Production Notes: Ryvoli’s “Secondhand (Live)”

Ryvoli wrote this song with Andy Baxter for the soundtrack of Noah Tidmore’s short film, Lauderdale, a few years ago so a recording already existed. Because of the combination of the challenging week we’d had and the song being “an old song” to the band, Sam was ready to cut it from the album.

I liked the song and wanted to keep it but we needed to find a new creative way to frame it. Chris Bethea suggested we go out in the hallway and play it. Anything to change it up.

Sam suggested we do something in the vein of Christian Lee Hutson on the acoustic. JP Ruggieri and I looked at each other and said Disfarmer and nodded. That's all we needed to discuss.

With that, we all headed into the studio and grabbed acoustic instruments. Bethea set up a few mics around us and we played it down. 99% of the rhythm take you hear was the first take. It felt great.

Of course, I made us keep playing and do 6 or 7 takes until everyone was sick of it and rigor mortis had set in. I’ve been burned before on the late-night “this is so exciting! Sounds great let’s move on!” thing before so I’d prefer to have some take options. Andy Baxter called this "getting Jacobied." Apparently, I've done this to Penny & Sparrow before.

Mitch Webb comped like one little thing in on the intro from another take but the rest is live including Sam's vocal. JP Ruggieri overdubbed steel. I overdubbed an upright bass, a cymbal, and a brush part at the very end. Andy and Jenn overdubbed their vocals. That’s it! I love that we started and ended our recording in AL sitting in a circle playing live without a click or headphones.

Hope you like the song. To me, it's a great compliment to the more involved productions on the album.

Happy listening!

Chris