If you go back, way back... and include all the various bands, bars, basements, and those few precious moments we spent here http://www.invisiblesoundstudios.com/, I conservatively estimate there are several dozen recordings of Keating songs out there. (I wonder if he has kept count?)
This isn't a warning so much as a statement of wonder. The man is a Trappist dedicating weeknights in subterranean solitude, scribing lyrics and frying things in duck fat. Or maybe songs come to him in random moments of inspiration, diligently captured in that notebook of his? Who knows? What is he building in there?
Recording with him is also enigmatic in that he'll come to a session with upwards of half a dozen songs, many of which I've never heard before. There's a scratch guitar track and the occasional instructions, whispered through headphones, as I record the drums. It's rare we go more than three takes. He likes to keep things from getting too, you know, professional sounding. Once drums are recorded, the usual scenerio involves laboratory magic in one of Doc's many undisclosed locations. For all I know, he's got a battery of mandolin-laden elves shackled up in Grafton.
As we've gotten better at the whole recording thing lately it's not unusual for a single song to get worked on in Maryland, Massachusetts and Maine. (Thanks for this goes, in equal parts, to the Interweb and AirTran.) Despite their provenance and squeaky clean digital encoding (and, whichever of our gang is sitting in on the session) I think the songs maintain their intrinsic Keating-ness and that's not something you can accomplish with a cheap plug-in effect.
-RK
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