Lance Whalen - She's Not Coming Tonight
Posted Jun 1, 2005, by Josh Snider.
Genre: Alternative;
Lance has been heard on a few radio stations on the east coast and also at CBGB’s NYC gallery. I think he has a great sound. His voice is warming, and his guitar is soothing, but being from Nashville he puts in a southern sound at the same time, and that makes it interesting.
This CD doesn't get old because the sound keeps changing. It took four years to make and started in 1998 as a band project, but the band split during the process, then he began recording as a solo artist from that point, you can hear the bands influence on "oh baby oh". During the recording process his girlfriend was murdered while studying abroad. While it took him a while to recover from that, when he began recording again his style had changed. And you can hear as the cd progresses. It was an interesting recording process bringing in all kinds of musicians to pitch in.
Most of the recording was done only in three takes or less, except for track 3, falling again. Often it was the first take. On track five the song “By Right”, is a poem by his departed lover. Lance really just wanted to go out and see what happened, so he put recording gear in the car, it was winter time and he drove downtown. He was gonna speak the poem on a street corner, but a fellow that he knew came up and said “Hey can I sing too?” Lance said “I guess so, but I don’t have a melody for this or a guitar.” So the man ran in someone’s house there on the street and grabbed an old acoustic guitar and they just did it there on the spot. The whooshing you hear is late night traffic.
I also took a listen to the 7" that Lance Whalen (playing “Out of Tune Love Song”) split with Andrew English (playing “My Sweet One”). Even though they only play one song each, I think it came out great. Lance said they had a lot of fun recording on an old 4 track at his home, and making vintage clothes to raise money to make the record and do radio promo. Check out lancewhalen.com to find out how to get a copy of this album and his 7”.
