Words by Chris Jones

In this age of supposed music industry meltdown, musicians are often to be found coming up with new and creative schemes for getting their music out. This is almost always to be applauded, and never more so than in the case of singer-songwriter Tom McShane, who plans to record his new album in two completely live sessions at Belfast’s Oh Yeah Centre on July 3. Tom and his band will play the album once through in each session, with the best of the two takes of each song being used on the album. And the biggest twist? A live audience. We caught up with him to find exactly what lies behind the idea.

How exactly will the sessions work?

The plan that Rocky O’Reilly, who’s producing the album, and I have worked out it to transform Oh Yeah’s main exhibition space into a large live-room as an extension of Rocky’s Start Together Studio upstairs in the building. We’ll have different instruments set up and mics and baffling across that floor space and we’ll have the audience right there in the middle, with all this going on around them.

There’ll be two sessions, one commencing at 14:00 and a second session at 19:00. We’ll record each of the 10 songs for the album once each session so the audience won’t have to sit through endless re-takes and also that’ll keep myself and the other mucians on our toes.

There’ll be a few breaks in recording where our MC for the event, ATL‘s Rigsy O’Reilly will be conducting a few short interviews and there’ll be a dialogue with audience throughout.

Where did the idea come from?

About a year and half ago I began recording what was then to be my next record, but the process of recording an album, locked away in a studio, overdubbing and overdubbing just wasn’t working for me anymore. In fact at that time, music generally wasn’t making me happy like it once had. At times I thought I should just call it a day and walk away.

But instead, I decided to try to reconnect with what had made me so fascinated with music in in the first place, so I took a musical pilgrimage of sorts to the USA. I started my journey at SXSW in Austin and then headed to New Orleans, Memphis, Nashville, Chicago and New York, all cities with an incredible musical heritage. I took with the old classical guitar on which I’d learned to play and I tried to pick up as many gigs as I could as I travelled and see and meet as many other musicians and music lovers as I could.

And it was that trip that really inspired the idea for this album. I called at Sunn Studio and RCA Victor Studio B, where Johnny Cash, Elvis, Carl Perkins, Chet Atkins and that whole generation of musicians recorded in the Fifties and Sixties. You really get a sense in those places of how it must’ve been to record in the days before multitracking, to have it all depend on the performance for the both the musicians and the engineers. That idea really excited me.

And I really found that I’d started to love playing to an audience again. I really started to appreciate the relationship between an audience and a musician. There can be a really special sort of energy between the two and normally that doesn’t exist in a studio environment. I want to see if that can be captured.

Is there any recent precedent for it or are you going out on a limb?

I’m not aware of any recent precedent for this approach. Certainly the examples I think of in my head are all older. One of the examples I think of was Charles Mingus’ original plan for his Town Hall Recordings in the early Sixties. Back then it wasn’t a success because I think he was so much ahead of his time, but I think in 2010 it’s an idea that audiences can really understand.

But that having been said, I do feel there’s a great deal of risk involved but I think things like this should be tried. Speaking from my own experience it’s easy to dismiss ideas because you tell yourself people won’t be interested in them or they won’t work, and that kind of attitude can see a lot of time pass with not much achieved. So I think it’s important that musicians test ourselves and embrace different ideas and go out on those limbs, because it’s all too easy just to get caught up in the same old cycle.

What kind of character do you expect the method of recording to give the music?

I’m really excited about the the idea of capturing a live performance. It’s almost a jazz approach. I jazz the work in all in the performance and composition. Once you get that right all you do with the album is to capture it. In pop music is normally works the other way around; you create the perfect version in the studio then aim for your best approximation when you play live.

There’ll be be lots of musical voices bleeding into each other. There may be a few mistakes here and there, and things may happen that we’re part of the original plan, but I think when doing something like this you need to embrace that idea, not be scared of it. That was one thing I learned on my USA adventure; perfection isn’t always exciting. Spontaneity is exciting.

When do you expect the album to be finished?

I’m aiming for a turn around of about two months. We have to nail the mix, the mastering, the artwork and the pressing in that time so it’s possible there’ll be an overrun, but I’m going to work as hard as I can to get the albums back to the attendees as soon as possible. All the ticket holders will get credited in the liner notes of the record and their version will have thier name on it. Then later in the year, there’ll be a full release of the album.

Tickets for the album recording sessions are available from the Waterfront Hall box office in Belfast, priced at £9 (including a copy of the finished album).