Different Glass

Gavin Glass is about to release his new album, Myna Birds, the follow up to 2007's critically-acclaimed Gavin Glass And The Holy Shakers.

He hasn't exactly been idle these past three years, of course. He has been gainfully employed as part of the touring band of Lisa Hannigan, filling in as piano player and multi-instrumentalist. Plus he's been stretching his wings as a producer. We're guessing he has quite a packed schedule.
"It's been bananas," he laughs. "It was the first time I'd ever been organised, you know, not really the whole typical flaky musician thing! Every moment of down-time I'd have I'd use to record my own stuff, but I was also producing an album for Our Little Secrets at the time, which has also just come out now."
The sessions that yielded this latest album were short-lived and high in productivity. An introduction to Steve Gorman of the Black Crowes after a show in Boston led to Glass finding himself at the helm of an all-star group of musicians, featuring Audley Freed (also Black Crowes), Ken Coomer (Wilco, Uncle Tupelo) and Jen Gunderman (Jayhawks).
"The recording in Nashville was done very, very quickly. I initially went over for two days, after Lisa had done a gig with this guy Jason Mraz, and as soon as that tour finished I went to Nashville, and did about four songs. I got on so well with the lads, they invited me back and said, ‘Look, why don't you come over next time you're with Lisa for a week and we'll hammer out a record'. I was there for about 10 days and the whole thing was pretty much tracked then."
It was, he says, the experience of a lifetime.
"The guys were such amazing musicians, they literally needed one take. The way it would work, I'd sit down, play them the songs, which were pretty much fully formed and ready to go, and they had this thing called the Nashville number chart system. I've never seen any musicians over here using anything like it, they'd score everything in numbers rather than musical notation. We'd do one take and that was it. They're so used to making records over there. It's like a factory line."
Not that the resulting album is at all a workmanlike affair. Myna Birds is rich in musical chemistry and steeped in Glass' love of Motown.
"Without actually comparing myself to these records, if you listen to any of the old Motown and Tamla records, they had a house band, and it was a factory," he says. "But it was just the best guys, at the top of their game, and none of that stuff sounds like it was churned out. Working with that calibre of musician on this album made me step up my game. The dude who drummed for Wilco, two lads from the Black Crows: these are guys that I listened to in my teens, who turned me on to so many other influences. I didn't give a shit if it sold one record or whatever, the fact that I've done this is a success on its own. When I did the Holy Shakers record, I had a lot of expectations. I knew it was kind of countryish and mightn't have a huge market and what not. I really felt like I'd poured a lot of myself into the songs. As much as it was really well-received and all of that, it didn't translate into sales. I was still having to go out and do pub gigs to Spanish tourists in Temple Bar. When that LP didn't set the world on fire, it taught me to enjoy a record for what it is, a piece of work or art or whatever."
His own studio is very far removed from Nashville, being located in picturesque Wicklow.
"The studios are attached to the Powerscourt gardens. The Slazenger family have kindly given me a room on the estate that I can record bands in, and I can write up there. Lisa rehearses up there, my band rehearse up there. It's really, really cool, right beside the waterfall in a little wood. After I came back from Nashville I did go analogue mad, so I bought myself a 16-track tape machine. Bands that want that can have it, and I think a lot of musicians are getting hip to that particular groove. Vinyl's on the way back. I just bought the Villagers album on vinyl. Compared to the CD it's amazing. Any of those new Britney Spears or whatever – they sound like crap, they cut the head off you."