Bone Machine

[leigh]

Hi Tchad,

Tom Waits' "Bone Machine" has been mentioned a couple times here in passing, but I would love to hear as much detail about it as possible. It's been my favorite all-time album going on ten years, just amazing dark sonics and dark songs merging perfectly.

For starters, the liner notes only credit you as mixing (the majority of tracks anyways). But from your comments here, it sounds like you were involved in some tracking as well. True?

If so, can you describe how the tracking sessions went? How many takes and/or different approaches were typical for a song? How much was done live in studio vs overdubs?

At the mixing stage, were there a ton of tracks and ideas laid down, that had to be selectively muted to create the final arrangement? Or was it built from the ground up, as is?

Thank you!
Leigh


PS: By the way, there's a pretty great online encyclopedia of all the unusual instruments that Waits has used through the years, see here:
Tom Waits Library - Instruments

[tchadb]

Originally Posted by leigh

Hi Tchad,

Tom Waits' "Bone Machine" has been mentioned a couple times here in passing, but I would love to hear as much detail about it as possible. It's been my favorite all-time album going on ten years, just amazing dark sonics and dark songs merging perfectly.

For starters, the liner notes only credit you as mixing (the majority of tracks anyways). But from your comments here, it sounds like you were involved in some tracking as well. True?

If so, can you describe how the tracking sessions went? How many takes and/or different approaches were typical for a song? How much was done live in studio vs overdubs?

At the mixing stage, were there a ton of tracks and ideas laid down, that had to be selectively muted to create the final arrangement? Or was it built from the ground up, as is?

Thank you!
Leigh


PS: By the way, there's a pretty great online encyclopedia of all the unusual instruments that Waits has used through the years, see here:
Tom Waits Library - Instruments

I was hired to mix but ended up recording a bit of whatever Tom wanted to redo. Some drums, vocals, kb and gtrs. Tom playing all.
The album needed very little arrangment wise in the mix stage. Some Ahuja treatment and Sans Amp of course. A few mutes here and there.
Don't remember specifics just one hell of a lot O' fun.