The sessions for 'Handmade Music' took place in late June at Ardent Studios in Memphis, Tennessee. Lance worked with famed producer Jim Gaines (Santana, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble, George Thorogood and the Destroyers), engineer Pete Matthews (ZZ Top, Evanesence) and assistant engineer Adam Hill (The White Stripes, Raconteurs) on the recordings.
Lopez spoke at length about the recording process of 'Handmade Music': "Working with Jim Gaines at Ardent Studios in Memphis, Tennessee again was amazing! Ardent is a very special place where ZZ Top recorded about 5 records, Led Zeppelin recorded some of Zeppelin II there and Jimmy Page mixed Led Zeppelin III there as well. As a matter of fact we recorded in the same room ZZ Top recorded "Sharp Dressed Man", "Cheap Sunglasses" and most of their biggest hits using the same console. George Thorogood also recorded "Bad To The Bone" in there! 'Handmade Music' was the last album to be recorded in the original room that all the other legendary bands had recorded in the way it was when they were there working."
"As soon as we were finished they totally remodeled the room. It was great to be the one to finalize a legacy in that Studio. So the place just had vibes all in the walls! Having all those vibes together with our team of legendary producer/engineer Jim Gaines who worked with Stevie Ray Vaughan, Steve Miller and Santana and engineers Pete Matthews who worked with ZZ Top and Adam Hill who worked with the White Stripes, was a magical combination!! There is not only vibes at Ardent but also there in Memphis as well. We finished the last album Salvation From Sundown at Ardent and I knew when it came time to do Handmade Music we had to do it all at Ardent. Handmade Music has more of a good old rockin' vibe and we had a lot of fun cutting the tracks there in Memphis. It has some of the best guitar tones I've ever recorded and the band sounds amazing on the new record as well."
"We road tested a lot of the material for about 6 months all over the world. But then after getting in the studio with Jim, who took and shaped and molded the songs even more, they are almost like completely new songs. Once we finished cutting basic tracks at Ardent we moved out to Jim Gaines' Bessy Blue Studio, which is in a 150 year old house in the country on the edge the Shiloh Civil War Battlefield in Stantonville, Tennessee and finished all the overdubs, vocals, and mixing. Jim mixed the album there himself. After he finished mixing the album, he told us it was the best record he's done at Bessy Blue, that made me feel very proud of this album! I truly feel it is some of my best recorded work to date. A majority of our live set now is the material from Handmade Music, every night the material gets better and better so please come out to a show and check it out…"
The album has been receiving rave reviews already upon its late 2011 European release due to Lopez's hard driving yet refined take on Texas blues rock. Consisting mainly of original compositions, it also contains two stellar cover versions, namely Robert Johnson's "Traveling Riverside Blues", and the Beck Bogert & Appice classic "Black Cat Moan".
Look for Lopez to be featured in an upcoming issue of Guitar World magazine, available at a newsstand near you.
For more information on Lance Lopez go to this location. https://www.facebook.com/lancelopeztx
"Come Back Home" from 'Handmade Music'
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