I Can’t Stop is the latest release from the legendary BoDeans, who started making music together more than 30 years ago. The band will be touring throughout the rest of the year, but in the meantime, frontman Kurt Neumann, multi-instrumentalist Sam Hawksley and drummer Kenny Aronoff will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week.
Hawksley: I Can’t Stop was recorded in various rooms between Austin, Nashville and Los Angeles. Kurt and I thought some of the tracks would sound good with horns, so we booked the Junkyard Horns to come play on a few songs. The only limit to technology is really your imagination. It’s fine to have all the gear and plug-ins for your Pro Tools rig. But what do you do with it? What music are you going to make with it? I hadn’t had a lot of experience writing for horns. Actually, none is the amount of experience I had in writing for horns. I dreamt up some lines and parts and got the manuscript paper out and wrote out the figures on the chord chart. I set up some mics in my living room, ready for Chris West and the Junkyard Horns to arrive. I played them the track and sang/talked through my ideas—they were very patient with me. They figured out amongst themselves which instrument would play which notes in the voicings I’d written out (I hadn’t assigned separate parts for each instrument, I’d just written out chord voicings and lines) and just like that, my lounge room became a studio and the BoDeans had horns. It just takes an idea and imagination.
