- Place – Nashville – London – Sweden
- Time – 1984
- Artist – Joe Sun And The Solarsystem
James Paulsen September 25, 1943, – October 25, 2019, known professionally as Joe Sun, was an American country music singer-songwriter.
Recording for the Ovation and Elektra Records labels, Sun charted fourteen singles on the Hot Country Songs charts.
He released 15 albums and performed in the United States and Europe. He also recorded national radio spots for Budweiser.
Along with being featured on television shows, having produced two Grammy nominated foreign albums in 1989 and 1990. He also acted as Tommy Fratter in the film Marie along side Sissy Spacek and Morgan Freeman.
My first meeting with Joe
In Early 1984, whilst I was under contract as house producer for Sonet Sweden they signed the country singer Joe Sun.
I was asked if I would produce an album with Joe to be recorded in Nashville.
Before producing any album I would always insist I meet the artist to see if we got on together and were singing off the same song sheet, forgive the pun.
I was visiting Nashville on other business so Sonet contacted Joe to let him know I would be staying at the Maxwell House Hotel my favourite hotel in Nashville back then.
I was in my room when I received a call from Joe saying he would come over to the hotel in an hour or so.
I told him to call my room when he arrived and I would come down to met him.
An hour or so later the phone rang and before I could say anything Joe said, “OK I’m here, I’ll come up to your room.”
A few minutes later there was a knock on the door, when I opened it I saw this guy with a physic of an American football player.
I said, “Hi Joe I’m Kenny, good to…” he interrupted walking straight into my room saying, “Ok, what does and English guy like you know about country music?” Mmm, “Nice to meet you too,” I thought.
I immediately replied, “Not anywhere as much as you do, but that’s not my job, your job is to know the music, my job is to get the best out of you.”
This seem to slow him down a bit and over the next few hours things became slightly less tense.
Listen to ego and songs
The next day I visited his home and he played me some of the songs he had written and wanted to record.
In his performance there were some similarities to Jerry Reed one of my all time favourite country acts and songwriters.
Jerry had many hits in his own right and also wrote several chart toppers for other artists, including two classic for Elvis – Guitar Man and US Male.
As each of his songs finished he said, “Now that’s one hell of a great song.”
I wouldn’t agree entirely with his view, but there was some reasonable material to work with.
I asked him if he could organise a tape of the songs he wanted to record so that I could take them back home with me. I also told him I would like to send him a couple of songs from the UK for his consideration.
We spent the rest of the day talking dates and studios choices.
I still felt an unease with him but that may have been down to the initial hotel meeting.
A night of music but not to much laughter
Joe said, he was going to a place called The Bluebird Cafe, which had just started an evening in which up-and-coming songwriters have the opportunity to play some of their original material with a special guest who already had success so, if I wanted to come along, I was welcome.
I told him I would very much like to join him and would pick him up from his house that evening in a cab.
About The Bluebird Café
The Bluebird Cafe was located in the Green Hills neighbourhood of Nashville and is now one of the World’s pre-eminent listening rooms. Over the past 39 years it has gained worldwide recognition as a songwriter’s venue where the “heroes behind the hits” share their stories and perform their original songs.
I arrived at Joe’s house and he was armed with his guitar, I could see he was ready to impress.
During the ride to The Bluebird and as I was listening to Joe talking about his past success I began to realise something, he had an ego bigger than Carnegie Hall.
The Bluebird had a really nice atmosphere and had seats for about 80 people, there was a small bar area where you could sit with a good view of the stage, being early we found a couple of seats at the bar.
A couple of new songwriters braved the stage before Joe and his ego opened his guitar case and launched himself onto the platform to show them how it was done.
It was obvious he knew his craft and was well received by the audience.
A short break but not my nose
There was a short break and Joe and I was at the bar having a beer, when out of the blue a nasty looking Redneck came over looking me straight in the eyes and said,
“I’m in the frame of mind to punch you in the face.”
As my Adams apple bounced up and down like a yoyo I knew the only thing I could do was to talk my way out of this.
My first thought was to say, “I never get into fights with ugly people, as they have nothing to lose,” but then thought better of it.
Trying to think of something funny to disarm this guy, I said, “Why would you wanna do that?”
