“Life is like a box of chocolates…you never know what you’re gonna get!” – Forrest Gump
Four score and almost two hundred weeks ago, in July of 2019, Beth and I, along with our three kids, took off on a good, old-fashioned family vacation, Griswald-style, and drove from East Tennessee up to Hamilton, Ontario, Canada to visit Beth’s big brother Joe and his family for a week.
One day, just for kicks, Joe (who happens to be the most talented musician I’ve ever known), took us to a recording studio he was doing session work in. He said they would let us record a couple songs for free, as a favor. So since we only had my acoustic guitar and Joe’s doghouse bass, I thought it would be fun to record a couple early Elvis Sun Records songs. But I had no way of knowing that this odd, unmarked studio in Canada would be loaded to the rafters with some of the most iconic and historic recording equipment in the entire world, and that on that day, I would begin recording this angel of an album called “Life”!
For some backstory, at this point, allow me to introduce you to a fellow named Bill Putnam. Maybe you don’t know his name, but you definitely know his work. Check this out . . .
Bill Putnam and The Sound
Bill Putnam is known as “The Father of Modern Recording”. He built the world’s first recording console. He invented reverb and multiband EQ. Putnam was an undeniable genius and a giant in the recording industry, pioneering and producing the best-sounding records in history for scores of the greatest artists in the world.
Putnam’s first studio, Universal, was located in Chicago, where he recorded the likes of Duke Ellington, Patti Page, The Platters, Muddy Waters, and Hank Williams. Then, thanks to the coaxing (and bankroll) of his friends and clients Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra, Putnam moved west in 1957 and opened United Western Studios on Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood. This is where Sinatra, Dean Martin, Ray Charles, Ella Fitzgerald, Sam Cooke, Elvis Presley, Richie Valens, the Mamas and the Papas, the Righteous Brothers, the Grass Roots, Simon and Garfunkel, the Beach Boys, Nat King Cole, and scores of others recorded million seller after million seller, producing some of the biggest hit records of the pop era, and some of my favorite records ever. If you’ve seen the award-winning documentary “The Wrecking Crew”, that’s United Western Recorders!
So as Joe, Beth, and I went inside the warehouse, passing people on horseback, and women dressed as flappers from a movie being filmed there (I’m not kidding!), Joe introduced us to the engineer and studio manager Trevor who was seated at the console. We thanked him for letting us come in and cut some stuff, as he was doing this as a personal favor to Joe, and we were there just to do the mess-around, and have some fun. The room was huge and unadorned, with concrete floors and vintage equipment stacked up everywhere you looked. I unpacked my guitar and was pointed to a spot in front of a very beautiful 1950s RCA 44 microphone. As I was strapping on my guitar and ogling the beautiful mic I was about to sing into, I mentioned to Trevor, “Man, I’ve got a photo of Sam Cooke singing into an RCA 44 that looks just like this one!” “Well”, Trevor said, smiling from his seat at the console, “That’s because this is THAT MIC!” When Trevor saw the dumbfounded look on my face, he elaborated, “All this equipment is from Studio A of Bill Putnam’s United Western Recorders in Hollywood. This is literally the holy grail of recording equipment. Sam Cooke sang into that mic. So did Ray Charles and Elvis and Sinatra. This board and all this gear is from United Western.” Trevor, not noticing my jaw hitting the concrete floor continued, “Elvis did his ’68 Comeback Special in that studio and on this gear.” As I stood there, frozen in shock, Trevor pointed casually to a Wurlitzer piano next to me, “You see that Wurly? Ray Charles played that in the pawn shop scene in The Blues Brothers movie.”
Well…knowing me to be a bit of a weirdo as most of you likely do, and realizing the deep love I have for this music, what comes next shouldn’t surprise you…but that’s when I started to cry! Although there may not have been tears streaming out from the fronts of my eyes, they were piled up high behind them, and I stood there paralyzed. Speechless. You’ve got to understand that the sounds, songs and singers I had idolized since I was a little kid had been sung into that mic and shaped by this very gear that I was about to sing into! Me??? Sing into a mic that Elvis and Sam Cooke and Ray Charles had sung into and cut records on??? I joked afterwards to Beth and Joe that I would’ve licked the mic if I wasn’t sure Trevor would’ve thrown us all out!
