Rataj-Berard
Corey Mathew Hart (left) and Paul Mitch met at a songwriting competition.
You’ll zoom right past County Road F on the way to Blue Mounds, if you’re not paying attention. That kind of thing happens in the country, especially at night, when your mind wanders out past the headlights and into the coming dark. Once on F, things get quiet. Deathly quiet. County F loops and lifts through the hills, turns into Z, and then it’s official: You’re in the middle of nowhere, otherwise known as Corey Mathew Hart’s house.
Hart is County Road Z personified. Meandering. Filled with twists. Hard to follow in the dark and, most of all, quiet. Hart speaks to you from across the room in the same tone as he would if he were whispering in your ear. But when he sings, hoo-boy.
Five years in the making, it makes sense that Hart’s new project with fellow folk traveler Paul Mitch is known as Lost Lakes. The record has a woodsy, corduroy feel. Hart and Mitch’s music blends the duo’s respect of traditional folk sensibilities with their own brand of hipster mysticism. Both are sensational singers. Together, their voices define the Lost Lakes sound. Think Milk Carton Kids with a bigger hammer.
The two met in 2010 during the 105.5 Triple M performance competition. Hart is a complete nerd when it comes to equipment: amps, mics and the like. “Corey is a tone guy,” says Mitch. Hart is also a savant when it comes to indexing sounds — filing those tones away in his mind and then reaching for them when the time is right.
What Hart heard in Mitch’s singing and bass playing in 2010 turned out to be exactly what he sought after his own bass player moved away later in the year. Hart and Mitch became an informal duo.
“They are like one engine running in tune when working together,” says Justin Guip, the New York state-based engineer who, previous to mixing Lost Lakes, recorded, among others, Levon Helm. Guip leaves next month on tour to drum with Hot Tuna’s Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady.
“I like their organic sense of pop music — which comes down to great groove, melody, arranging and, of course, lyric.”
Many of the songs that eventually became part of the Lost Lakes project were fashioned and refashioned as Hart and Mitch tested them out in live performance. “Give Up the Ghost” is an example. On the record, the arrangement, lean but fully realized, starts in a hush. Rusty Lee’s piano makes a sweet announcement of forgiveness. The song has a gorgeous weariness to it as the music crescendos in a tide of volume and emotion all the way to the end.
Hart says the song was the product of much tinkering, “tightening up the arrangement and ultimately cutting more than a minute in length.”
By November 2013, Mitch and Hart were on the verge of turning their songs into the Lost Lakes recording. The band was getting tight. They were playing some bigger shows, including opening for Blind Pilot and the BoDeans. Of course, life has a way of intervening. It was as if their close collaboration included family planning, because both musicians became fathers that month — Mitch for the first time, Hart for the second. Lost Lakes was shelved.
Two years later, the fathers finally headed into the studio. A very chilly studio. With the inside temp sometimes dipping down into the low 40s, Eau Claire-based drummer Shane Leonard joined them at Madison’s warehouse music funhouse fondly known as “The Dojo.”
The song finessing continued into the recording sessions. “I love writing vocal parts,” says Mitch. “Coming up with interesting ways to lay in background vocals is one of my absolute favorite things to do. Corey comes to it with a really unique, powerful voice. He’s definitely got an idea in his head when it comes to how a song should be, and what kind of tone or sonic color it needs to have.”
Two musicians who know what they want is a powerful thing. Their choice of drummer Shane Leonard is proof. Leonard has been deeply immersed in the explosive creative scene in Eau Claire. His own band, Kalispell, helps define that sound as well as any. He also plays with Milwaukee’s Field Report.
Rusty Lee’s piano parts were laid down after the Dojo recordings were complete. His keyboard overdubs included work on a Steinway grand piano captured in Mitch’s in-laws’ living room.
Lost Lakes will release its first single, “Digital Tears,” Oct. 28. The quartet will perform on Nov. 3 at a venue perfectly suited for their delicate sounds: the Williamson Magnetic Recording Studio at 1019 Williamson St.
“We don’t pretend to play tunes that people get up and dance to,” says Mitch. “It’s critical to make something else happen there. Hopefully we make some moments that make you feel the hair on your arm stand up.”
