Aunt Louise

Spice Rack Collective

This one has quite a convoluted path, too!

The origin was toward the end of the first RPM recording session on Saturday, 2/4, when Matt said, “Hey, can we jam on G – D – Em – C and see what happens?” We arrayed ourselves around the studio – Matt on electric guitar, Nick on bass (maybe for the first time with other folks?), Robbie on acoustic and vocals, Kenny on vocals and tambourine, and me on drums. We stumbled through a couple of initial takes, then got more confident with the structure on take 3. That’s when I discovered that I had mis-assigned the inputs for Matt’s guitar tracks, so we had recorded a couple of my drum mics instead. Le sigh. With Take 4, though, we had the makings of a song!

On 2/11, the second Saturday in February, Nick, Kenny, Robbie, and I assembled in the studio and hashed out a more formal song structure, including revised lyrics and a new bridge that wasn’t in Take 4 from the previous week. We laid down acoustic guitar, bass, and vocal tracks to a metronome that was about 25-30 bpm faster than the more laid-back Take 4.

The next day, I tried unsuccessfully to import Matt’s electric guitar parts from the previous live take – the tempo difference made the parts sound strange when compressed to fit, and it just didn’t work. Nick also wasn’t happy with the timing for his bass part, but he and I had figured out the week before how to use stretch markers in Reaper to tweak exactly that, so I used my laptop and headphones during the Super Bowl to sync his bass notes closer to the metronome and Robbie’s acoustic guitar (though not fully quantized – still wanted it to sound like an actual human being played it!).

I added a couple of drum takes on 2/18, and then on 2/26, Matt sent me the electric guitar parts he had recorded to an intermediate mix of the multitrack version. With that, Aunt Louise finally stepped out as a finished track!

Robbie Robinson - Arrangement, lyrics, vocals, acoustic guitar
Matt Appleberry - Songwriting, electric guitar, recording
Kenny Tannehill - Arrangement, lyrics, background vocals
Nick Peshman - Bass
Kevin Craig - Drums, lyrics (1 line :) ), recording, mixing

Aunt Louise

Some people for wait a lifetime
For things to finally work out,
Like my dear ol’ Aunt Louise,
Who this song is about.

Ooh

It’s been a long time coming,
And Lord knows that she’s due.
I hear Louise is out running,
I guess a natural thing to do.

Ooh

Her husband was a drunk,
But he gave her eight kids.
At least one was always at the house.
But now the baby’s grown,
And Daddy’s in the slammer,
And Aunt Louise is puttin’ on her party blouse.

She’s finally decided to live her life in another way,
It could be better, it could be worse, who’s to say?

She’s still helping with the grandkids,
Sometimes they stay at her house,
But now that she finally has some free time,
Aunt Louise is stepping out.

Ooh

Aunt Louise is stepping out.