Sunday,
August 18, 2002
Unique Recording Studios occupies three floors of the Cecil B. DeMille
building on 47th Street and Seventh Avenue. Meeting at the studio was
an added bonus, as Ray was kind enough to explain and demonstrate for
me a bit of the technology involved in mixing tracks. The 5 studio rooms
are equipped with significantly impressive gear, including the 64-input
(SSL 9000-J) console that Ray is using to master the tracks. Best of all,
I was treated to a little taste of what Ray jokingly referred to as the
Ray Gomez "Experience." The music, however, is no laughing matter;
an electrifying mix of driving rock, jazz and blues, breaking down all
the boundaries and resulting in one extreme blend! Listening to the sounds
Ray manages to pull out of his Strat with such second nature mastery of
the instrument, I caught myself, eyes closed, just smiling. .. No one
else sounds like this; it's simply music that makes you... feel... real...
good! To give you an idea of the elite stratum of talent involved, accompanying
Ray's guitar and vocals are Dennis Chambers on drums and bassists Will
Lee and Tony Garnier.
These are beautiful studios!
Yes, the owners are my good friends, Bobby and Joanne Nathan. They're
wonderful people. In fact, Bobby was a student of mine for about three
years. I'm really proud of his work and happy that he's gotten back to
gigging.
You're doing all the mixing on the CD yourself?
Well, the way to get the best out of a studio is to record live with a
band, but unfortunately, I don't have a steady band. I wanted to use all
the best players; I wanted to use Dennis and Tony and Will, and I couldn't
get them all in at the same time. These are some of the busiest musicians
in the business. So I'm recording a lot of tracks. Sometimes I'll just
put the basic guitar down so they know the song. And really, sometimes
the best takes are even the first takes.
The most spontaneous.
Right. And then I'll get the bass player or the drummer in for a session
to play one or two tunes. I spent a lot of time maybe too much time -
on some songs. But it's because the players come in cold a lot of times,
or maybe I wasn't in shape when they were in town, so I go to the computer
to fix things or even sometimes re-do them.
So you just decided to learn engineering?
Well, how it happened is, basically, I ran out of money! I was paying
engineers. And sometimes I'd have money and the players were not there.
Sometimes I'd have players and the money was not there. You know, all
the elements are not there at the same time. You need a lot of money -
you buy time and you buy people! And, I'll be honest. Part of me...I don't
really want anybody to own my masters.
You've got total control.
I have total control - and no control at the same time. I have artistic
control - ownership, but I have no control of how I'm going to sell it.
It's a very tough thing. I had a weird experience with my first solo album,
and once you sign with a label, what happens with promotion or whatever
they decide to do with your product - it's out of your hands. The good
thing about a record company is the volume that you can move. You can
get your record played all over the world at one time. But, like for my
first album, I had to fight to get it played worldwide. They were going
to wait to see how it played in America first, and then distribute it.
But I got it played by flying to Europe - Holland was the center for CBS
at the time, and you know, just put it out there and you'll see that it
plays!
Not everyone has that kind of determination or confidence.
Well, I think that if you're already successful, you can become very cozy.
I think about all the artists that are huge and they don't have a problem
with the record companies, because at that point, they've already made
it. It doesn't even matter. Or maybe they just have very good deals.
It's the status quo.
That's what I mean. People go along with it and very few do something
about it. But, there are exceptions. Don Henley for example - he's the
only guy that I know that has a problem with the record companies and
is trying to do something about it.
He's heading the Recording Artists' Coalition. There are some really
big artists involved with that. Eric Clapton, Bonnie Raitt.. One of the
main issues is with the contracts, as you mentioned, which basically says
that it's not a condition of the contract that the company has an obligation
to promote or even release the product.
I think that a lot of times, they have so many artists that they don't
really take the time to listen. I mean, you cannot determine how great
someone is based only on their commercial success. So, I guess I'm not
easily convinced by industry people. I haven't come across many people
who are in it for the right reason.
Art!
Yeah, and sometimes I think the whole situation is pretty grim. I have
no idea about how I'm going to work out the distribution, but on the other
hand, I don't know what God has in store. I'm an artist and I have to
put that above everything else.
Well, maybe things are about to change. It seems like the smaller record
companies and independent labels are the ones that are handling the really
good, innovative music now, anyway. You know, necessity is the mother
of invention...
Really, I don't know how this would work; I'm just thinking out loud,
but in a sense, we should have a community of artists where we help each
other. Musicians should play on each other's records...
Like a barter system.
That's how we have to survive. I don't even know about independent labels.
I only know that, ideally, you should be able to record things yourself
and be able to move your own product - do your own tours. It doesn't have
to be big. When you sell 60,000 CDs, that's pretty healthy for a blues-jazz
artist. And if you make a living, you're doing great.
Our thanks to Unique
Recording Studios and to Ray Gomez for sharing
his valuable time and providing a sampling of his very exciting upcoming
release.