Written and recorded at Lenny’s woodland oasis in Coventry, CT
(Sound of Fury Studios), the disc was produced by Mike Woods of
Damone and mastered by Ted Jensen at Sterling Sound. Using of
densely layered vocal harmonies and vibrant acoustic guitars to
create a lush tapestry of sound, Bosh is one of the few modern day
artists that balances the importance of songwriting with impressive
acoustic guitar work.

Still uncertain? Goldmine Magazine raved that ‘Thoughts I
Collected’ is “Often quiet and introspective, but always on the
verge of bubbling over with deep emotions, ‘Thoughts I Collected,’
is a richly constructed acoustic affair with lush vocal harmonies
and spotless production values,” while the Bristol Observer
described it as “A melodic record, straight out of the singer-
songwriter mold, with a touch of country a la the Eagles,” and
founding Moody Blues member Mike Pinder stated that ‘Thoughts I
Collected’ consists of “Well crafted songs that evokes a lot of
emotion.” Go over to www.classicrockrevisited.com and fill out your
entry, before it’s too late!

For more information, visit:

www.classicrockrevisited.com

“Thoughts I Collected, the new album from Lenny Bosh, is a triumph.
Filled with personal, heartfelt stories, beautiful harmonies, and
superb production, this album is perfect for a lazy drive on a Sunday
afternoon. A must-have for Americana music fans everywhere!

Since I believe mastering is very important to the final product I want to go with the best I could afford. As it turns out I could afford arguably the second best mastering engineer in the country. Ted Jensen works for Sterling Sound in New York City. That is a two-hour ride for me. I realized if I decided early on in mixing that I would go with him – it would also raise the mixing engineers expectations. I chose Greg Dicrosta to mix because I heard his mixing and liked the sounds he got. But he raised his game knowing his mixes were going to be handled by Ted Jensen.

For mastering you are allowed to sit in on the sessions for questions and comments. I decided to take Greg and Mike with me into the city to do this.

At the time Mike was growing a beard and at this time it was a cold fall. So he was wearing a black winter pull over hat. Combined with a camouflage jacket that looked like he had just gotten out of Vietnam, he literally looked like a homeless guy. We teased him mercilessly has we went through the city because even in New York he got a few looks.

We should up for 10am appointment at Sterling Sound and they have a gorgeous facility complete with a stocked kitchen with everything imaginable. We dropped our bags in Ted’s waiting room and noticed an plaque with thirteen or so CDs in there, each indicating platinum sales levels of the Eagles Hotel California album. This was Ted’s big start in the business. Ted’s most recent project was Metallica’s much-anticipated Death Magnetic. We were nervous, and I sure was –it was my music he was going to be hearing.

Ted comes out to the kitchen and grabs us. We go to his studio, which over looks the water and New Jersey shore. Amazing. The speaker system alone was valued at well over 100k. He asks for the drive and start working “What If”.

About half way through the song he pauses it and turns around to us sitting on the couch behind him and says “you know when I saw you guys out there I didn’t expect much”, of course Greg and I eye ‘homeless’ Mike. Ted continues “but this stuff sounds really good”. I was floored. He talked a little more about how he really like the sound of the acoustic guitars and he noted that the mix had the proper balance especially in the low end. Our heads were big when we left.

As it turned out Ted was from the same town in Connecticut that Greg and Mike were originally from. He also started by playing horns as Greg did before he got into audio engineering. We spent the day there, enjoy our previous months work with an ultra professional, lived with nice compliments. Speaking for myself at least – it was a pinnacle moment of the entire recording project. It was impossible not to feel auspicious.

The truth is that recording basic guitars was the hardest part both physically and mentally for me throughout the whole process.  I am not a professional guitar player – but I have been playing guitar for 20 years.  Never did I feel like as much like a rookie as I did the first day we went to record the acoustic guitars.  Every song has acoustic guitars and to me it’s the most key instrument other than the voice on the CD so it was pretty important to do right.

To get that true stereo image of the guitars I had recently (in the past 24 months) sold a bunch of guitars and bought two custom R. Taylors. (rtaylorguitars) (see Castor and Pollux blog/video). These guitars are identical in size, shape and configuration except the types of wood they are made of.  They have very different sounds.  One is brighter, the other more thick on the low end.  The technique we picked to record a stereo image of the acoustic guitars ended up being a highlight of sound as far as I am concerned.  We took one guitar at a time, put two microphones on the 12th fret in an XY pattern and put that guitar on the LEFT speaker.  Then we recorded the exact same thing using the other guitar and put it on the RIGHT speaker.  The trick to this was the difficulty in playing something EXACTLY the same every time.  Every up stroke, every nuance, every rhythm had to be the same or it sticks out worse than a sore thumb.  The first go around took me about 6-8 hours to record just the rhythm acoustic guitars.  It was frustrating and humbling but by the end of the project I had that time cut down quite a bit.

