“Erik” is Erik Schrody, better known as Everlast. The album he’s discussing is Eat at Whitey’s, the stunning follow-up to the brilliant smash hit Whitey Ford Sings the Blues. Everlast’s first musical forays were strictly hip hop, but nowadays he’s branched out into the realms of folk, blues, rock, and, yes, soul and country. Beck got away with it; Everlast probably will, too.
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Shortly after the demise of HOP, Everlast was preparing to record a solo hip hop album with Gamble and Dante Ross—the two are the Stimulated Dummies production team. While they were working on new songs, Everlast was staying at Ross’ house playing a borrowed guitar. Ross walked by one day and heard him playing “What It’s Like” on the six-string. A new career was about to be launched. “We didn’t even know he played guitar,” Gamble remembers. “We said, ‘Let’s just try. We’ll put some drum programming underneath it and cut a live guitar and bass and vocal thing over it.’ Once the demo of ‘What It’s Like’ was done, we knew we had something really strong and just kind of on an impulse changed directions.”
Whitey Ford Sings the Blues introduced all concerned to a brand new Everlast. Recorded at his Los Angeles home with a basic list of technical accoutrements, the album was a bit of a challenge. “Our studio [SD Studios in New York City] had been wired by somebody and had a patchbay,” Gamble says. “He didn’t even have that, so when we went out to do his record there, he didn’t have any mic pre’s or any stuff like that. It was very bare-bones. We were kind of inventing it as we were going along.”
In between Whitey Ford Sings the Blues and Eat at Whitey’s, Everlast toured the world, won a Grammy, thanks to his work with Carlos Santana on Supernatural (“Put Your Lights On”), and became more comfortable as a songwriter. In fact, when it came time to work on the follow-up, it was almost an old story that Everlast could actually sing and play the guitar. “Well, I hope it’s not that old of a story,” he says with a laugh. “I’m still exploring all that; it’s fun. We just figured that out on the last record. On this record, the goal for me personally was to find out if that was luck or if I could write songs. I’m not even talking about on a success scale like selling records. I was strictly trying to find out if I could write songs.”
For Eat at Whitey’s, the production team brought the party to New York and welcomed touring keyboard player Keith “Keefus” Ciancia into the studio. “There was an additional great musician, set of ears and creative person who had a very large arsenal of old synths and Clavs and a ton of stuff,” Gamble points out. “It seemed natural to go even more in the direction that we had in the first record. I feel the record is more musical.”
Indeed. Thanks to songs like “Love for Real,” which blends bits of hip hop and soul, and the sultry vocal additions of N’Dea Davenport, this album is brimming with musicality. Producer Dante Ross calls “Love for Real” one of his favorite songs on the album, perhaps because it challenged him. “I thought that it was a good tune, but initially it was more of a singer/songwriter tune as opposed to a soul tune,” he explains. “I heard it as a soul tune, and I was like, ‘Yo, we can do it like some Superfly, Bill Withers-y, Al Green shit. We can break out some strings and make it real Stax-y and funky.’ So we just went for it.” In addition to the string arrangement—courtesy of David Campbell—Ross and Everlast came up with a horn arrangement and added it the same day as the string tracking.
Creative sparks flew when Davenport and Everlast sang together in the studio. “She’s a natural and so is Erik, so it’s not like rocket science. They are both pretty emotive and soulful, so you just go for performance and try to steer them along,” Ross says.
Reprinted with permission from
Magazine, April, 2001© 2000, Intertec Publishing, A Primedia Company All Rights Reserved
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