Adam Eckersley Band,
The Second Album was tracked at the world-beating Studios 301 in Byron Bay, with legendary producer-engineer Nick DiDia (Bruce Springsteen, Kasey Chambers, Powderfinger) behind the sound-desk. The record came together in a storm of live tracking, with album sessions capturing several jaw-dropping jams from the preternaturally tight outfit.
“One of the cool things was, half the time we didn’t know we were cutting a track!” Adam recalls. “We’d just start jamming, thinking we were only pulling sounds or warming up, and the next thing Nick would say, okay, come into the control room. He’d just been running red the whole time! He was always working to capture the most natural take for every song.”
The Second Album certainly sees the Adam Eckersley Band take full flight.
“For all of us, that’s what gets us off musically – just going on a sort of journey with dynamic lifts and falls,” Adam says. “If you can jag it so that everyone’s right on the same page and just flowing together, it’s pretty banging. Over the twelve months of playing songs from The First Album live, we started messing around with the standard versions, adding extended jam sessions to them. We really enjoy doing that, so we thought,well, let’s include a bit of that on this new album.”
Reflecting considerable growth in the band’s outlook, The Second Album showcases ideas both new – the inclusion of a string quartet being a stirring example – and time-honoured. It all adds up to a collection of eleven tracks that are emblematic of AEB’s striking versatility, impressive range, and clear camaraderie.
“It covers a fairly broad range of sounds,” Adam says of the album. “There’s definitely some jamming Southern stuff, some straight-up rock sort of songs, a bit of country, and a coupla ballads. I don’t know really how to categorise the whole thing overall!”