Knoxville-based company records musical performances in a unique way
The streets of Bristol are bustling. There is music everywhere, mixing sounds of traditional bluegrass with Americana rock guitar riffs. Small alleys and side streets lead attendees and musicians alike to stages tucked in every corner of this small town. But there is one stage that is not listed in the program. No one would expect that just above the quaint storefront for the L.C. King Manufacturing Company, a 100-year-old American owned denim company marketing Pointer Brand products, some of the most intimate performances of the festival are taking place. Upstairs the cameras are set. The space is so quiet you could hear a pin drop except for the unmistakable sound of cowboy boots trying in vain to move silently on old hardwood. The large brick-walled factory room is filled with sewing machines and cut denim and the ladies of the Grammy nominated band Della Mae are all set, eyes fixed on the audio engineer in the back of the room surrounded by equipment. Occasionally the quiet is disrupted by the honk of a car horn or the sound of tires rolling through puddles wafting through the giant open windows that line two walls of the massive space. Just a few lucky people sit patiently, quietly waiting for the sign that it is time to start recording. There is a something magical and truly powerful about the whole scene. Everything is set and it’s time to start. Finally music fills the room, as do the plucking clicks of fingers on wooden instruments and sounds of feet tapping to keep time. It almost seems like you can even hear the sound of smiles. But unlike a traditional recording session, those sounds will be included in the recording. After all, this is a recording of a live performance. The song is over. There is a still pause until the cameraman breaks the silence with a single word. And suddenly everyone is animated, laughing and joking, and shuffling around hurriedly adjusting lights and microphones. This is a Live and Breathing recording session.
According to founder Justin Glanville the idea for Live and Breathing stems from the imperfections in the sound of live music performances. “It was all just an idea I had to capture music the way that I was hearing it as opposed to the way I heard it on a record. Everything else I had heard was always radio or MTV, that sort of thing, and I had never heard bad notes or the rawness of it. And I enjoyed that much more.”
Growing up Glanville learned to play the guitar and went to country music and other concerts with his parents but it wasn’t until he was in college and friends started visiting a cabin he lived in the mountains north of Atlanta, Georgia for jam sessions that he began to appreciate the subtle sounds he was being trained to edit out. “I didn’t really realize how I wanted to capture it but I knew I wanted to record it.” Glanville admits those early audio days were a little rough. “I was still learning, and still am, but at the time I was fresh meat. They never came out exactly like I wanted them to and then I would have another idea. I never took most of them to completion.” But soon he found himself recording for Atlanta area musicians Rising Appalachia. “I recorded their Scale Down album. That was the first thing I had ever recorded. That was an awesome experience. And that’s one of those that when I listen to it I still think, ‘Awww… I wish I had done that differently.’ But that’s why it’s so special because now I do those things differently.”
Photo by Rusty Odom.
In 2010 Glanville joined up with his old high school classmate Will Godfrey who had access to video recording equipment and the two attended Pickathon, an indie music festival held outside of Portland, Oregon, and the idea for Live and Breathing was born. Since then the crew has grown and changed quite a bit and though co-founder Will Godfrey left the company 3 or 4 years ago, the addition of graphic designer Travis Whitner, web manager Brian Simmons, videographer Ranjit “Dirty” Singh, and fellow audio engineer Nick Corrigan has enabled Live and Breathing to amass a collection of more than 520 recordings. And with the addition of Rachel Williams and Destiny Smith to help with publicity, marketing, and artist relations, Live and Breathing is poised for many avenues for growth. “In order to do it right and keep everybody comfortable and make sure you have the kind of space you need to have you need at least one other person like Rachel and Destiny there. They explain what’s going on… just kinda keep people happy and social and having a good time which is really important when a band is waiting to be recorded. If they are happy and content hopefully that comes across in the performance.” When referring to the Live and Breathing team, Glanville says, “We are a band. And everyone plays in their section to make our song when it comes to the videos.”
But scheduling this team for recordings can be tricky. According to Glanville, whose full-time job as front-of-the-house audio engineer for internationally acclaimed group The Avett Brothers keeps him traveling, adding another audio engineer has really made a difference. “For the Lubbock sessions I had to leave so it was just Dirty and Nick the whole time. They did four or five days of recording; just the two of them. It’s great to have Nick.”
For the Live and Breathing team, recording musicians in an intimate and private setting is not just a profession but a passion. “What I really want from this is that people get to see music performed by artists who have spent a lot of time, sometimes their whole lives, learning and perfecting a way to express their music. I think Live and Breathing does that because the majority of these bands, for whatever reason, in the business world won’t get to a certain tier, which has absolutely zero reflection on the talent or the meaning behind what they are doing.” Many of the artists recorded by Live and Breathing are independent artists or work with smaller labels to distribute their music, with little to no budget for products like music videos.
