Fredric Milpips Mother

Fredric Milpip's Mother
Caught between battling betrayals, little Fredric Milpip is asked to play the role of the "Hush Man", lest his
cheating mother be caught by his cheating father - or vice versa. Even in the excuse he is told to provide to the
other parent there is ironic sarcasm …

Tom bartered some studio time to get a string section and the arrangement. Most of the players were
octogenarians, but one of the cello players was very cute. She got a lot of attention from Charles who kept
trying to show her the orange groves outside the studio. She seemed interested, but I can't recall if he got his
way. Tom was always moving things along, and in this case he had the section for only a few hours, as none of
them wanted to be there after dark. The dirt road to the studio was pretty treacherous. More then one car had
ended up in a dry creekbed just beyond the studio's poorly marked turn-off.

You get used to how a place sounds, and, in general, the little studio at Two:Dot was pretty "dead" i.e., not
reverberant. The string section filled the Two:Dot studio that was smaller then a two car garage. There was lots
of padding on the walls, which suited recording rock bands, but string sections need reflections around them. So
on the day of the string session, Tom got us there early and we carried sheet after sheet of plywood into the
studio, covering all of the floor, and most of the walls. The ply on the walls was set at odd and varied angles.

The studio had a door straight out to the surrounding orange groves. I recall a surreal experience when, after
picking an orange, I walked into the middle of a string section sitting amid a jumble of rough plywood, and a
small forest of mic stands, as they worked out the orchestration to Fredric Milpip.

The string players had only Charles' piano part, and a click track from a mechanical metronome to keep them in
sync. Keep in mind that drum machines had yet to be invented. I recall we miked the metronome on a stool in a
storage space, and once the strings were recorded the metronome was erased. The metronome track had the
owner's dog barking in the background. After so many weeks of hearing that bark on the track, we had gotten
used to it. When it was gone we missed it. The dog left in a huff, and said he would start his own band.

To add contrast to the somberness of the verses and chorus, the bridge was a vaudevillian vignette to symbolise
Fredric Milpip's Mother's character (or lack of it). John Hall added a banjo, and Greg (leader of the Ensenada
Brass) added a cornet.

In the last verse, Fredric is left wondering where to turn, as the song lulls us into a state of drowsiness,
punctuated by a deep yawn. Suggesting perhaps, that a state of deep sleep might be more nurturing to a child
then the harsh realities of the wide awake adult world.