God Street Wednesdays: Dirty Little Secret Video Premiere

Over the next few months, we’ll be working with our pal Mike Wren to debut a series of exceptional videos from God Street Wine’s reunion shows in 2010. Today, we’ll premiere the first of those clips, so we asked Mike to fill us in on the process he used before showing off the video…

When God Street Wine announced their summer 2010 reunion shows, the first major public shows for the band since their brief regrouping to help close the much lauded live music venue Wetlands Preserve in New York City, I immediately got in touch with guitarist Lo Faber about snapping some photos. I was late to the GSW party; they were completely off my radar until, in late 2001, a friend suggested I take a ride up to Saratoga Springs to check out the Lo Faber Band. “You like Gabriel-era Genesis, you gotta see these guys,” he implored. It was around that time that I also developed a taping habit of my own. *Someone* needed to preserve these moments! It was the first of many, many Faberband shows, through which I met a lot of fantastic people.

[All Photos by Mike Wren]

Fast-forward to spring 2010, groveling for photo credentials for both GSW reunion shows at Gramercy. “Sure,” Lo said, “but we’d really like to have video recorded. Can you do video?” Without hesitation, I agreed.

Video was something I previously treated as bad voodoo – I mishmosh of codecs (compression/decompression filetypes) and huge files that were best tamed by geeks with huge hard drives and CPU power. “Capture quality content now, figure out post-production later” I kept repeating to myself.

For capture, two Canon HV40’s were rented: One stage left side of the soundboard, one hard stage right about parallel with the photo pit but at eye-level with the band. Both these cameras were locked down; zoom, tilts and pans would be finessed in post-production. Power was strung via long runs of extension cords. Tape in both cameras needed to be swapped hourly, but it was manageable. Soundcheck was used to dial in manual exposure settings. The first rule of shooting live music (stills or video) is never trust automatic exposure modes. It *will* blow out the highlights and muddy the blacks.

To try and convey the energy and vibe around the venue, I used a Canon 5D Mark II, which is primarily used as a stills camera. Honestly, I didn’t get anywhere near enough hand-held video from this camera as I had hoped. But, as requested, the scope of this project was strictly archival, and two cameras were all that was expected. And archival is right up my alley, going back to the Faberband days in Saratoga.

In the months after the shows, Lo Faber and Ted Marotta went through the multitrack audio recorded by Eric Budke, directly from Brian Duffy’s soundboard mix, to produce a final matrix. I ingested and logged tens of hours of tape. Then the video sat…and sat. Until mid-winter 2011/2012 when I finally decided to overcome my own inertia and learn to cut video. I quietly started piecing together some footage and learning along the way, with the expert eye and support of Lynn Kestenbaum and Michael Weiss. The rough edits, when mixed with the audio, came together really nicely. I started to get antsy at the thought of relegating the package to just “archival footage.”

Unknown to me, the boys had a little something cooking of their own. It was a very happy coincidence that the video recorded at Gramercy would have a purpose. It would be pulled out of the archive and be shared, in conjunction with their summer 2012 shows.

Over the next few months, a fully edited song will be posted every other God Street Wednesday here on Hidden Track and on the Bring Back God Street Wine Facebook page. We’re kicking things off today with Dirty Little Secret, recorded the second night of Gramercy, 7/10/2010.

God Street Wine – Dirty Little Secret

Huge thanks to Scotty for the soapbox, Jeff Volkhausen for his masterful use of lights, Lynn Kestenbaum for keeping me honest and providing a very helpful eye, Michael Weiss for project coordination, and of course, the band.

A limited number of tickets are onsale now for the three shows at the Gramercy Theatre, August 16, 17 and 18 in New York City, and August 10 and 11 at Bob Weir’s Sweetwater Music Hall in Mill Valley, California. A live webcast from TRI studios will also be happening August 9 at tristudios.com.

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One Response

  1. A.Maze.Ing! Thanks for the shout out Mike, I get inspired through music, and GSW is seriously case in point. What a magical and special week that was for me, so excited to do it again!

    Big thanks also to all the crew at Grammercy who helped me prepare and focus for these shows. Couldn’t have done it without them, especially Ian!

    Great work Mike, keep it up man! See you this Aug! 🙂

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