To The Maxxx

Today, September 15, 2009, marks the release of Pete Yorn & Scarlett Johansson Break 
Up, a record I helped make way back in January 2007.

We were back home for a few weeks following a particularly grueling Pete tour. Once you’re off the road, sedentary with nothing to do, it’s easy to go stir-crazy. You have to keep active to stay sane.

Not long after the tour had ended, I got a call from Pete. Coming home this time had been particularly unpleasant. He was restless. But he had an idea and he asked for my help. “I want to make a duets record with this girl singer.”

lyrics

During that last tour, Serge and Brigitte’s “Bonnie and Clyde” would play over the P.A. at the end of every show. That was a hint. And I have a vague memory of Pete offhandedly mentioning that he wanted to sing more duets when we were wandering around Melbourne on a day off. I just had no idea that he’d want to go ahead with making the record a few weeks later.

He wanted to do this on a very small scale and in secrecy, so nobody would intefere. So Pete contacted the mysterious girl singer and I was to get in touch with my friend Sunny Levine, a producer of whose work Pete was a fan. I’d given him Sunny’s self-produced solo record and Pete really responded to the eccentric sonics. Sunny’s a mensch and a super-talented guy (who’s collaborated with Shaun Ryder, Mickey Avalon and Hugh Masakela, among others) and Pete had a feeling that he would be the right guy to help make this thing. He was in town, available and intrigued.

Mr. Levine at work

About that “girl singer”: this was before Scarlett made her Tom Waits record. I believe it had been announced, but she hadn’t recorded it yet. So we knew she was inclined to sing, but we hadn’t actually heard her voice. She was into the idea, and thought it sounded like a fun little project.  And if she showed up and their voices didn’t work together… well, we’d have some new Pete Yorn songs.

Pete asked me to make a playlist that we could use as a sonic and aesthetic jumping-off point.  There were lots of 60s girl groups on there, some classic and obscure duets, and a handful of other stuff that just had the right vibe. A sort of future-retro thing was emerging. Peter Bjorn and John’s “Young Folks” was getting popular right around then and we joked that we should name our band Peter Yorn & Johansson.

Headphones, Lola in the background.

Sunny was living in a back house in Mar Vista at the time, and he had converted the garage below into a little studio, so that’s where we tracked the thing. Pete and I had to get back out on the road in a few weeks, so we were really just going on instinct and not looking back. Pete sang and strummed the songs, Sunny started to make beats and pull samples from his massive vinyl library. I would come up with little melodies on this banjo we had sitting around. We were banging out something like a song a day. Soon we invited our friends Robert Francis, Giuseppe Patane and Amir Yaghmai to come in and record additional instrumentation, which really brought the songs to life.

At night we would go home and Sunny would stay up playing with the sounds, adding more textural elements or running sounds through this old messed up tape deck that would make guitars sound like distant growls. Each morning the tracks emerged more fleshed out, as we got closer and closer to Scarlett coming to record her vocals.

Pete, Sunny & the tape deck.

It was sort of like Waiting For Guffman. We were getting everything ready, but would she show? Would she bring it? Would she be stoked about what we had been working on or would she be meh….

She showed up to the garage with her dog Maggie. Maggie and Sunny’s little doggie Lola wold hang out while we were recording. They were sort of like our mascots.

Scarlett really took to the material. She hadn’t heard the songs in advance, because we were working on them right up until her first day, but she was a fast learner. We’d work on these intricate harmonies and then she’d record them and we’d move on to the next part, then to the next song. Total pro. And we were relieved. Not only that she could sing, but that her voice sounded great alongside Pete’s.

Pete and I left for the road again and Sunny mixed the record and did a few more overdubs. By the time we got home he had moved to a new spot on Rose Avenue in Venice and we finished up the record there. My beard was huge and there was an old kaftan sitting around so I would wear the kaftan and stroke my beard and nod approvingly, trying my best to act my part as the Rick Rubin of the project.

When we were done we brought Scarlett in and played her the record. It had really transformed from what she heard when she did her vocals. She seemed somewhat taken aback, like this little garage thing she did had become so full and big and crazy. We’d made something unique, something personal, and we’d had fun. We celebrated with a little pizza party on Abbot Kinney.

We never knew what would happen with the album. There were no immediate plans for it. She went off to make her solo record, Pete recorded his next record. We continued to tour, she made a bunch of Woody Allen movies.

Rehearsing for Le Grand Journal.

Last week, two and a half years after making the record, I found myself in Paris, at a press conference in honor of the release of Pete Yorn & Scarlett Johansson Break Up. It’s surreal that this weird little thing we made is finally seeing the light of day.

I feel such a strong sense of ownership in regards to this album. This was the first record I’ve worked on. As you can imagine, I treasure the experience of collaborating with these fine folks in Sunny’s garage; making this thing that we weren’t sure anybody would ever hear, but that we believed in.

“The album’s out!”

All of this is a long and weird way of saying that the album’s now available! Our baby is out in the world, taking its first steps.

And we are so proud of it.

And… today only (time’s running out), you can download the album (plus a bonus track) at Amazon for the mindblowingly low price of just $2.99! What a deal. Just buy it.  CLICK HERE