Upright bassist Shelby Means of Della Mae is grateful for the opportunity to share their art with new audiences through Live and Breathing recordings. “This was our second time here at Bristol and first time with Live and Breathing, and hopefully it’s not the last time because we had such an awesome experience. Everybody was really helpful, really friendly and easy to work with. We have a couple of videos that we have done so far. We are on Rounder Records and they produced a video for our single song “Empire” that’s out there on the Internet.” But according to Means, there is something special about the Live and Breathing sessions. “It’s really helpful. People record on their cell phones or iphones all the time at live shows and put that stuff up on the Internet and that’s also nice but it’s really great to have professional quality recordings to be able to promote ourselves. And also for our fans. You know, we performed a couple of songs today that aren’t on our albums so it’ll be really great to have a nice quality recording of those songs for our fans to listen to.”
The decision to make the recorded session private was as much about the production as it was the quality and tone of the performance. “I think it helps the band feel no pressure from an audience,” says Glanville. Of course for some of the recordings it would be impossible to include an audience. Abandoned bars, an old train station, and even shower stalls have all played host to recording sessions. Glanville says the ability of a band to understand volume and space is a major factor in the success of video recordings. “There is a shower session with Low Anthem that I think is perfect. But if you were to take a band like The Defribulators and put them in the shower there is no way it’d work cause it’d be too loud. But then The Defribulators were playing in an old bar outside of Knoxville and they just blew the roof off. It was just awesome. The video I am thinking about on that one is ‘Go Go Truck’. They are just really, really rockin’.” Since different bands sound better in different venues, the team is pretty open to exploring new spaces. When referring to the shower sessions with Low Anthem, Glanville says, “Though they really are a quiet band, they really fit into that shower. They sang everything and played everything right at the right volume.”
In just a little over three years, Live and Breathing has grown from a handful of video recordings to a possibly unparalleled library of performances by emerging and independent artists. And though music festivals offer an opportunity to record a large volume of artists in a short amount of time, Glanville envisions more autonomous projects in the future. “So far the festivals we have done have been ones where we already had personal connections from my career. I hope, personally, that we steer clear of going to festivals that are already set up and start focusing more on our own events. I think it would be really awesome if we had a touring season to where we had events planned out every other week or however it works out across the country. We would go record for a week then have a week off then go the next town, focusing in each town mostly on both local bands as well as those who are touring through.” For now, however, Glanville sees Live and Breathing’s ability to come to the artists as a win-win for both “because we fuel each other.”
To date Live and Breathing has hosted several of their own events to varying degrees of success. “We tried to do one in Knoxville. We have a place on the French Broad River called The Dacha; Ian Thomas and Paul Lee Kupfer and the Bus Driver Tour, they all live out there. It’s beautiful. It’s on 60 acres right on the river with hiking trails. It’s a real magical place with some old buildings on it. That was the first attempt at getting a bunch of bands together, maybe three years ago. We called it The Dacha Sessions. Knoxville was the beginning of that idea.” So by the time Live and Breathing entered Lubbock last January, the team was poised to impress, adding the production of a compilation CD to compliment the Lubbock experience. But the team hasn’t stopped there. In early January 2014, Live and Breathing hosted artists James Apollo, Sam Lewis & The Kenny Vaughan Trio, Nikki Lane, and The Howlin’ Brothers at The Stone Fox Theatre, which included a public performance accompanied by a week of private recordings.
What does the future hold for Live and Breathing? More merchandise, compilation CDs, and possibly even a wider distribution of their recordings, according to Glanville. “As everything keeps changing with the internet, so many bands and so many songs, right now it seems like the thing to do is to make compilation CDs but I also think we would be shooting ourselves in the foot by not letting people not create their own compilations. I’d like to figure out a way to do that.” For now fans will just have to enjoy the variety of musical videos available on the group’s website. “We are just now getting our online store going and we are also making a compilation of Pickathon artists. We are aiming for three different compilations. And then they will be sold digitally at first until we make enough money to make physical ones and we will grow that way.” Glanville also has big plans for the video performances. “I would like some way for bars and venues to be able to play our videos either during happy hours or have the ability to play the videos on a TV or on drop screens. I think it would be great if between opening and headliners our videos were used for stage change-overs.” And with a library of performances by artists such as Dave Rawlings Machine, Pokey LaFarge, JD McPherson, Abigail Washburn, Ben Sollee, Dawes, Dr. Dog, Railroad Earth, Yonder Mountain String Band, Shovels and Rope, and the everybodyfields, there is no reason to think Live and Breathing will not continue to grow and evolve into a major resource for emerging and independent artists. With festival season approaching, the Live and Breathing team is busy planning their next move. For now, fans can keep up with new videos by subscribing to the Live and Breathing weekly e-blast, and find out where and what the group is up to by “Liking” Live & Breathing on Facebook.
Glanville is not only proud of Live and Breathing’s progress in the past three years but he is also thankful for so much support in seeing his vision through. “This whole thing would not happen without everyone dedicating their time for which I will never, ever be able to express how thankful I am. At the same time, it is all with the hopes that we will eventually be making enough to where everyone’s job is covered. Perfect situation would be that this was everyone involveds career. I think that with the direction we are going now I believe that is very possible but unfortunately it’s gonna take a lot more unpaid dedication and time.”
