Jason Bodlovich Group

           Over the weekend of May 28&29, Prairie Sun had the pleasure of working with North Bay Guitarist Jason Bodlovich.  The Jason Bodlovich group set up shop in both the live room of studio C and the adjoining Waits room to track drums, bass, and guitar over the span of two sessions during the weekend.  

            Behind the drum kit was James Stafford, a former Jazz student with a wealth of Bay Area notoriety through fifteen some-odd years of gigging.  James brought in a great set up with a neon Ludwig Vista Lite drum kit and Zildjian K-custom series cymbals. Steve Froberg completes the rhythm section on bass guitar, playing a custom blue-green Mike Lull jazz model that sounded warm and milky while playing clean, fat and round when he stomped on the distorted fuzz.  Jason has been playing with James on drums for a while now; they’ve been gigging together for about 5 years now and Steve was added to the bill around a year ago. 

            The chemistry of the group was undeniable.  The trio set up and quickly found the tones they were looking for.  James managed to lay back in the pocket while simultaneously driving the backbeat of the groove, which is not always an easy task in the studio.  Dynamic drumming combined with Steve’s bass line embellishments on the melody of Bodlovich’s guitar progressions made for an extremely full-sounding trio. 

            Bodlovich brought along friend and colleague Robin Livingston to engineer and later mix the weekend’s session.  Watching Livingston simultaneously capture the sound that the guys created while coaching them on what takes brought out the purest form of their musical voices was a great model of what we like to see from audio engineering at PSR.  No tentative date has been set for this release: Bodlovich eluded to the fact that it would be more left up to his mastering engineer as to when it would be finished.  For further information on Livingston’s audio and visual media work, go to www.robinlivingston.com.  

            Jason’s technical abilities were amazing and still extremely soulful, effortlessly galloping over Stafford’s kick and snare with polyrhythmic solos.  Different colorful landscapes of funk, jazz, and world music are rife throughout the recordings that were captured at Prairie Sun.  Bodlovich said that it was his intention for the improvisational aspect of their music to be highlighted during the session; the mic techniques really grabbed the vibe of the room and the live tracking environment as well.  And with such talented and practiced pieces, the Bodlovich session is a testament to the ‘rehearse more, edit less’ mantra of the studio.  More of Bodlovich’s extensive collaborations can be seen at www.jasonbodlovich.com/index.php