Feature: Don McGlashan - Loneliness of the Long Distance Strummer

For someone who has just completed his first solo album, Don McGlashan is very sparing in his use of the personal pronouns 'I' and 'me'. Instead he is much more likely to substitute the inclusive 'we'.

Not through any self-effacing desire to deflect the limelight (although there's possibly an element of this), but more as an acknowledgement that without the input and inspiration of certain key people, the somewhat belated 'Warm Hand' might never have arrived at all. It would certainly bear scant resemblance to the intricate and soulful work it has become, and for that he is more than willing to give credit where credit's due.

Although Don is a brainy, hard-working, multi-talented, multi-instrumentalist singer/songwriter, arranger and composer with his own home Pro Tools studio, the effort of producing a solo album which refused to sound finished was beginning to weigh on his mind. He'd spent about seven months, starting in July 2004 (when the rhythm tracks were recorded in a barn at Bethels Beach), tinkering and doing overdubs at his home studio. He'd done string and brass sessions at The Lab, and even some final mixes with Angus McNaughton, with the aim of being wrapped up by around January this year.

"But the more I listened to them, the more I realised they were nowhere near final mixes. Songs needed different instruments on them and quite often I just didn't believe the lead vocal or something. And so then I did more work..."

Quite a bit more as it turns out. Because he is someone who admittedly doesn't over-write for an album - "Never have actually," he stresses - Don was pretty reluctant to dump songs just because they weren't quite gelling. The upshot was a rather protracted period of re-jigging, re-arranging, transposing, adding and subtracting and in some cases complete re-recording, all of which takes time and can play havoc with a writer's sense of objectivity. 

Enter Sean James Donnelly and Ed McWilliams (Cake), two musicians Don is obviously happy to share the NZM cover shot with, and who, through their own individual musical output have contributed some of the most original and intelligent music this country has heard for many a year. Just check out SJD's 'Southern Lights' and Cake's 'Downtown Puff', their most recent solo releases, for confirmation of this.

"Sean was in the middle of his own project ('Southern Lights')," Don recalls, "... and we were able to push each other along at different times when we needed it. My constant bleat was; 'I have to do everything myself, I'm tired of this, I just want somebody to take it off me - tell me the good bits and throw away the bad bits and just release it!' And his constant refrain would be; 'Deal with it, welcome to solo albums.'"

So while 'co-producers' might be an adequate technical description for the role these two played in getting 'Warm Hand' made, it doesn't really paint the whole picture.

Over a nice lunch (I brought the fish, he did the salad) at the Auckland villa he shares with wife Maryanne and their two children, Don's telling me that the changes by no means started and ended there. By the time rhythm tracks were started at Bethels, his concept for the album had changed from being "a fey, fragile little acoustic folk record," to "... an album with a lot more blood in its veins, an album with real people playing, with an overlay of quite a lot of cinematic texturals."

These textural backdrops are an important component of SJD's own solo work, and his expertise in this area proved invaluable. "He'll fill up the frame with lots and lots of detail and then he'll start to erase bits and then arrive at the form he wants, and I think he's given me some permission to do that."

As Donnelly also played bass on all tracks while Don would simultaneously lay down a rhythm Telecaster part, McWilliams' input as far as producing the sessions became paramount.

"Ed set up and basically ran the sessions. He was the producer in the sessions because Sean and I were playing on the rhythm tracks. We needed that outside ear and he was fantastic for that; he really put a lot of energy into it."

McWilliams also facilitated all the beg-borrow-and-stealing of the various extra leads, mics and outboard gear needed for successful 'garage-style' Pro Tools recording. His real forte though was apparently his enthusiastically unconventional approach to engineering. For example setting up overhead drum mics to capture the sound of the rain on the iron roof, "... really trying to catch the feeling in that barn at that particular time", as Don describes it. Or literally climbing inside the drum kit to alter some aspect of the sound. He likens Ed Cake's tinkering and questing for perfection in capturing a certain mood or feel to that of Brian Wilson. "Although hopefully without all the medication!" he hastens to add.