Page 18 - ROCKNATION ISSUE 26

PAGE 18 ROCKNATION ISSUE 26
MORANO

VOODOO MOONSHINE

Hello Duane and welcome to Rocknation. Congrats to your new CD
“Incognito”. How did you line up your stellar vocalist and musician
lineup for this CD?
The CD started with Bill Leverty. Bill and I have been friends for many
years so he was familiar with the music I write, my studio setup, and things
of that nature. I knew Bill had a great studio and I really liked the mixes he
was putting out so I asked him if he would mix the CD. He agreed so I sent
him 4 tracks to check out and mix. One thing I noticed right off the bat was
my drum programming was lacking. He recommended I give his drummer
Michael Foster a shout so I did.That was the start of the guest lineup.
Michael was the first guestand played on 11 out of the 13 tracks and the
guests grew from there.
I knew I wanted certain people on certain songs because of what I heard
in my head. For example, I knew I wanted a fretless bass creating the
counter melody to the vocals and acoustic guitars on Hearts. I don’t own a
fretlessso I gave Tony Franklin a shout. He took a very basic melody and
turned it into this beautiful line that complimented everything nicely. A very
similar thing happened with my brother John Morano on the song Giovanna.
I sent him the track with a straight 1/8th note ride the root bassline and he
turned it into a living, breathing thing that gave the song a new energy and
made it groove.
Pat Badger was onboard for a few tunes from the beginning but Kevin
Figueiredo came onboard through a chance conversation. Kevin and I had
hung out a few times when I would meet up with Pat but never talked shop
or business. Pat and Kevinwere in town for a show with their Dark Desert
Eagles band so we set up a small jam session/house party thing at my place
for the night before.We all had such a blast making noise that it seemed like a
natural extension to have Kevin,Chris Lester, Tom Appleman, and Eric
Clemenzi play on a track or two. Luckily for me Kevin has a killer studio
with Pro Tools that he does session work out of so recording his drum parts
weren’t the logistical nightmare I thought it would be.
Terry Ilous, Danny Vaughn, Bryan Cole, and Dan Michaels all came at
different points during the recording process. Dan Michaels co-wrote much of the album with me but due to time constraints
he wasn’t able to perform on a few tracks so I put out a post on Facebook looking for
a singer. A friend of mine named Mike Floros recommended Bryan Cole and we hit it
off well. Terry and I had met a few years back and exchanged contact info so we could
keep in touch. As I put the CD together, I thought Terry’s voice would fit a song perfectly
so I gave him a call. He agreed to do one song initially but as we started working
together, it turned into writing and arraigning a total of 5 songs. He also introduced me
to JK Northrup who also helped write, mix, and play some guitar on a few songs.
When I was deciding what route to go with singers, I put a bunch of names on a
piece of paper and listened back to instrumental versions of the songs envisioning
whose voice would best suit the next batch of tracks. One of the names I kept
coming back to was Danny Vaughn. I asked Bill what he thought of the idea and he
gave me Danny’s contact info and called Danny within 5 minutes of me mentioning it.
I sent over the tracks with scratch vocals so he could check them out and decided to
sing on 5 songs.