]
“Best Laid Plans” would probably be my choice. We can play around with it live, and I think it's the longest one on the album. That's us as a trio, that's us just riffing on a vibe. It helps segue into the Black Luck stuff later in the album, while it also creates a mood for Shane's song on the album, “Crystal Cathedral.” It helps set the overall feel for the record while the other ones can all kinda stick out a bit.
“It was a conscious decision going into it to sound a little different from before, but it also evolved. We try to be on a schedule, do at least one or two particular records a year. We're in the middle of work on Shane's debut as a singer-songwriter, so we had to put him on the record, while we also recorded music for a film, the Black Luck songs. For the next LP itself, we're working with a variety of performers, so it may be more like a Booker T/Stax thing, where you had the MGs backing guys like Otis Redding or Wilson Pickett, something like that!
“When I was approached to do Black Luck, I was listening to a lot of Daniel Lanois at the time, hearing how he and Brian Eno molded a lot of ambient sound underneath the pop songs of a band like U2. It's something I like to do, I always like to play with color and I always like to play with feel when it comes to records. As a producer, I feel like that's the main thing. Storytelling and craftsmanship, that's great stuff, and that comes with individual performers; with my role, I like to play with tones and moods, sounds and textures. It's really easy to get lost in ambience because there are no rules!”
