Bill Payne and Paul Barrere Talk About Their 30-Year Ride
| by Blair Jackson |
What was Blue Seas like? It must have been odd to go from recording in L.A. to Maryland?
Payne: Well…it was a chance to…heal. [Laughs.]
Barrere: [Laughs.] He’s right.
Payne: We had all sorts of horseshit going on around the time of that record. We were kind of burned out and had various problems. We were kind of scattered. Lowell and I were supposed to be in a band with John Sebastian and Don Everly, some kind of super band that thankfully fizzled out before it had a chance to go anywhere. I was with the Doobie Brothers on a tour called “What Once Were Vices Now Are Habits” and about two weeks into that I respectfully bailed out and started touring with Bonnie Raitt. Lowell was in New Orleans working with The Meters and Allen Toussaint on a Robert Palmer record called Sneakin’ Sally Through the Alley—a wonderful record—and Bob Cavallo, who was our manager at the time, spoke to Steve Boone, who had also been with the Lovin’ Spoonful, and Steve had a studio back in Maryland, Blue Seas. It was Cavallo’s idea to re-center the band back in Baltimore; give us complete freedom to record and do what we wanted, put us in an atmosphere away from Los Angeles, and by God, it worked. That’s a good record.
Do you think Lowell picked up much from Templeman in terms of being a producer?
Barrere: I think he definitely got some smarts from his dealings with Ted and with Russ [Titelman] and the engineers, especially Don. He also picked up a lot from Van Dyke Parks, including getting that sound on the slide, which was a Russ Titelman-Van Dyke idea, using dual compressors and all that.
Payne: And that came through Ry Cooder.
Barrere: But Lowell was a very smart cat and he picked up a lot. I’m sure he picked up some miking techniques from George Massenburg. The very first session I ever did with Lowell, I was 18 and it was with myself and Lowell and Dr. John and my brother Michael playing drums and some others, and he would put a speaker in a bathroom and mike it. He had mics all over the place. He was always experimenting.
Were you surprised when Waiting for Columbus, your live album, actually became a hit?
Payne: Yeah, definitely. That album is certainly an icon of live recording, but it’s also a live recording that had a lot of overdubs on it. We never hid that.
Barrere: There were a lot of guitar fixes and there were quite a few vocal fixes.
Payne: And that was largely Lowell’s idea. He said, “Here’s the energy we’ve got; let’s work with it.” I think the drums and keyboards didn’t change much. We edited the keyboard solo in “Dixie Chicken.” One track, “Mercenary Territory,” came from a soundcheck, rather than a show.
Barrere: It wasn’t as blatantly worked on as [The Who’s] Live At Leeds, where you can hear the old tracks in the background. [Laughs.] Warren Dewey, who recorded Waiting for Columbus [along with Massenburg and Andy Bloch] did a great job of getting separation.
Reprinted with
permission from 
Magazine, February, 2001
© 2000, Intertec
Publishing, A Primedia Company All Rights Reserved
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