Jonny Tobin in his true form, the synthesizer.
For the last three weeks I’ve been reviewing mixes for my new album. We’re getting close. The songs are all a hair’s breadth away from being where I want them to be. I can feel the seasons change as this phase begins to wrap up. One of the markers of that change is a subconscious turn towards reflection.
One of my producing partners on this album is the creative hurricane Jonny Tobin (pictured above). I say hurricane because I don’t know anybody who can translate an idea or sound into music as quickly as Jonny.
Early on in the recording we did a day at local studio, and home of Station 234, Monarch Studios. We wanted to get the Hammond B3 organ on a couple of songs. Hearing someone who can command the myriad of options for expression on a Hammond B3 always gets me. The drawbars, the pedalboard, the vibrato. Have you ever heard Cory Henry’s The Revival (live)? If you haven’t, you should go listen to it. But first, take a listen to Jonny play a chorus on this song from the new album. This is the raw WAV file of the organ track from, Last Diamond of Light, plus a bit of crappy iPhone footage of him in the booth noodling away, courtesy of your Adjusting the Dial DP, me.
This got me choked up. You have a vision for something in your head and you translate it onto an instrument you hadn’t envisioned. Months later, you step inside the studio and hear it come roaring to full-blooded life through the two vessels that can connect up that vascular network: the Hammond B3 and Jonny Tobin.
Organ Tears