I managed to compose myself enough to record five songs that day, on acoustic guitar and doghouse bass, and in the months that followed, we recorded several more songs at my home studio in Johnson City, TN. But the rhythm section on everything has been cut in Canada on that United Western gear, and everything I’m recording in Tennessee is being processed and mixed up there, giving me THAT SOUND! The sound that literally changed the world and my life.
To say it’s the best I’ve ever sounded would be an understatement. For the first time in my life, my voice and my songs sound like the records I’ve memorized and the singers I’ve idolized since I was wearing pajamas with feet in them! Don’t misunderstand me…that gear didn’t make me sing nearly as great as Elvis or Nat King Cole, or Aretha, but for the first time in my life, my songs really SOUND like their songs. And that mojo is just not attainable in digital recording or on lesser analog equipment. There’s a reason Ray Charles and Sinatra and others wanted to buy Bill Putnam’s equipment after recording on it, and there’s a reason that United Western sold more records—by far—than any other recording studio in history. And that reason is . . . the sound!
My First Love
Having been steeped in 50s and 60s stuff from the time I was old enough to stand and reach the Magnavox console stereo, this United Western Sound has been like a family member to me. Much of the soundtrack of my life was recorded there. My Aunt Jeanette (who was a second mother to me) was friends with Elvis and his family and she used to spend many long weekends at Graceland with Elvis prior to him leaving for Army duty and Germany in 1958. And tons of Elvis sides were recorded at United Western. My Mom and Dad loved Sinatra and Dean Martin. My Dad’s favorite songs were Dino’s “You’re Nobody Till Somebody Loves You” (United!), followed by Sinatra’s “One For The Road” (also United!). My uncles that I hung out with constantly as a teenager were into classic country and 50s rock ‘n’ roll like Hank Williams (whom Putnam recorded at Universal in Chicago), Buddy Holly, Little Richard, and Ricky Nelson (again United!). My older brother and sister were into the music of the 60s, like The Beatles, CCR, Motown, and the Righteous Brothers (United!). And growing up in the 60s and 70s, I was completely immersed in the great pop music coming out at the time, much of which came from United Western. I was about ten years old when my Dad took me to a dinner theater he managed in Florida to see Sonny and Cher do a road version of their popular TV show. That was my first concert! Oh…Sonny and Cher? You guessed it…United! When United Western was sold and renamed Ocean Way Recording in 1984, other notables such as Elton John, Alanis Morissette, Eric Clapton, R.E.M., and Whitney Houston recorded there, on Bill Putnam’s equipment and in his unaltered room. Other iconic recordings cut at United Western that were part of the soundtrack of my youth were TV themes like “Hawaii Five-O”, “Sanford & Son”, “Beverly Hillbillies”, “Batman”, “Green Acres”, “M*A*S*H”, “The Flintstones”, “The Jetsons”, etc. So let’s just say that the sound of United Western has been inside my head and in my life since I began to walk! And it’s been in yours too, whether you knew it or not.
Good Music for Good People
Today, I am blessed to be able to integrate lots of these childhood loves into an amalgam or gumbo that my fans know as “Lightnin’ Charlie Music”. It’s always been the music I love, and I can’t remember a time before it. Music was my first love. Today I call it “Good Music for Good People”, and it encompasses all kinds of American Roots Music: 50s Rock ‘n’ Roll, 60s Soul, Classic Country, Gospel and Blues. My repertoire is very broad and eclectic due to growing up surrounded by generations of family that loved and listened to great music all the time, and my fascination with music, religiously memorizing every nuance and syllable of hundreds of great records since learning my ABCs, led me to be the musician, singer, songwriter, and recording artist I am today. My Mother remembers me doing little “shows” at home, at three years old, singing my favorite song at the time, and my show-stopper…Dean Martin’s “Standing On The Corner (Watching All The Girls Go By)”. My Mom says I could do it to perfection, copying Dino’s every word and nuance, mimicking every slur and tipsy turn. Wanna take a guess where Dean recorded that song? Yep! United Western!
I’m a very lucky guy. One who gets to play the music he loves—and has loved—since childhood. More so, there’s a sound that I’ve been chasing since I was a little kid, one which I finally found by accident in a weird, unmarked warehouse in Ontario, Canada!
