It's a year of twos for Limblifter. Limblifter's core members -- two brothers, released their second album (featuring their double 'L' logo), which coincidentally took two years to write and record happened to come out in the year 2000. Jacob Two-Two and Bathman's nemesis Two-Face would both be so proud, but will success strike the band twice? With another solid recording under their belt, the Brothers Dahle have proven their ability to write and record songs worthy of a listen from any fan of their previous work, along with some new sets of ears after the catchy first single "Ariel vs. Lotus" makes its rounds on radio.
Limblifter spend the better part of those two years working on their follow-up to their self-titled debut, which was recorded over a couple of weeks back in 1996 -- quite the contrast. Ryan Dahle, songwriter, lyrcist, guitarist, occasional keyboardist also filled the role of producer for the album along with his brother Kurt, the band's drummer. The band was without a bass player when they started the album, and settled on Todd Fancey part way through the process. John Maclean co-produced the album with the band at his Vancouver studio...more on John later. The album features guest appearances as well, including the vocally-powerful Holly McNarland, Corrin Culbertson (formerly bassist for Bif Naked), Doug Elliot and Ian Blurton (of Change of Heart/Blurtonia fame).
Limblifter first rose as a side project to Age of Electric (which happened to feature two sets of two brothers). Limblifter quicklly surpassed AOE, and consequently helped AOE's CD sales right across Canada. Canada was now in love with the Dahle brothers. Make a Pest a Pet (1996) would turn out to be AOE's final album together, spawning the hit single "Remote Control" ['Where's my remote control?' You know the one.]. That split has allowed the Dahle brothers the time they required to finish the second Limblifter album. That album is Bellaclava, and it was released in early March of this year...
The Writing Process
Ryan Dahle is Limblifter's lone songwriter. Ryan even ventured to a cabin in the wilderness of British Columbia to write alone for a week. "Remember that issue I wrote that songwriting article? One of those songs ended up on the record -- 'Hostess'," recalls Ryan. [An event well documented in a "Writing" column Ryan wrote in the March/April 1998 Canadian Musician, a time when he was just starting Bellaclava.]
Due to the length of time spent on the album, many different writing methods were used by Ryan to find what he needed to create the final cuts you hear on the finished CD. "It was written in many different ways because it was such a long period. I had a lot of time to write in different ways. Songs can pop up, but they may not be finished for almost a year."
Ryan used varying methods to suit whatever he's working on at the time, whether it be lyrics, melodies, guitar layers or bass lines. "Each part is different...lyrics, you read something back later [after first jotting an idea down], and you use anything that kind of sticks with you -- anything that connects with you."
The questions that troubles many artists and bands is, that out of all the song ideas flying through their heads on a day-to-day basis, which will be good songs? How does Ryan whittle his choices down? "I play a lot of things for friends, to get their opinions. It's almost like our friends produce our records in some ways. I have the luxury of having some really honest friends." At least they're not two-faced.
ANy songwriter is faced with the challenge of discovering the method best suited to their creative flow to record ideas clearly and quickly, whether it be writing in a notepad or carrying a tape recorder. Ryan covers all bases: "I have a little cassette recorder for full-size cassette tapes. That works really well. I have a dictaphone like this [the author's recorder] too so I can carry it around. I have a 4-track, and an ADAT, so I'm pretty much covered. More and more, I put ideas on my little cassette recorder any chance I get. The micro-cassette tapes -- I always lose them and the quality isn't so great, so I bought the bigger one. But it's mono -- that's the only problem."
Once his brilliant ideas are recorded, safe from the danger that is forgetfulness, Ryan can recall his ideas. "Yeah, but then I'll listen to it the next day and it'll be crap. I'm kind of an ignorant listener, I like to listen to things and not analyze them too much -- I try to anyway. Otherwise all the ltitle intricacies will drive me nuts. When you get ideas down, it's just what sticks with you the longest. I still have a lot of songs that stick with me that I've never put out because I think they're too stranger. They're not really user-friendly. Or sometimes the marriage of lyrics and melody don't work, and it never will work, but I've tried to change the lyrics, and I can't change the lyrics, and it will never fit. I have a lot of things that I've worked on for years, and they don't get any better, and they won't, so I just leave them alone..."
Ryan is a rewriter. He explains how he squeezes out all the imperfections -- which he feels is not necessarily a great way to write. "Sometimes ideas just come to me, I wish it always happened like that. A lot of people are just really prolific and articulate, and they can pull off something that's always good. I have to work on stuff for a long time." He goes on to explain that he was embarrassed carrying a notepad around, until he heard that Gord Downie, frontman for the Tragically Hip prescribed to the same ritual.
The actual act of writing a song means writing many different parts for different instruments, but Ryan seems to have discovered his own songwriting success. "I don't concentrate too much on one thing, which maybe is a good thing, because if you get too obsessed with lyrics you'll get too political or introspective, or too out there. You still want your songs to be user-friendly."