All the guitars including leads are “doubled” and this challenge ended up being quite rewarding.  Doing leads required the same skill but it is how that big full sound comes out.  For the leads I primarily used two guitars – a custom Hembry guitar (www.hembryguitars.com) which allows me to mix a sound that is softer.  The primary electric guitar is a trust Paul Reed Smith I bought used years ago that is the color of blue jeans.  It is aptly named BJ for Blue Jean.  This guitar is always in tune, has a sound that can’t be matched, is well intonated and plays like butter.  Everyone that visits the studio that plays that guitar on a recording knows it has the “mojo”.

Vocals were done in a few weeks.  They were done last – well actually background vocals are done very last but lead vocals are the part where everything comes together.  One problem with me is I am not a full time singer.  Meaning I don’t sing every day, I have atrocious habits, and my voice changes a lot depending on how much I sing or don’t.  I took lessons for about a year some time ago and they really helped me get comfortable with my voice.  Most folks spend all the time trying to sound like someone else, instead of getting their own voice.  The human voice is an awesome instrument and to date is impossible to duplicate with computers.  The dynamic range of any voice compared to any other instrument is amazing.

I really wanted to sing one song at a time and take a break of a week or so.  But with independent productions and scheduling issues it came down to me having about 2-3 weeks to sing all the lead vocals.  Mike enjoyed the part where my  voice would break up after about two hours of singing.  After about four hours into singing my voice would start to give but I could hit the high notes more easily.  Each song had hundreds of takes throughout and we mixed and matched what we thought would get the song across the best.

I bought a new microphone the Telefunken U47 modeled after the most famous of all microphones –the U47 by Neumann.  Since those are no longer made – Telefunken makes them, they are amazing microphones.  If I am two feet away from the mic and rub my fingers together this microphone will pick up that noise.  After talking with them I wished I had left the microphone on for weeks at a time because it sounds even better when its warmed up for days.  The intro to Outside Looking Inside was sung after that mic was accidentally left on for a week.  To my ears I hear a difference.

The learning curve continues and thankfully we humans can evolve…

To prepare I grabbed an acoustic guitar and sang him some tunes. We picked the ones that we liked, ones we thought he could really have influence over, and put a few on the back burner that just weren’t there yet. My songs used to not be totally 100% complete, meaning the lyrics, the melodies, the chords were all there but missing were some intros, bridges, solos and structural changes that should be there. Each song has Mike’s hands in there somewhere, whether it was like – put a bridge here, let’s leave this for an 8 bar solo,, or cut this part out here. That is what a producer does in a lot of ways. They maintain the general vision of the CD and contribute to all areas of sound and structure.

We decided to start with “If She Can” as it was my wife’s favorite. My wife is a very big country fan so it was determined early on it would have the most country influenced sound of all the songs but it wouldn’t be country. I can hear it plain as day now that “If She Can” could be a big country song. It just has that feel to it. This song was written when I was eighteen and the first comment Mike had was “I think we should change the first line”. There are some not so obvious possibilities of the meaning “Your finding yourself a man” but I told Mike “it’s a song about a kid realizing he has to be a man to endure adult emotions.” As you hear – the words stuck.

In the old days bands would come in and record a song together and be done with it. Modern recording has many individual parts recorded at separate times and places combined to make the final sound you here. Each guitar, drums, bass, vocals are all done separated and added together as you go. But where do you start?

You usually start by doing the rhythm section: Drums then bass. But you do those one at a time. So how do you get a drummer in here to play drums without any music? After the songs were worked out with just Mike and I on acoustics, we “demo’d” the songs to a basic recording. With a click track or a metronome we recorded just an acoustic guitar and a singer. This was played and then recorded over one instrument at a time. These rough demos were VERY rough and Mike did them with me recording. I listened to those for a long time to memorize structure and melody so when it came time to record my part – I knew it well. The demos are funny because Mike is laughing a few times or being silly. My kids would make me rewind spots over and over again and just laugh until they had tears in their eyes. But that was our baseline. Each chord and melody was there where it should be.

“If She Can” we did in two weeks: Demo, drums, bass, guitars, back up vocals, lead vocals, finishing touches. That process was different for the rest of the CD. The rest of the CD we demo’d the songs, had a drummer come in and do the drums for all the songs, and so forth. So those other songs were grouped together as the same process. This was easier for scheduling because I had a friend of mine Jimy do drums and then I had two other friends do bass (not including Mike) and so forth. This batch mentality of work allowed us to schedule guys easier and always have things to work on, without putting things out of whack. You wouldn’t do lead vocals anything but last because they are the most important part of the song. And you need to know where it is going to sit with everything else.