I named this record “Life”, because it’s been in the making my whole life, and it paints a rich and eclectic musical portrait that reflects the many-faceted emotions, moods, and ups and downs of our lives. An unabashedly Americana album, “Life” explores more of a singer-songwriter vein than my past records, and has—as usual for me—a very exciting mix of styles. My fans know that my records do not conform to categorization, and unapologetically refuse to be pigeonholed. So for those of you who enjoy the diverse and manifold nature of my previous albums, you will surely not be disappointed in this one. We have covers from Elvis, Danny O’Keefe, Harry Nilsson, Ray Price, and everything from a one-hundred year old Spanish folk song to a coffee song by the Ink Spots! I feel that all the material is really outstanding, and that my originals are among the best I’ve ever written. It’s difficult for me to be completely objective about my songs, and whether these are truly better than others I’ve written I just don’t know. I suppose that’s for others to decide. But I do know that these songs are very different from previous songs I’ve written, and the way I’m writing has been different and perhaps deeper and more personal than ever before. And I know I’ve never made a better “sounding” record!!!
By the end of 2019, we had a handful of songs in the can, but there was still an important ingredient missing to release an album. All we had recorded so far was covers, because what happened in Canada was completely unexpected and I didn’t have any original material ready. If we were going to release this onto an album, we obviously needed some originals—some STRONG originals to stand beside the great covers we had recorded. So I got busy writing. And over the course of the next few months, being very inspired and enthused about all that had transpired, a few songs started pouring from my pen. Good songs. The future was bright, and the new year 2020 held nothing but promise and high hopes (hey, that’s a great Sinatra song recorded at…yeah, you got it!)
The Best-Laid Plans of Mice and Men
At the first of the new year, we had completed lots of session work with musicians and sidemen in Canada and Tennessee on the things we had down so far. So we entered 2020 with plans to finish and release “Life” by mid-year. But there’s an old saying, “Man plans, and God laughs!”, and even perfect 20-20 vision could not have foreseen what the year 2020 had in store for us.
In March 2020, we hit a little hiccup. You remember…a global pandemic that stopped the world as we know it. In one 48-hour period in early March, while answering my phone all day for two days, every gig I had booked for the rest of the year disappeared, one by one. And along with them went the plans to complete the record of my dreams. Well…not altogether gone, just postponed for a little while. As God had other plans. Let me explain what I did not see then . . .
In spite of the pandemic and the quarantine—or maybe because of it—I began a very fruitful season of songwriting in the Spring and Summer of 2020, being blessed with a beautiful batch of new original songs, and these songs wouldn’t be here if not for the pandemic. In addition, Beth and I began doing impromptu livestreams from inside our studio in March 2020, and for two hours or more every Saturday night for a year and a half—I think we only missed two or three—folks from all over the world joined us for our weekly “Live From Lightnin’ Land” livestreams! The importance of these broadcasts cannot be overstated. They were so important to our sanity, as they kept a connection between us and our music, and between us and our fans. They reunited loved ones, friends, and fans from all over the world, and lots of folks told us that the “Live From Lightnin’ Land” livestreams really helped to get them through the long, dark, and scary ordeal of covid. They gave us all something to look forward to each week. They gave us an escape from the terrifying reality, as we got to hang out and play music, talk about our fears, encourage one another, and laugh, cry, sing, and pray together, during a time when we weren’t hardly allowed to leave the house, and/or were too scared to. Several people told me afterward that our weekly livestreams literally saved their life. We would take requests, and sometimes get asked to learn songs I didn’t know. I would learn them (not having much else to do!), and perform them the following week. Some of this material that I would have NEVER picked for myself ended up working so well that they are now permanently included in my repertoire!
So here’s the deal . . . This is how our God brings us through trouble. This is how our loving Father works all things together for good for those that love Him and are called according to His purpose. Here’s proof of how He delights in us, fights our battles right beside us, and gives us the victory in wild and spectacular ways we could never imagine. Because He’s a wild and spectacular God!