“Unless you’re the guy that wrote the sign over the front door of this place.”
“Uh, what do you mean?” he growled.
“The sign over the front door, the one that’s say’s – Hey, pick up your teeth and let’s be friends come in and you can buy me a beer and we can make amends.”
To my relief and surprise he grunted, which sounded almost like laughter disguised as a cough.
So I quickly followed up with, “So, can I buy you a beer?”
At this stage, I got him a beer and turned to get some backup from my buddy and host, but to my astonishment all I could see was the back of his extremely large shoulders, giving me the impression he didn’t wanna get involved.
This confrontation continued for about five minutes, during which time I tried to keep going with the humours dialogue.
I told him “I’m a lover not a fighter, although there was a time when I was a boxer,” quickly explaining not a very good one. Seeing this seemed to be working, I continued with.
“In fact, I was so bad my manager decided to make some money by taking out advertising on the souls of my shoes and to make easy for the corner men to carry me out of the ring, he put handles on the side of my shorts.
By now, he was on his third beer and seemed to have relaxed up a bit.
Lucky for me, the break in the music was over, as another wannabe stepped up on the stage, so my newly found sparing partner took his drink and without a punch kiss or a cuddle, disappeared into the audience.
By now, Joe was networking his way around the place so I decided to leave and get a cab back to my hotel.
Was it a set up?
Only at the time of writing this encounter for my blog all these years later, did I consider that this whole episode was set up by Joe, not sure why, maybe he wanted to dismantle my confidence and see how I would handle the situation.
Lets get this show on the road
The day before I was to leave Nashville, I called Joe to say I would pick up a tape of the songs and we could talk over the phone to make the final decisions about the recording.
A few weeks later the material and the dates for recording were confirmed and Glaser Sound Studios Inn Nashville was booked for the recordings.
I had also asked my dear friend Augie Myers, who was living in New York at that time, if he would like to play some piano and accordion on the tracks, which he said he would love to do.
Time to face the music
I arrived back in Nashville for a couple of days rehearsal before the recording session started and Augie arrived the night before the sessions.
Joe had a really good backing band of young musicians called SolarSystem.
We rehearsed for a couple of long afternoons and all was sounding excellent.
The day before the sessions there was a huge amount of time spent at the local Musician’s Union office.
There was sorts of paperwork to be agreed which I’d never come across anywhere else before.
Let the session begin
On the morning of the recording I arrived at the studio early.
I had left Augie at the hotel and told him to get to the studio about 9.45am
I never engineered any sessions in studios I wasn’r familiar with, there was always enough pressure on me in getting the music right, never mind learning how an unfamiliar studio worked.
The first problem
On entering the studio control room I could see the engineer in the studio setting up the mics for the musicians.
I went in to say hi and oversee mic positioning.
The engineer was very friendly and laid back, but I noticed he had set the drums up in the middle of the room.
I had to say, this won’t work for me, I need the drums in a drum both for separation purposes otherwise every instrument track will have drums on them.
I helped him move the mics to the drum booth, but unfortunately the tempo he worked at and the communication speed between us was not happening and with the tight budget I had to stick to, I knew this with this engineer wasn’t going to work.
I went to the studio manager and feeling awful for the first time ever and the only time in my entire career I explained I need a different engineer.
Being a professional studio they quickly phoned for a replacement engineer.
The next hurdle
Was when the session musicians started to arrive.
I started to think that I was at the wrong studio until they started asking, “Is this the Joe Sun Session?’
The drummer was setting up, and as the new engineer hadn’t arrived yet, I started placing some mics around the kit.
The drummer then informed me that he was only booked for the morning session as he had another gig that afternoon, this meant we would have to spend extra time setting up for another drummer later that day.
I was starting to get slightly agitated, the new engineer hadn’t arrived and strangely I thought for some bizarre reason we would be working with Joe’s band.
Joe finally arrived.
“Joe what is going on here, why are we not using your band?”
“Kenny, you don’t understand man, when this record comes out, it has to have the Nashville names playing on it, there’s no way I could use my band.”
“Joe, why did we rehearse the songs with your band?”
Demeaningly, he replied, “So you could hear what the songs sounded like with a band.”
