Drambuie (a New Oldie)

Words and music by Bruce Irving and Rob Simbeck (c) 1978.

Yes, 1978! This is a new recording of an old song of mine, which I wrote with Rob Simbeck back when we were trying to develop a music career in Rochester, NY. We eventually wised up and moved to Los Angeles, and Rob later moved to Nashville, where he still lives. But I digress.

"Drambuie" was mostly Rob's lyric, based on the observation that some people like Drambuie, and others prefer beer. Or something like that. I wrote some semi-jazzy music on a classical guitar. I've always liked this song, but I never tried to make a serious recording of it. This week I was fooling around with a music arranging and songwriting program I have called Band-in-a-Box (2011), trying out some of their "RealTracks," which are prerecorded audio files of various riffs, chords, and drum parts played by professional musicians. I have quite a few of their RealTracks styles, and every few years I upgrade and buy more. In this simple, jazzy "classy ballad" style, the instruments are piano, acoustic bass, and drums with brushes. They sound pretty good to me considering I simply entered the chords for my song, chose the style, and BIAB did the rest, except for the singing (me) and the electric guitar, which was played by Roger Lavallee.

I exported the audio tracks from BIAB and imported them into Sonar X1 for further recording, effects, and mixing. This version is not quite final. I am not happy with the vocal, and the mix needs some work. Roger played some pretty nice guitar lines around the keyboard riffs played by someone years ago, probably in PG Music's studio in Victoria, BC.