BY SCOTT KINNEBREW | On Tuesday, July 23rd, my band Truth & Salvage Co. released their second record, Pick Me Up. It had been a very long time in coming. We started working on the record in Winter of 2012. A year and two producers later we were still completely without a record, and the label was approaching the point of releasing demos for our “sophomore effort.” At the final hour (almost literally) our saviors at Echo Mountain Studio in Asheville, NC, came to the rescue, and invited us to come make the record of our dreams in their church studio.
It was two weeks of magic. I am not just throwing out that word for color. After the previous attempts of recording and dealing with some difficult situations and crazy creative visions, getting into the tracking vibe at Echo Mountain was a monster delight. It was a liberating experience. Every morning before the session began, we smudged the room with sage to neutralize any negativity.
And then we got right to work: grooving and smiling and having a good old time with the songs. We didn’t have a lot of time, so no song got more than 5 takes. All the beds—drums, bass, guitars, keys—were recorded to tape. After we got a good take we’d dump it to Pro Tools and overdub the vocals and extra tasty musical bits. We were tight but loose in all the right ways, we sounded like ourselves.
The icing on the cake was when our friend Bill Reynolds from Band of Horses agreed to mix the record. He knew Echo Mountain really well, having previously produced the Avett Brothers’ Emotionalism and engineered Cease To Begin by Band of Horses there. Being that Bill had been recording a handful of us since the late ’90s, we felt that he knew what we are about. We were right and he killed it!
After a live show celebrating the album release in Nashville, we travel northwest to Washington and then south all the way to San Diego. We are really looking forward to this run of shows. We are all revitalized and excited to play for all the peeps who waited so patiently for Pick Me Up!
I will be checking in weekly—sharing the highlights, pondering deep questions of life, and showcasing hot pics taken from my grandpa’s camera. So check back in to Truth & Salvage Co.’s TVD Tour Diary!
Truth & Salvage Co.’s second full length release, Pick Me Up arrived on store shelves Tuesday, July 23 via Megaforce/ Sony RED.
