The long road to the Big Furry album began with a job as television audio engineer at an upstart home shopping channel owned by people expecting the return of the Messiah in 1997. While Sean was in their employ, he maxed out a few credit cards to set up his own music studio, taking the risk that the Messiah would not show until he had paid them off, and if the Messiah did show- well, bad credit would the least of Sean’s problems…
Showing remarkable self awareness and the ability to honestly assess his engineering talents, Sean decided to use his new studio only for overdubs and sought out engineer Dave Lawrence to handle the basic tracks and mixdown duties, beginning a long lasting relationship that is evidenced in this recording.
This album was produced, written, arranged, and forced into existence by Sean. As producer, Sean would like to take the time to acknowledge the musicians who made the live core of these songs. Mike Bishop, lifelong friend and ’57 strat tone monster added his prodigious yet somehow organic chops to the cause, as well as the subject matter for a verse or two… Mark Ambrossino brought unbelievable tone and insanely consistent yet free flowing timing to his drum tracks. Denzel Hathway played bass perfectly locked and without ego, except when encouraged to take the spotlight (check out his intro to “Just Make Music”!) Brendan Wyant made even the most complex song groove, and his swing provides the air that keeps some of the heavier songs afloat. The aforementioned Dave Lawrence plays mandolin as well as engineered, and I need to spend a moment addressing this man, incidentally whose unintentionally panty-dropping announcer voice can be heard introing “Just Make Music”.
This album doesn’t sound as good as it does without Dave Lawrence for what he did and didn’t do. He did not impose his ego upon the production. He did have the musicality to understand where the songs were going, and his rare suggestions were always right on target. His work ethic coupled with his belief in the songs were gratifying and inspiring, and not lastly, somewhere between the start and end of this 6 year odyssey, he went from being very good to frighteningly good at his craft, which pushed me to see if we could top the previous effort. So…. know it. Thank you.