Songwriting is not an art to be learned overnight, and although a musician learns to communicate their visions through songs, they may never learn to work with another musician. "I don't think I'm very good at collaborating because I'm too particular. I rewrite so much. I'll wait a really long time before I really nail down what's going to happen with a song. It would be too frustrating for people to write with me because I'll take a song like 'Wake Up to the Sun' and I'll go through 10 choruses for it. I remember playing songs for my old girlfriend or friends, and they'll tell me, 'I liked it the way it was before.' If anyone else were involved, they'd probably go bananas because I just can't sit down and say 'here it is' in half a day. Although 'Cordova' was like that, 'Remote Control' was like that. 'Ariel vs. Lotus' was also like that. Sometimes it does happen. I think that's the point I'd like to get to...where you work at all these little things, and nothing really comes of it, and then something all of a sudden pops up. Because you'll be attuned to yourself, you'll not be thinking what you were doing, and that's when ideas become the best. That's why I'm rewriting choruses where I'm waiting for another thing to come to me like that -- from my subconscious. A lot of writers talk about that, where when they're creating, it just comes through you. I don't get too weird or spiritual about it, but I believe that your subconscious is much smarter than your conscious. All kinds of barriers exist with your conscious mind, especially with me I get a little uptight."
Capturing ideas on tape for Bellaclava in a simplistic way lead the band to a sound they're most happy with. "What we continually try to do is create an atmosphere where we can make mistakes and be really loose, and then trap them. As opposed to playing the part as best as we can play it, we play the part as loose as we can until the part becomes something completely different. That's what the album is like -- that's why it took so long. Every single part, every instrument, every performance are little accidents. They can never happen again. I'm looking for something that can never happen again on every instrument or vocal. You can sing a vocal line, spend half a day recording it, and come back the next day and sing it the best you've ever sang it, or go back to the first take."
This rule also applies to Kurt's drum playing, as Ryan explains. "I really find that Kurt plays really well the first time he hears a song because he's really excited about it. And after that he's not really excited about it and he gets bored quickly."
While capturing their ideas as quickly as possible, Ryan does share songwriting duties occassionally. "When Todd first joined the band, he played stand-up bass on 'Hostess,' and he just played whatever he made up on the spot. Same with Corrine 'Coco' Culbertson, she just played whatever she wanted to."
Speaking of Limblifter's new bassist, Todd (originally from Halifax, NS) was recommended to the Dahles by Coco, who played in a band with him. "He hadn't played in a band in about a year and a half, which is good. He was really tired of playing in local bands, and now he's really excited it again," shares Ryan.
Capturing the Charm
Bellaclava was recorded at Vancouver's Factory Studio. As described by Ryan, the album hearkens back to classic records the band loves from the `60s and `70s -- including their usage of old analog equipment. "We used everything from really old Neve consoles from the `70s, and old mics like Telefunken or Neumann. The highest quality and warmth we could find -- like the old records we love."
Sometimes the recording process doesn't exactly go the way you plan it: "We did a whole session like where we scrapped seven songs. The songs weren't finished really, but as opposed to creating demos for them, we thought we would create them in the studio, which would trap some of that charm. But it didn't work. It was too much pressure. Everybody was staring at each other. It was too much -- I didn't get what we did. That's what has to happen... if you don't even get it, you can't expect anyone else to."
When the band has demoed their material, and is prepared to enter the studio, they first lay down the guitar bed tracks. "Even when in AOE, I always put the bed guitar tracks down because Kurt really follows me. He'll never listen to bass in his headphones -- and live as well -- he never listens to bass. He only listens to guitar. We played together for so long, and I really seem concerned with rhythm, and bass also clogs up his monitors -- harder to hear." The band decided to record bass tracks last this time out. One song which broke that mould was the first single "Ariel vs. Lotus." "The song was written around the pass. I played along, on bass, with the drums. We tried to record everything, including vocals, before bass. On this album, there are so many melodies you can work around on the bass. The bass dictates so much. It's better to have the bass moving. A lot of times in rock and roll, the bass is stiff -- really steady. It can mean the difference between a boring song and a really interesting song."
Recorded at Vancouver's Factory, this record would have been impossible to make without John Maclean. "He pulled out all the stops -- he did everything he could including putting everything on the line to finish this album. We'd go in for a couple of weeks at a time, and we'd be working around the clock, and John has a couple of kids, and he'd always try to go see them all the time. I really pushed him to the limit. This was kind of like the 'never-ending album' and John had so much patience. He was very sensitive towards what I wanted to do, believing in me having an idea of what the outcome would be. I think he's going to do really well as a producer and engineer. We looked at this project as if it was the last record we were all going to make -- that it was the only record that mattered. John's been at this a lot of years, locally, and he's always been recording local bands so he hasn't had a lot of success, so he really wanted to make a really good record that he was proud of from beginning to end."