Dave Clemo- I Wanna Thank You Lord

This track is from my 2003 album ‘Ain’t Quitting’. This was the first album where I recorded the basic tracks in our home studio before taking the raw data to my friend Andy Crawley for him to work his magic.
At that time the desk and computer was in a separate room to the live area (something that was rectified a few months later when we had the stud wall that separated the two parts taken down. I had originally designed the studio so that whoever was engineering was shielded from the live band and the sheer volume they were generating. (My son liked his music LOUD back then.)
On this particular day I had some free time before the next session. This track wasn’t on the original recording schedule but I decided to see what I could do with it. I’d written the song as a chorus to be sung in churches (the occasional and very welcome royalty payments suggest that a few churches picked up on it- thank you), so this recording was very experimental.
I set up the mikes and plugged my guitar into the DI box, went back into the control room to hit the ‘record’ button and came back, counted myself in started playing. Take 1 was done. I set up another track, put on some headphones and began recording the second take. The playback in the headphones was ear splitting! It was like my old rock group days when my band was so loud that we played on instinct and we were very tight.
So rather than stopping to adjust the volume I carried on, playing on instinct. I knew the song so just improvised some solos. Then I recorded another overdub. This time I had two guitars in my phones and still couldn’t hear what I was playing. I just went for it, soloing as best I could. I added a vocal and listened to the playback. It was a cacophony of sound but in a good way. The whole process took less than an hour. I took the track to Andy. A few days later he called me to say that he’d edited it down to a single guitar and vocal with a single guitar solo. I listened to it and to his surprise declared that I preferred the original! So Andy very kindly topped and tailed my recording, adjusted some of the levels and left it as it was.
It sounds like a free for all at a jam session, when all the players are in tune with each other and the music, and free to take it wherever it went.
And that’s OK by me. What do you think? Comment below.