Bonus Weekend Post: Call Me “Steve Asheville.”

I needed some chimney work done this week, so on the recommendation of a Facebook friend, I called a local business. When I spoke to the guy, his name (Joe Carlson) sounded familiar. I asked him if he was also a musician (in Asheville, you have to be one of those, a poet, a massage therapist or “life coach,” otherwise they turn you away at the city limits).

Anyway, he said yes. “I thought so,” I said. Then I reminded him of a studio session I did for an album he was working on. I laid down keyboard overdubs on four or five of his original songs, mostly using Wurlitzer electric piano and Mellotron string samples. This would have been back in February 2006 (I checked my records). We hadn’t met before the brief studio session, nor did our paths ever cross again, until today.

Turns out that when time came to finally release the finished album (in 2011, some five-plus years after my overdub sessions) he didn’t remember my name. So on the liner notes, the credit reads: “Steve Asheville: mellotron and synthesizer.” I had never heard the finished mixes until today when he brought me a copy…and sealed my chimney flue.

I had totally forgotten the session, as well as the session fee. I gotta say, I really like the ‘Tron textures on the title track of Living Sideways (I come in just before the one-minute mark). And I’m a fan of any mix that puts my work up-front, especially when it also means I can claim to be on an album with such musical heavyweights as Eliot Wadopian and River Guerguerian!

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