It was a fun record to do and odd in a way too.
Richard is an amazing fiddle player with huge hands. He had been in Sea Train, Loggins & Messina, played the fiddle part on Rod Stewart's "You're In My Heart", etc.
From his work with Sea Train and George Martin, Richard decided that he wanted to set up the players - upright bass, acoustic guitar, Mando and fiddle, do tons of takes and then edit everything together of the best bits. "That's what George Martin does" mentality.
I think I used a KM84 for the bass, 421 on mando, maybe a 451 on acoustic guitar, and a U47 on fiddle.
When we got to editing, Richard was deciding edits on his solos in many cases - "go from the 3rd note of take 6 to th 4th note of take 16" - a real pain in the neck as it was all acoustic and cutting multi track - it had to be super clean. I think we spent 3 weeks editing. Richard was thinking where to edit his solos and his 4th note of the solo may be in the middle of a guitar chord for instance. Loads of analog fun.
The next record we did together "Blue Rondo" was fun as well. Add a second fiddle player, viola and orchestra percussion and it is bluegrass meets jazz to the max.
On Ramblin' we went for a dry, close, intimate sound. I didn't mix it as I believe I had another project starting up.
A funny exchange - Richard asks me "what did you think of my solo" I answer "I hate to say it but you aren't quite making the octaves" He snaps back, "I'm playing 11ths!" Yeah, I felt about 2 foot three at that point.
