Octave Records is proud to present Goodnight Moon, the latest album from husband and wife duo Acoustic Eidolon. A collection of 11 instrumental pieces including eight original compositions and covers of Sting’s “Fields of Gold,” Don McLean’s “Vincent” and “Ashokan Farewell” by Jay Ungar, the album blends an inviting, spacious musical style with unique instrumentation and extraordinary high-resolution sound.
Acoustic Eidolon’s Joe Scott plays a range of instruments including acoustic guitar, synth guitar, and the guitjo, a unique instrument featuring two necks, one of which is tuned like a guitar but plays like a banjo. Scott creates a compelling array of instrumental sounds and textures, from the almost harp-like melodies and arpeggios of “Beyond Words” to the warm synth pads of “Shelter Cove.” Hannah Alkire’s cello provides a lyrical counterpoint to Scott’s playing. They’ve been playing for 28 years, and together they create music that is intimate and compelling that unfolds in a way that is natural and unforced. As Hannah noted, “we started playing in 1998, and we just felt like, ‘oh my gosh, there’s a lifetime of music in these two instruments.’”
Goodnight Moon was recorded using Octave Records’ state-of-the-art Pyramix Pure DSD system, with Manley Laboratories and Forssell Technologies, preamps. The album was mixed and mastered using PS Audio’s flagship Aspen FR30 loudspeakers. The microphones were carefully chosen and placed to faithfully capture each instrument, from delicate fingerpicked passages to layered textures. Octave’s Pure DSD reveals the detail of every plucked string and the natural resonance of the guitars and cello, with a real sense of wood, air, and sustain.
The guitjo and everything played by Joe Scott were recorded with a stereo pair of AKG 414 condenser mics and a Grace Design direct box. Hannah Alkire’s cello was captured with a pair of Geffel M930 condenser mics, pointed slightly off axis towards the sound holes and fingerboard of the cello. The album was recorded, mixed and produced by Callum Bair at Octave Studios in Boulder, Colorado. Paul McGowan served as executive producer and Gus Skinas did the mastering. As Callum noted, “Joe is also a great engineer, so we would inch the mics around at the beginning of each session until we all loved what we were hearing.”
Joe Scott and Hannah Alkire of Acoustic Eidolon.
Goodnight Moon opens with “Closer and Closer,” showcasing the clarity of Joe’s plucked strings and the richness of Hannah’s cello in a slow, contemplative melody. “Fields of Gold” brings weight and gravity to Sting’s classic song. “The title track, “Goodnight Moon,” evokes the soothing mood of the classic book, and “Zach’s Lullaby” continues the calm, peaceful feeling. The Don McLean ballad, “Vincent,” is played with a meditative flow that is a joy to hear.
Other highlights of the album include “Simple Gifts,” with its almost harp-like intro that moves into a beautiful ensemble passage; their stately cover of Jay Ungar’s “Ashokan Farewell,” the flowing gracefulness of “Eidolon,” and more. Goodnight Moon closes with “Ala Makai,” its ukulele and Hannah’s cello painting an evocative musical picture of a pathway to the sea in Hawaii.
I spoke with Joe and Hannah about the making of Goodnight Moon.
Frank Doris: How did you get together? And how did you decide on your instrumentation? It’s a really nice sound, with the cello blending with the…well, I’ll have to get the details on the instrument Joe plays.
Hannah Alkire: It's a great question because we came from such different backgrounds.
Joe Scott: Back in 1995, I had a commercial recording studio in my home and I was recording and producing a lot of records here in the Rocky Mountain region. And a group from Boulder, Colorado called me. I was doing a record with them and they said they were going to have cello on the record. And I said, “That's great. I love cello.” And then…Hannah can pick up the story from me…
HA: Yeah, so they called me out of the blue. I didn't know them and I [told them], “Just give me directions to the studio because I live in the middle of nowhere.” It turned out that across the street from me and three houses away was Joe in this recording studio.
JS: We were neighbors, but we didn't know each other.
HA: So I walked over to his house with my cello. I rolled it over there and was like, “Hi, I'm your neighbor!”