The opportunity to craft my new original songs with (and for) my audience would have never happened if not for covid. Seeing these songs evolve and grow in depth and maturity, getting the encouragement and real-time feedback from my audience of beloved Lightnin’ Bugs, and getting (for the first time in my life) to share in this magical process together of developing these songs in front of the ones who were ultimately going to be listening to them on the album was just incredible! If the songs are my kids (and they are), then the family of Lightnin’ Bugs who got together with Beth and I on Saturday nights through covid helped raise them. The songs of “Life” that were nourished, nurtured, and brought to adulthood by our fans are now fully grown and ready to leave the home and go out into the world. And all of that happened via those livestreams, with the active participation of our fan family. Think for a moment about what I’m saying . . . that the artist and the audience birthed these songs, and gave them life TOGETHER. Nothing like that has ever happened to me before, and that’s a gift and a memory that I’ll treasure forever.
Three things happened in 2020 and 2021 that ultimately produced “Life”. One was our kickstarter campaign that produced the funds to finish the record. Secondly, the “Live From Lightnin’ Land” livestreams which connected us with our fans, and was the stage from which the songs of “Life” grew up. And thirdly, the fruitful season of songwriting that resulted from my newfound unemployment (one song “Wisdom” was finally completed, after it had sat, unfinished inside a notebook for 15 years!).
Forgive me if I’m stretching here, but let’s explore an application of the symbolism of these three things, in light of what we know of the Holy Trinity from God’s Word, and the creation of “Life”:
- God the Father is known by many names, based on His many attributes, one of which is Jehovah-Jireh, “The Lord who provides” (Gen 22). During the quarantine and my resulting financial hardship, Jehovah-Jireh provided manna to me from above, in the form of money to finish making this record. He did this through His people, my Lightnin’ Bug Family.
- Jesus, the Son of God, was the nature of God made manifest in the flesh (John 14), was the perfect sacrifice (Heb 10), and is the intercessor and one and only mediator between God and man (Rom 8, 1 Tim 2). No man comes (connects) to the Father but through Him (John 14). Jesus is the Connector. The livestreams were the connection between my music and my fans, and was a comfort and a blessing to us all. The livestreams saved us. They brought together, or connected, those who were forced apart.
- The Holy Spirit breathes life (Gen 2), and my songs (if they’re good, that is!) are gifts from above (James 1). So I believe the Holy Spirit to be the Source and Author of my songs in the same way that I believe Him to be the Author of the Bible.
These three things, that created “Life”, may or may not be a symbol of the Trinity, but are clearly a testimony of God’s love, are a glorious and triumphant spit into the face of covid and the quarantine, and are the very stuff that Joseph is talking about in Genesis 50:20 when he says, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it all for good. He brought me to this position so I could save the lives of many people.” What the enemy intended for evil, literally gave life to our album “Life”, and in a beautiful and personal way that I could never have imagined! The words of an old African proverb ring true, and are a tribute to our family of Lightnin’ Bugs, “If you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, go together!”
Our God had already worked all these wild and crazy things together for good, before Canada and before covid, from Ontario to Tennessee, from Wuhan to Western Recorders in Hollywood, He gives us good and perfect gifts, far more abundantly than all that we could ever think or ask, and He’s given us this amazing gift, by His grace, of this dream record called “Life”.
The Spirit of God has made me; the breath of the Almighty gives me life. – Job 33:4
Well, that’s the story of my “Life”! The making of this album has been a long and winding road, and an unforgettable experience, filled with the best of times and the worst of times. But the best is yet to come (sorry, but there’s yet another great song, cut by Sinatra at United Western!). We’re so excited about sharing our “Life” with you! Soon to be available for streaming, and in CD and vinyl formats (a vinyl LP is another happy first for me!), our new “Life” is set to make it’s way into your hearts and ears in the newness of Spring 2024.
Stay tuned for details on how to get this latest and greatest good music for good people. Until then, you can help us by simply spreading the word, sharing this with your friends on social media and elsewhere. Because who doesn’t like good music, and who couldn’t use some in your life right about now?
Thanks, Love, and L’Chaim—to life!
No animals were harmed, no shortcuts were taken, and no microphones were licked during the making of “Life”!
SNEAK PEEK: If you’ve made it this far, you deserve a treat! So here’s some ear candy from my upcoming album “LIFE” . . . it’s the opening song on the album, and our first single. Enjoy the good life y’all . . . la dolce vita Lightnin’ Bugs!
CLICK HERE FOR “Good Time Charlie’s Got The Blues”!!!