Today, we’re rolling out a new series of posts called Wayback Wednesday (yes, we stole the idea from your kid sister’s Twitter feed…). Every week, we’ll share interesting old school Jars of Clay content!
This week’s offering is the “Savage Flavor Remix” of Flood. The remix comes from a CD released by Essential Records in 1996 called Vibe Central: The Essential Remixes. It features tracks from Jars of Clay, Eric Champion, and other artists from Essential’s roster.
All three of the Vibe Central remixes were produced by Jeff Savage, the brother of Scott Savage (Jars of Clay’s touring drummer, 1995-1999). How these remixes came to be is an interesting story, as we learned from Jeff himself…
A long time ago (way back in the 1990’s), my older brother Scott was attending Belmont University, where, through a family connection with Jar’s first manager, he was able to audition as the tour drummer for this new band that had just been signed to a record deal called “Jars of Clay”. (Mind you, at the time, I was 15 and living in Mississippi, so this was HUGE news over the phone from all the way up north…in Nashville..ha ha).
Now mind you, I was just a little country boy from Mississippi who didn’t know anything! All I knew was that I had a drum machine and some turntables and I was gonna do something one day, even though I had the maturity level of, well, a 15 year old country boy from Mississippi. (which took me until about 22 to get rid of)
So, on one of our trips up to Nashville to visit Scott, he invited me to come to the studio to meet this new group while they were mixing their new album. He made me SWEAR not to do anything stupid and embarrass him. I don’t think I complied, it’s foggy.
For my 15 year old existence it was amazing, they were mixing the song “Blind” with an engineer named JD. I remember meeting Dan first, Charlie second, and then Stephen…Matt showed up later. They were so nice to me and let me sit in the engineer’s chair and listen. I remember being fascinated that the faders on the mixing board would move by themselves. I knew then what my destiny was!! It was a defining moment in my life.
So time went by and eventually my family moved to Nashville from Mississippi, right about the time the Jars album was released. I remember, that first summer, the 5 of them riding in a mini van with foam beds, drums, and luggage in the back, taking turns driving. Dan had a piece of crap Honda Civic that he would follow the band in, and every time they would hit a new state, they would blow the horns fiesta style. For my 16th birthday, I got to go with them to this place called “Club Rule”..and run sound. I blew the fuses out…oh well, ha ha..the club didn’t rule so much after we left.
I was so proud of my bro..I told anyone that would listen that MY brother was the DRUMMER for Jars of Clay. I drove everyone NUTS with it. ha ha ha..I wanted that attention SO bad, and I got it, mostly in negative ways, and to much frustration (understandably) from the guys and my bro. There were quite a few sit downs with me and every single one of the guys at some point with lectures about shutting up. ha ha ha..I love it now looking back all of these years later.
More time goes by, and at some point during my 11th grade year in high school. I’m messing around with my little 8-track cassette tape ghetto home studio and drum sampler at home, and I figured out a way to remove Dan’s vocals from the song “Liquid”, so I started messing around with his vocals and the beats and made kind of a garage quality bootleg remix. I began to dig a little deeper and I found Scott’s rehursal tapes which were the rough mixes of the first album with certain elements isolated. And soon, I had done bootleg remixes of “he” “Blind” and “Like a child”, straight up Ghetto, to Cassette. This was enhanced by the fact that I had totally jacked all of their concert tracks from a device called an ADAT that served as an element to their shows on the PFR tour (my brother had forbidden me to touch it, so by rule of brother law, I had to do it!)
So one day, Steve and Dan come by the house to see my bro (who was still living at home at the time). And I just “happened to be playing the mixes”, and Stephen sticks his head in my room and is like “What the heck? Can I get a copy of that?” and I’m like, “Oh these? Sure I guess”.
A week later, I get a call from Robert Beeson’s office at Essential Records (Robert was the head of Essential at the time and the guy that signed the band, but you already know that because this is a Jars site).
“Is this Jeff Savage?”
“yes”
“Robert Beeson would like for you to come in next week. He wants to talk to you about the the Jars stuff you did in your room”.
“…..ok?”
That was it, I was totally screwed. I knew it. I had done these bootlegged mixes and now the label knew about it. Oh man! Scott was gonna get fired. How in my 16 year old mind was I gonna deal with this!
So next week rolls around and my Dad and I go to the meeting with Robert. Who walks in, sits down and plays the cassettes.
“Jeff, the guys and I have been talking, and we want you to produce these remixes for real, in the studio.”
You can read the rest of Jeff’s story, including an update as to what he’s doing now, on the forums.
Without further ado, we present Flood (Savage Flavor Remix)!
Is there something you’d like to see featured on Wayback Wednesday? Let us know! Send an e-mail to jarsofclayfans {at} gmail [dotcom].