JS: Over the following couple years, whenever there was need for a cello, and there's always room for cello, I had her in the studio several times. Then the band I was in then was disbanding. Our group, Wind Machine, used the fretless bass a lot, like a cello. I thought, wow, I'd love to hear my double neck, the instrument that I play, with the cello. I called up Hannah and went over one snowy Friday. Friday morning we played [together]…it was in 1998.
HA: So he came to my house, and he came driving, because it was snowing, and played me the first melody he had ever written for his doubleneck guitjo. It was a song he had written for his one year old son called, “A Song For Alex.” We started playing it back and forth and we just felt like, “Oh my gosh, there's a lifetime of music in these two voices, in these two instruments.” So we cleared out our lives and decided to pursue what became Acoustic Eidolon. Joe went to get back into his van to drive back to his house – all three houses away – and he was stuck in my driveway for a week. It was hilarious. A week. Yeah, those were our humble beginnings. [And] the driveway was just not that steep!
FD: What does the word “eidolon” actually mean?
HA: It means ideal or visual image. That's what our dictionary said. Literally, we found the word in the dictionary. We found this word eidolon, which meant ideal or visual image, and we're like, “Ooh, that's actually really cool.” And because our instruments are so visual, it kind of fit.
FD: You have something in common with the Grateful Dead; they picked their name out from a dictionary.
Joe, what instrument are you playing? It’s listed as a guitjo, but that’s a banjo with six strings tuned like a guitar, and the record sure doesn’t sound like that.
JS: I grew up playing five string bluegrass banjo, started at 14 and guitar at 12. When I was 16, my dad said, “Hey, you ever think about stringing your guitar like a banjo?” At that time, I thought that was a dumb idea. Then, fast-forward several years, I was going to GIT (Guitar Institute of Technology) in Hollywood, California, and that idea popped back into my head. So I strung my guitar like a banjo and I was like, wow, this is really cool, because I could do all my banjo-related stuff on the guitar, and that took on a whole different sound.
Fast-forward, I moved back to Colorado in 1985, started the group Wind Machine with a guy, Steve Mesple, and I strung my guitar like that. Then he got a guitar and strung it like that, and we wrote all this music [for these instruments]. Then I decided, hey, what if I had a double neck where the bottom neck was like the banjo and the top neck was like a regular guitar?
(For) the bottom neck, strings one through five are the same gauge as a five string banjo. But then I added two additional high-pitched treble strings. So basically I have a C major ninth scale, depending on what tuning I'm in, for the open strings. Then the upper neck is strung like a regular guitar, but it has an extra bass string for its seventh string.
Then I developed a technique where I play mostly melody notes on the banjo neck with my right hand, and then I pluck the upper neck with my left hand, and I pick bass notes and chords with my index and other fingers. So I'm kind of like a piano player, where you're playing bass notes and chords in your left hand and melody in your right hand. That's where it all started.
So that was in 1991, and for 35 years now I've been pursuing this and it's wound up being a really good experiment.
My right hand's picking melody notes on the bottom strings. My left hand's actually plucking, and picking, and then I do a lot of hammer-ons with my left hand on the upper neck to get the notes I need.
HA: You have used your teeth, but I don't think you did on the album! (laughs)
JS: I have [had] to reach over to grab a bass note sometimes with my teeth! It's a really cool instrument and I've had two built. I use two in concerts because I use different tunings.
FD: Who makes the instruments? You can’t go and buy them at Guitar Center!
JS: My first one was built in 1991 by Denny Stevens. In 2003, I had a guitar builder in Florida, Rich Mermer, build the second one, and it's a thin-body electric acoustic. It’s got bolt-on necks so when I fly, I can take the necks off and it just goes in a gig bag on my back and fits in the overhead.
FD: Hannah, what kind of cello do you play? It sounds beautiful.
HA: I love my cello. It's a Christopher Dungey cello; he's a modern builder based now out of Grand Junction, Colorado. I have several cellos from him, and the stories have been woven through our music for years, because I basically fell in love with a tree and this tree [has] kept producing cellos, and it's just been a cool journey.
JS: She has three Dungey cellos. The latest one was built 10 years ago. He had a big chunk of this special curly maple, and Englemann spruce. Then a guitar builder originally from Australia, Beau Hannam [who] lives near him actually built a guitar [for me] from the same pieces of wood. So we have a matched set of instruments that we play in concert.
