KEXPs Roadhouse Presents: Early James w/ Forest Ray

What to expect

Early James recorded his first two Easy Eye Sound albums, Singing For My Supper (2020) and Strange Time To Be Alive (2022), at the studio inside the vaunted labels Nashville headquarters. But for James third release, Medium Raw, producer and Easy Eye Sound label head Dan Auerbach envisioned something quite different for the Alabama-bred singer-songwriter-guitarists rawboned, sometimes scarifying music. Day of the first session, I had my GPS routed to Easy Eye, James recalls. We ran into some traffic, and I texted [engineer M.] Allen [Parker] Hey man, sorry, were gonna be about 15 minutes late. And he said, Its OK, were still getting set up at the house. And I was like, What house? Were recording at this house, its really cool. It was news to me! It felt unusual in the moment, which I think makes you play the songs differently. But Im really happy with and proud of the results. I wanted to try to find that power of when I first saw him, when it was just him and his guitar, Auerbach explains. After working with him a couple of times in the studio, I felt like I wasnt going to be able to do it in the same kind of way. The comforts and luxuries of the studio, where youre able to hear everything and make adjustments and changes, wasnt right for this project.Some of my favorite albums are those Arhoolie records produced by Chris Strachwitz that were recorded in houses, by Fred McDowell, Lightnin Hopkins. I felt like we might get better results if we did it in a house. The house in question, known as Honky Chateau, was an old Nashville property owned by photographer and artist Buddy Jackson. Its a house with a lot of character, Auerbach says. Ive always loved it. I always felt inspired when I was there. I knew it would be a fun place to do something. Its over a hundred years old. Its got the old plaster on the walls, plaster ceilings, old wallpaper. There are big oak floors and an oak stairwell. The first floor has twelve-and-a-half-foot ceilings. Its pretty awesome. But its not a recording studio by any means.We had to drag all the gear in there. We set the little mixing console upstairs this crazy, wild old 50s Universal Audio tube console that Id just gotten and fixed up, which was built by FAME Studios Rick Hall for his studio in Memphis in a spare bedroom, and we ran the wires down the stairs. We set up James and everyone in separate little rooms downstairs. James little Princeton amp was right behind him, there were no baffles or anything, and so when he was soloing it was all bleeding into his vocal mic. Adrian Marmolejo, James bassist since the beginning, was in the hallway, peeking around the corner. We had these beautiful microphones sucking up the soul of the house. It sounded fucking amazing. When you have headphones on, you can hear that room. You can even see the room when you close your eyes.