old friend of hers from carbondale) songs and covers. these were her first recordings, all jimmy songs. ‘wait a minute, baby’ also has my first pedal steel on tape… more of a lap steel part, but hey!

while those early shawn recordings were also my first sessions as an engineer and producer, i really learned my stuff working with jai uttal. we recorded about a dozen of his more pop/rock tunes… think ali akbar khan meets peter gabriel, with horns. i’ve had the cassette sitting on my desk for years, and finally dumped everything to mp3. i was part of jai’s pagan love orchestra for three or four years, and played bass on ‘monkey‘ (engineered by roger nichols, steely dan’s engineer!) and ‘beggars and saints‘, a world music cd of the year in 1995. we also played the montreux jazz festival.

let me know if you’d like to check out them out.
.
.
.