It’s simply amazing to me that we have reached 200 episodes of The Loft Sessions!  The first was in September of 2001 with my friend Bruce Cockburn shortly after the world changed.  It lasted under thirty minutes, but Bruce made it up to us a year or so later with a stellar full hour performance on Loft Session #23. 

 

Bruce was very easy to work with, mostly due to the fact that when he released “The Charity Of Night” album I was the guy from the record company that brought him to radio stations, conventions and the like.  I brought many artists across the country in those days and I became somewhat jaded.  Although there were still quite a few true music lovers encountered in these journeys, the artists for the most part had to make do with substandard equipment, harsh lighting and a ton of “schlep time” to record what amounted to multiple versions of the same few songs.   And we’re not even going to get into the barrage of superficial answers to the same questions.

 

One of the first things we all noticed when we were hired at XM, whether among the initial crew or in subsequent years, was pretty much the same thing anyone that enters our Eckington Pl, D.C. location notices… we have some fairly amazing gear and people that really know how to use it!  A state of the art Performance Theatre with a very nice Steinway and all the trimmings, staffed by world-class recording engineers.  Hmmm…

 

Since we were on a mission to re-invent radio, not to mention outside of F.C.C. regulations in regard to language, I felt there was an opportunity for artists to create a real session and have it perfectly recorded in multi-track.   All I needed to create were the rules, but since I wanted no rules here’s what I came up with, they have never changed:

 

1.    We need as close to a full hour as possible.  More is fine.

2.    Play whatever you want.

3.    Say whatever you want.  (Steve Poltz really loves this one)

4.    We are going to use it all, unless there’s something you don’t like and we’ll take that out. 

5.    No, there is no interview, see #3.  (A few just couldn’t do it unless I was in there and asking questions)

6.    Play whatever you want.

7.    Have fun.

 

There have been musical moments over the past nearly eight years that I have personally witnessed during the recording of these 200 Loft Sessions I will carry with me forever.  That there have been far more than I could list here makes me feel truly blessed.  I can’t take all, or even most of, the credit for the actual behind the scenes work that has gone into Loft Sessions.  Kate Bradley showed up a few years into it and kicked it up a notch during her time here and Jerry Rubino has pretty mush assumed control (with my full approval of course) over the last two plus years.  Believe me, it is an enormous amount of work and going forward we are all excited to be working with Steve Leeds and his team in New York to further evolve the series. 

 

Let’s see, we discussed the artist angle and the setup labor and follow-through, but none of these Loft Sessions would have been possible without the amazing engineers that have staffed the XM Studios.  Tony Masiello designed the rooms, and his trusted team of Jackson MacInnes, Michael Taylor, Quinton  “the ‘Q’ Man” Roebuck, Alex Haje and Aaron Lee has pushed the buttons on these sessions.  Not only are they all top notch, they all live, breath and love music, a combination you don’t find with nearly enough frequency.  

 

It’s fitting that Loft Session #200 would be another one of those artists I used to “schlep” around, the incredible Alejandro Escovedo.  It was wonderful to see Al so healthy and happy and sounding at the top of his game.  His latest album “Real Animal” is my personal favorite of 2008, and should be one of yours as well.  He takes the band (with Carrie Rodriguez sitting in) through their paces over these 90 minutes in front of a live studio audience.  We hope you enjoy it.

 

With Love,

 

Mike