THE MAKING OF JEFFERSON AVENUE
There may be records that took longer to make than this record, but nobody in the project can think of one.
It all seemed easy enough at the beginning. One night Tom was at a gig at the Cadieux Café and he ran into Eddie Baranek. Tom didn’t really know Eddie at all, but he knew Eddie had played with all kinds of Tom’s music idols everyplace. He’s seen Eddie play with the Sights and Blaire Elise and a great holiday event Eddie used to put on, and he’d hung out with him locally with the likes of Peter Buck, Scott Morgan and tons of other great artists at shows they’d both attended or played at. Tom knew Eddie was approachable (since he’d met him and talked him up at previous Eddie shows) so he introduced himself (as he had once or twice before) and asked Eddie for advice about a little EP Tom wanted to put together – did Eddie know a good producer? Besides, who the hell else was Tom gonna ask.
Eddie mentioned Jim Diamond right away, another guy Tom had known about for years and seen around town a lot. Of course, Tom knew Jim was an obvious choice – actually, THE obvious choice for the project. Eddie offered to make an introduction and to Tom’s great shock and delight, this resulted in Jim listening to a number of demo tracks Tom had self-produced, and, ultimately agreeing to work them into something better. If you had told the Tom who wrote many of these songs that they’d someday be produced by Tom’s very favorite of modern era producers, he would have not believed that – not for one second.
Still, it started to happen. By later in 2019, Jim and Tom had basically exchanged ideas for what to do in the studio and initially decided on scheduling and content of the EP. Again to Tom’s great delight, Jim ultimately suggested that Eddie and Eddie’s longtime collaborator, drummer Dave Shetler do the base tracks with Jim handling bass. In no time at all, it seemed Tom would have a boss little garage EP of “Dirty Little Numbers”. Three chords and a cloud of Detroit Dragway Dust.
Just as production was about to begin though, COVID hit, and it would be fully 2 years, until fall of 2021, that the 4 first convened at Tempermill Studios in Ferndale to record the project that had been laid out very nearly ready to record nearly two years earlier.
At that moment, it once again seemed like the whole project would be completed in no time….this time by early 2022. The initial cuts of 7 songs for the EP – including 5 that ultimately would appear on the final work – were completed in 2 easy days. Several follow-on sessions were scheduled to add buff and polish, and by July of 2022 final mixes were in place. Then – and again – it felt like the project was weeks away from release.
But then, Tom and Eddie met to discuss next steps on marketing the project. The sessions made it feel to everybody like there was still a lot of gas in the tank….a full album was more than possible, At the time, it seemed it would easy enough to not hold things up for more than a few months.
Except for shows all summer. It would therefore not be until the fall of 2022 that Tom would record or update 30 or so additional demo tracks for further consideration by the group. Easy enough, but by the time all this occurred and finalists were refined, it was spring of 2023 and – again – shows all summer slowed the project. In the fall of 2023, though, the 4 returned to Tempermill and once again, 4 or 5 more tracks were laid down in short order to the general satisfaction of all involved.
However, as 2023 came to a close, the project grew in scope and breadth. The echoes of Detroit music past seemed to arise in many of the later tracks with small riff and vocal tributes to the great Detroit music that informed the project seeming to call for enhancement of many aspects. The storytelling, cohesion and theme of the tracks seemed to be leading to Tom further sonically layer the project.
Scheduling delays naturally occurred as numerous other musicians – horns, piano, keyboards harp parts, choirs, etc. etc. were brought into the mix, very much changing the basic feel of much of the project. By fall of 2024, the record had officially left garageland by way of Jefferson Avenue as cameos from Lyndon Baines Johnson, Coleman A. Young, Rev. C.L. Frankin and others came to pepper the later additions to the project, along with other additions intended to enhance the historic tone of the record. The ebb and flow of the production and ultimately the selection order of the music patterns the historical vintage of the songs and their place in music time – as well as the development of Tom’s own musical influences across the represented eras.
Which is to say in a different way that it has become clear that Eddie and Jim are the two most patient men in all of rock n roll, doing their best to accommodate Tom’s ever growing set of “great ideas” – ideas that did not always stay in one place long coming as they did from the man known at the gigs as “Tommy Adderall”. At some point though, Jim and Eddie began to suggest to Tom that the next new “great idea” should be a “great idea” for the next record, with mastering finally and mercifully taking place in the winter of 2026.
It is thus that a project intended initially to be a quick and dirty little EP turned into a years-long effort to forge the sonic history of a city, layered in sounds, voices and vignettes of our time.
Or at least that was the idea.