Bob-

Jeff Stevens here, I thought I’d “part the curtain” and give you a look inside :)   When you said “The advantage of being Nashville’s biggest star is you get to play with the biggest and best players.” I knew I had to reply. My son Jody Stevens and I worked in studios on this album for 7 months straight, pretty much 7 days a week. Some of the songs were recorded and played totally “in the box”  by Jody in our little studio, like “Home Alone Tonight” and we brought in Jimmie Lee Sloas on bass and Adam Shoenfeld on electric guitar as overdubs on that one.

“Huntin’, Fishin’ and Lovin’ Everyday” however was as old school Nashville recording as it gets. We tracked it at beautiful Ocean Way studio A through the Neve 8078 with Derek Bason at the helm. We did have the best players in the world available to us and they came when asked. That’s Greg Morrow on drums, Mark Hill on bass guitar, JT Corenflos and Kenny Greenberg on electric guitar, Ilya Toshinsky on acoustic guitar and banjo and Mike Rojas on the Hammond B3. The album credits don’t give specifics on who played what so I’m thrilled to shine a light on these gentlemen.

Upon taking his seat and picking up his famous among musicians, blueTele, JT Corenflos clicked on that wonderful throwback phaser tone and delivered the signature lick and subsequent direction of the track. Mark Hill’s simple bass line punctuates the lyric wonderfully in the choruses, sounding more like the bass player that wrote the song instead of a world class musician. Ilya Toshinsky’s banjo at the end of the track sounds like a four year old boy chasing a butterfly “through a field downwind”. We only took a second pass at recording it because everyone was having so much fun on the first pass we couldn’t remember if it was any good or not and besides that everybody wanted to play it again!

Luke sang his lead at “The Pond” studio at Starstruck (another beautiful facility) improvising many of the lyrics that you hear including “ya’ll close them eyes, let’s go there in our minds”  and “Mercury”. Perry Coleman stepped up to the microphone and after hearing Luke’s vocal track delivered an incredibly inspired background vocal. You can hardly call it a background vocal, he gave it more of a  group or duo feel. Again, like your brother was over there singing.

Derek Bason tore into it at his mix station which is also in “The Pond” using the SSL 9000J, tons of old school outboard gear and he rendered the world class mix that it deserved. Put on a good set of headphones and listen to Luke records, listen to Carrie Underwood records. Derek Bason is a genius who still knows how to make the big records.

I’ve loved recording with computers at my home ever since I did it first in the early 90’s but even the most talented musical programmer/musician with the latest plug-ins cannot model the feel and heart these folks achieved on this track. You are correct, you don’t get these sounds at home.

Have a great day!
Jeff Stevens

PS: I want to emphasize how fortunate we feel in todays market to have the budget to go in and record a track such as this.

From: Tom Gilbert
Subject: Re: Luke Bryan Live From Irving Plaza

Hey Bob,

Just wanted to share, that’s my father in law playing pedal steel on “Play It Again” – although it doesn’t really sound like your typical steel in that tune! You might enjoy this video: https://youtu.be/FdtvenGLWHw

Russ Pahl is an innovator on the instrument and can be heard on countless records.

Always enjoy your rants. Cheers.

Tom