HA: Their DNA match! [The two builders] were even matching varnish samples, because the techniques they use for varnishing a cello versus a guitar are completely different, but they color-matched [them]. So they're the first actual fraternal twins cello and guitar set in the world! It's pretty cool.
DNA match: Hannah and Joe's Christopher Dungey cello and Beau Hannam guitar.
FD: I always ask artists about what inspired them to write the songs. I like your version of “Fields of Gold” better than Sting’s. There! I said it!
JS: When Paul [McGowan] and his crew approached us about doing something, we decided to go back and take our favorites from our very first three CDs, which were released in 1999 and 2000, and just re-record them in DSD audio and just strip them down to just be just cello and guitar, double neck. People were always asking us to do a lullaby CD, and we thought, well, this is the perfect opportunity. We thought that could work really well, because the folks that Octave and PS Audio are reaching are audiophiles and a whole different audience than our audience.
HA: But the other aspect to this album is really meaningful for us because those first tunes and those first albums, these melodies are the ones that started this whole journey. Joe and I have been playing music together for 28 years now. Last week we celebrated 25 years of being married, because we fell in love by our third CD. The song “Beyond Words” is actually the title cut to our third CD, which is the one we wrote about this budding love story that was coming out of the music, and that's the one we played in our wedding.
So it's very nostalgic for us. I was going through a lot, because the very first year that we started Acoustic Eidolon, I went through this huge cancer battle that just became this very formative part of me and of our music and of our journey and the gratitude that came out. All the things that happened from there were like, OK, this now is sacred ground. Life has just elevated to a new level.
FD: Wow. Quite a story.
How did you feel when you heard your music played back through the incredible system that Octave has?
JS: It's pretty phenomenal. We like to say we sweat blood over every note when we're in the recording studio, and we do. Callum [Bair], the engineer, did such a great job. It’s so pristine. We joked that if we breathed too heavily, you could hear our nose hairs move.
FD: Any overdubs?
JS: On five or six of the tunes I did some just light guitar synth pads. And there were probably a few moments where I overdubbed some harmonics where I couldn't physically play [everything] at the same time. But this is pretty much just us sitting there and recording together at the same time.
HA: It was cool because Callum had learned a bunch of producing from Joe's son, Alex, who was in Denver at the time and is now in New York doing music production. And so when Callum reached out to us, he said [Joe was] kind of like the grandfather of his studio experience, because he trained with Alex, and then [here] is Alex's dad. I would say rather than being intimidating, it was very inspiring just to be back with these melodies. These are old friends.
FD: I hate to stereotype us audiophiles, but we tend to listen to a lot of music that's sparser and more spacious and gives the music room to breathe, as opposed to a production with a hundred tracks. Your music lends itself to that sensibility, and the recording captures it.
Where it all begins.
HA: It was very inspiring. And I smacked my headphones into the cello peg a couple of times, so that there's some “real” stuff in there too!
FD: That’s part of what makes a performance real. And then sometimes you'll improvise something, where you'll never do it again. Then if you have to figure out what you did to reproduce it in concert!
JS: Oh yeah. Yes. That happens to us a lot. So you are a guitarist. What type of music are you doing?
FD: Well, mostly pop and rock and a little bit of country. I am jazz influenced. I'm not a jazz player, but I learned the old-fashioned way with guitar teachers and the Mel Bay books. And learning songs by dropping the needle on the parts 20 times until you figured out what it was.
JS: That's what I did, only with Chet Atkins records. I would slow it down from 33 down to 16 (RPM) to figure out every note he was playing.
FD: Now you can just go online and go to Ultimate Guitar and find a cheat sheet.
JS: And I think all these amazing young 20-something guitar players are just technically doing mind-blowing things. They've got all these resources. Now if you want to learn a Chet Atkins song, you go on YouTube and there'll be somebody there that'll show you how to do it note for note. [Young people] have a big head start on us old timers who were dropping the needle, slowing things down.
FD: But we have the experience.
JS: And a better ear probably.
HA: In my background, that was a big part of it, the ear training and transcribing rhythms and all that stuff. As my world expanded beyond the classical and into all these other worlds, that's what stood me in the best stead of all.
FD: I run into a lot of younger people, and I always tell them, the more you play, the better you get. It's not like, “OK, I’ve got it down now.” It's never ending.
JS: It is never ending.
