Woolshed Sessions (+video)

The Woolshed Sessions captures the DIY essence of New Zealand music. A collective of musicians and friends recording a live session in a Golden Bay woolshed, owned by NZ film maker Gaylene Preston, with no expectations.

Two years later The Big Idea catches up with the band at the Leigh Sawmill Cafe.

The intimate gig in April was part of a small tour of venues with the same vibe and wooden sound as the original woolshed.

Who

Age Pryor, Jess Chambers, Justin 'Firefly' Clarke, Andy Hummel, Peter Hill, Brett Skinner, Al Fraser and Lee Prebble. The band has musical connections to Fly My Pretties, The Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra, The Black Seeds, Rosy Teacaddy, Tahu, Rio Hemopo and Rhombus.

The collective originated from a week of jamming in a Takaka woolshed in December 2007. The band says the album captures the ‘character and honesty’ of a moment and place in time, what history will call the Woolshed Sessions.  “It was a great exercise to record live, in pursuit of capturing a feeling,” says Age Pryor.

“Anybody listening to the album can listen and meet us exactly how we are, or were, and there is no pretence to it. Everybody was playing music that they had been writing and performing naturally without any contrivance.”

The songs

The four songwriters, Age Pryor, Jess Chambers, Justin 'Firefly' Clarke and Andy Hummel, brought their songs to the group as a finished piece and then arranged it for the group.

Age wrote three songs for the album, Acceptance, Waterfall and Violence on the Quiet, at Takaka. Waterfall is set at a waterfall and bush nearby and Violence on the Quiet is more of a political song. “It’s a bit of tongue and check statement about the corporate attitude. That’s quite relevant down in Takaka because you’re in what seems like quite an idyllic rural environment but you get the sense there is strong, dark, unseen forces at play in the background.” 

Learning the songs

The band had to learn the songs, jam and record it, live. Brett Skinner - long time drummer, first time recording, and full time Weta Digital editor - had to learn the songs and come up to speed on site.

Lap-steel guitarist Lee Prebble found out the chords as they recorded.   “It was a lovely way of capturing the songs, very inspired playing. Sometimes when you play a song a lot you lose a bit of inspiration and go through the motions, but when you are playing for the first time in that setting you capture something pretty special.”

The recording

There were a lot of unknowns recording in a hot shed, with the doors open, into spare mics and a computer.  The final album has lots of ‘character’, says Jess Chambers.  The songs come complete with crickets and birds, capturing the sounds and essence of feeling that “perfection often takes away from.”

“Sometimes in the recording studio you can get bogged down listening to each take and try to pick the best one,” Jess says.

Dr Lee Prebble is a producer and engineer with a Wellington recording studio The Surgery. For this project he helped set up and mix the album, while Age Pryor took the helm to record and produce the sound with Justin Clark.

Prebble says the raw sound provides something different with a spark. “A lot of people definitely pick over things too much in the recording studio these days and often those things don’t matter and majority of people don’t even hear them. And sometimes they’re also things that are quite special that make it sound like it’s actually human beings playing instruments, and mistakes are a natural part of that process.”

“There is a special energy that you capture when you do that which you often don’t get if people are behind glass walls, you kind of lose that intimacy.”

The mix

Prebble said there was less control and isolation between instruments recording in a shed compared to a studio.  He had to try different and new approaches to clean up the sound, whilst keeping the feeling of being in the room with the music.

“No matter how much we cleaned it up, it still would have had the essence of the room in it.” 
Pryor says sounds and instruments bleeding from one mic to another made the mixing a bit difficult but the final sound carried the tone of the room, the desired effect.

“We knew it wasn’t going to be a technical or clinically correct recording approach but we were doing that on purpose because we wanted the tone of the room, a live sound, all playing together.”

The plan

The band got together on a winter in August, for Age Pryor’s birthday, and realised their jam sounded good.  With most of the band having prior commitments, the recording at Takaka nearly didn’t happen. It finally came together in four days in the summer of 2007 – with no expectations.

Chambers: “I was hoping it would work out like it has.”

“I don’t think we had a world domination plan at that point, maybe  Age did.”

Pryor: “The plan was as long as everything we do allows the possibility for world domination then we are doing it
right.” Which included making sure they got at least 12 songs for an album.

The photos

Andy Morley-Hall took approximately 800 photos during the recording.  Pryor says the photos were crucial for the release and album. “It gave people a sense of where the music came from, the photos are invaluable.”

The woolshed

NZ filmmaker Gaylene Preston’s farm in Takaka was a popular and inspiring roadie stop for some of New Zealand’s emerging creatives in the late 90s. It was the summer of 1999, and Age was feeling fine when he penned his first song in her guest book - something he would end up adding to in future summers, often rhyming a new saying with the year of their visit. 

Almost a decade later they had come full circle to record a live session in a small woolshed on Gaylene’s farm. 

“When we first got there we were a bunch of kids mucking around, everyone who was there then (including old friends Toby Laing from Fat Freddy’s Drop and Bret McKenzie from Flight of the Conchords) has all gone on to be professionals in what they were mucking around with as teenagers.  So she was really struck by that.”

The kids had grown up to be successful musicians and actors, but now the farm was on the market, an emotional sale for Gaylene.

“For her it was a great to have a bunch of creative people at her place but also it’s quite a cool circle to have gone back there 10 years later and done a formal project there.”

“Without even knowing it, we had provided this amazing closure for her.”

The present/live shows

The band partly got together with a joint interest in avoiding noisy pubs and disconnected audiences. The sound and character of a room in the small north island tour was an important part of recreating the friendly vibe of the woolshed sessions.  Read Leigh Sawmill Cafe review.

The future

The collective of band members are busy with solo, band and creative work.  They will go as far as the journey takes them with the Woolshed Sessions, and have recently started bringing new songs into the set.

“If there is continued interest from all of the musicians to bring new songs to this group then it will just keep regenerating,” says Pryor.

• Interview with singer/songwriters/guitarists Age Pryor and Jess Chambers, lap-steel guitarist Lee Prebble and drummer Brett Skinner. Interview by Cathy Aronson, Filmed and Edited by Phunky Dave, Freaky Gizmo Recordings.