By 9.45 all the musicians had arrived with the new engineer on his way.
Joe started running through the first song so the session guys could write down the chords.
I fired Elvis’s recording engineer
I went to get a coffee and seated in the lounge area was the engineer I had complained about.
I felt terrible but apologised to him and tried to explain, because I was on this tight budget I needed to work at a really fast and I didn’t think we would be compatible in that area.
He seemed fine about it but was such a laid back type of guy, I didn’t know if he had excepted my apology or it hadn’t sunk in yet.
Looking on the wall, I was stunned to see that he had been presented with three gold discs for recording Elvis albums.
Shame I didn’t have Presley’s budget.
Back to the stress zone
I returned to the session to find Augie was having a really tough time with the Nashville clique, it was obvious they didn’t like out-of-towner’s especially ones from Texas.
I told Augie to stay in the control room with me and we’d add his parts later.
This is what Bob Dylan once said of Augie Meyers.
“Augie’s my man, he’s the shining example of a musician, He can bring a song, certainly any one of mine, into the real world.
He’s the master of syncopation and timing and this is something that cannot be taught. If you need someone to get you through the shipping lanes and there’s no detour, Augie will get you right straight through. Augie’s your man.”
Red record light goes on
We finally got underway, with the new engineer saying, after every take, “That’s the greatest thing I ever heard .” Looking at me and continuing, “Isn’t it?”
Almost every time, I would say, “No we’ll need to do it again.”
After a pain staking couple of sessions we had the basic tracks down and the vocals and overdubs complete. Joe was going through his phone book to look for backing vocalist.
Enter The Solar System
Hey Joe, let’s just get your band in, they know the songs and harmonies and when you go out on the road the band will sound a lot closer to the recordings.
He reluctantly agreed.
When the guys turned up they never stopped saying thank you, thank you for the opportunity to be in a professional studio and the chance to be on this record.
I told them, being Joe’s band you should have been playing the backing tracks.
Back to the UK
When I returned I called Sweden and spoke to record company bosses Dag and Gunnar and told them, I can’t go back to Nashville to finish this album.
“It’s Joe’s territory and his narrow thinking of how to make a good record is not mine”, the only way I could get a good record made was to record Joe outside of Nashville.
Dag suggested to Joe the idea of recording the rest of the album with his band at the Sonet studios in London and perhaps play some gigs in Sweden and around Europe.
Letter to Dag confirming the London recordings
Joe would now be on my patch and I knew I would have the full co-operation of his band, so I agreed this would be a good way to complete the album.
I don’t remember too much about the London recordings except there was no pressure.
Joe and the band performed well and professionally and tracks went down without any problems.
A disaster of monumental proportions
I mixed the album in Sweden at Sonet’s Park Studios.
I usually worked late into the night and although the Studio had great noise gates, I preferred to take the time and clean each and every track on the multi-track that had noises or unwanted breaths and guitar hums etc.
This would make it so much easy for me to mix.
Around 2am, I was doing just that on Joe’s harmonica track, on the song called The Light That Shines The Brightest, when my mind drifted away before I realised I had wiped his entire harmonica solo. Oops!
With Joe being in Nashville and me in Sweden this was a disaster of monumental proportions.
After the initial panic was over, I decided to find a few harmonica phrases Joe had played in the verses and joined them together to form a solo.
This took hours before I had something acceptable.
Once I had a few bars that worked for the opening I repeated the same thing three times, then spent more time coming up with the last few bars.
I was sure Joe would notice when he heard the finish mix, but lucky for me he didn’t. Nor did anyone else for that matter.
The album never sold in any volume but did achieved a minor success with the single Bad For Me on the Billboard Country charts.
I have just recently played this album for the first time, since I finished the recording and I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t as bad for me as I thought at the time.
I did wonder, if my very first meeting with Joe hadn’t have been so fraught, we may have had a bit more respect for each other and recordings may have captured something a whole lot better.
Even when I was visiting Nashville I never spoke or kept in touch with Joe once the album was finished, like I did with many of the other artist I produced.
Joe Sun, finally arrived at the place where the sun never sets in Palm Bay Florida on October 25, 2019. RIP
The Sun Never Sets (Full Album)
Like this:
Like Loading...
Related