Jimy Soprano graduated from the University of Hartford with a degree in Jazz drumming. I met him while taking my Protools class at a local studio and befriended him early on. Honestly it was an honor to have a guy that skilled do drums on my CD. He is far better a drummer than I am a guitar player or singer so I liked the idea of bringing in people better than me to make myself try harder. Jimy did the drums in probably 2 weeks. He had to spend time at home with our demos to get used to song structure and so forth, but when he was here he was ready.

Bass guitar was split three ways. Mike MacDonald played in a 1980s band Rythym Syndicate who did the song “P.A.S.S.I.O.N.” He is a friend of mine so I wanted him on two tracks, and Scott Cole is someone I worked with over the years and I wanted him to do two tracks, and I left the others for Mike Woods to do. Most don’t know it but Woods is a fantastic bass player – one of the best I have seen. As it ended up Woods did 4 tracks, Scott did 2 and Mike MacDonald did 1. We needed to get another feel for one of the songs Mike MacDonald was doing so Woods had to re-do that one. Scott Cole also spent a few days at the end of the project really hammering out lots of good ideas for background vocals. Other background vocals were done by my friend and Damone member, Mike Vazquez. Also my pastor and friend Chuck Ericson did some background vocals.

When all the songs were done being recorded at my studio I sat down with a watch and figured out the time of each song. Armed with the knowledge that all the music together comprised a little over 23 minutes I said to my producer Mike Woods that I should have named the CD “How to turn three months into 23 minutes ”. Out of the four months Mike and I spent about three solid months of full time hours taking the music on the CD from inception to birth.

As with things artistic, it all starts with an idea. My idea was to put down some songs both old and new onto a CD so I can place a marker at this period of my life for my kids to look back on and think, “Oh, that’s where our father was”. If you get to know me you would understand everything I choose to do – I chose to do it correctly and “to the max”. Fate has always seemed to be on my side and when the band Damone came to my studio to record one song – an anthem for the Major League Soccer Team the New England Revolution – I never thought it would lead to a long and prosperous relationship with it’s song writer and lead guitarist Mike Woods.

After finishing up their latest CD I know Mike Woods was interested in producing. This is a hard market to get into and while he worked on getting contacts so he could do this work, I knew he needed some work to keep himself afloat. I had the idea “Maybe he can come here and help me do my CD”. With two younger children and ranch that requires upkeep I was lucky if I could spend 1-2 hours straight in the studio without interruptions. I thought if I had Mike here I would have to work in larger chunks of time. If I were spending money to have him here I would feel the need to make sure we are working.

At first Mike said “Don’t do this because you want to help me out as a friend” but I quieted him pretty quick telling him that this is my dream and he is the one person who can assist me in accomplishing this dream. He signed on but warned me early on not to go for a 12 song CD that it would be a years worth of work and just to work on one or two songs at a time. I met him half way and decided on a smaller CD with 6 or songs on it.

At the same time this project was a benefit for Mike. He was using an archaic recording process/system for his demo work and he knew he needed to get into Protools, which is the world wide standard for audio recording. I have Protools, understand it and worked with it so I would in turn teach him what I know and he would be forced to learn a new system. Part of his payment was setting him up in Protools. When were done with my project Mike was probably better on Protools than me and he would say he successfully converted to Protools and is much better off on his personal music now that he went through the process with me.

So in the spring of 2008 we looked over our schedules and decided on a few blocks of 2 weeks where he would come and we would start working. That meant that Mike was to live here for those two weeks. He lives in Boston and I am 2 hours away so it was a matter of him coming down and living here weeks at a time. As the linear notes indicate the hardest part about that was getting Mike on my schedule. I am a 5am to 9pm type of guy and Mike is the noon to 3-4am kind of guy. It took some work but after the first week the schedule was I got up at 5am and did what I had to do, then wake him up at 9am, work from 10am-6pm, then when I went off to finish my responsibilities he worked on editing that days recordings.

Most everyone has had a guest for a week at their house or been a guest of someone’s for a week and quickly you learn it is difficult to get along all the time. With Mike it was easy because he was always so respectful and helpful. When you stay at my place I want you to treat it as your own home. Truthfully when all was said and done my wife and I would sit there and miss Mike’s company. He is like a brother to us both, and a member of our family now. So for four months Mike spent two weeks at my ranch at a clip, and then took a few days off to go back to Boston and take care of his affairs.

All this and we haven’t even started recording one note….

Read More Here