HA: That was another reason why it was so much fun to come back to these melodies (on Goodnight Moon), because the players that we are now…for myself especially, I felt like it was a whole different experience [revisiting the songs]. It was really fun.
FD: I interviewed Zuill Bailey, who recorded the Bach Cello Suites for Octave, and he said he wanted to redo them after recording them 12 years earlier, because he was not the same person now. The way musicians approach music, the way the feeling comes through after years of living life, it's this intangible thing. I’ve spent most of my life trying to figure it out.
JS: We've lived a lot of life. Hannah's a two-time cancer survivor.
HA: Yeah, twice. Well, I'm OK.
FD: Luckily, the world we live in…I don't know if I'd be here if it wasn't for the medical technology of today, so knock on wood.
JS: Yeah, exactly. Anytime I'm in a medical setting or clinic or hospital, I'm always very grateful that I live now and not a hundred years ago where you could die from a toothache.
FD: I judge the quality of medical facilities by their ceilings, because I’ve spent so much time on my back, looking up at them! "OK, this place looks like it's pretty well-kept!”
HA: Awesome! I love that. Yeah. Is there a correlation between a popcorn ceiling and the...
FD: I don't know. I went in for an angiogram and I was pretty nervous. The nurse said, “Do you want something to help you relax?” And I said, “Well, yeah!” I don’t know what they gave me, but I went from being really tense to “Hey, look at the pattern on the ceiling over there. Far out!”
Talk about going off on a tangent…
Well, my mission is to let people know what great music and audio gear is out there. You go on the audio forums and there’s a lot of snark and negativity and know-it-alls…they’re such know-it-alls that they don’t even need to hear a component to give an opinion on it! (laughter).
JS: Yeah.
HA: You're onto something though, because for me…I'm sort of a heart on my sleeve kind of person. And so to be doing this 28 years now with Joe and in this entity of Acoustic Eidolon, we've managed to hang on to the authenticity of who we are. We've not turned into...[we’ve been] joking now because it's the day of the tribute bands, right? And so we've been joking that we're going to end Acoustic Eidolon and start a tribute band to Acoustic Eidolon.
JS: Just so we can get more kids [in our audience].
FD: Well, I'm on Long Island and the only bands that are drawing and making money around here are tribute bands.
JS: That's true across the country.
FD: I can't begrudge any musician who's getting gigs and playing, but I wish there was more opportunity for original music.
HA: We've had to reinvent so many multiple times through the years to stay with the business. That's what you do. We all do. And we've somehow managed to stay true to the music that comes through us and in us. To me, that's just such a gift because there's been no expectation. I think part of it is this just [that we have a] really different sound. I'm grateful that [the music] has supported us [in] being able to stay true to who we are, because that's been important through this whole journey. We said at the beginning, we're doing this for the joy of the music. And if that ever changes and if this ever feels like work – I mean, of course there are moments that it's work – but if this ever feels like a burden, we stop, period.
JS: Earlier you had referenced “Fields of Gold.” For all 14 of our CDs, we've always picked at least two to three cover tunes to cover. We've always made them our own, [but] you can still tell what the song is. On Our Tree Finds Its Voice, we actually recorded an instrumental version of “Bohemian Rhapsody,” guitar and cello. And we followed, I put the original Queen version into Pro Tools and we did it identical to their version, on two instruments.
HA: That was insane. We don't recommend that!
JS: We do “Vincent” on [Goodnight Moon].
HA: We just tried to pick old friends, old favorites I think it's important to sprinkle these old friends among new music so that people kind of go, “Oh yeah, I know you.” I think it's important.
FD: I like it when somebody covers a song and makes it their own.
HA: Yep. Yeah, that's where our hearts sing.
Another aside is that Zuill Bailey plays a Gofriller cello, which is what my cello is. [These] were the biggest of the cello models built in the 1700s, prior to Stradivarius, who then built a smaller cello, and that's become the industry standard for cello size. But the Gofriller is bigger.
FD: No wonder the cello sound is so big and rich on the album.
JS: Well, thank you for the support.
FD: I'm on a mission. I've loved music my whole life. Some of my first memories are of the music that came out of my mother’s radio on the kitchen counter.
HA: When it grabs you from the inside, that's special.
All images courtesy of the artists.
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