Singled Out: The City Champs

About two or three weeks before we were scheduled to go into the studio to record our second album, the three of us had already put together most of the tunes. The songs we had prepared were mainly written by Joe Restivo. George Sluppick and I helped some with the melodies and tweaking, but Joe is the main writer in the band. I knew I needed to contribute something to this new record, and was putting a little pressure on myself to write something before we went into the studio. Honestly, I'm not sure exactly how I got the idea for The Set-Up. The band had moved away from the Boogaloo influence of the first album (The Safecracker) to more of a Booker T. and the MGs influence with the material we had so far. So, I tried keeping this tune in that vein. One morning after my wife went to work and our three girls were at school, I sat down at the organ in my living room and came up with the melody for the A section of The Set-Up. I felt like it had a Hang 'em High feel, especially with the call and response between the organ and guitar. After a couple of days of messing with it on my own we got together for a rehearsal and I let the guys hear it to get their opinion. Joe suggested a nice chord substitution for the A section, and George immediately came up with the right groove and we were off. I had the basic idea for the B section ready to go but it still needed some tweaking. Joe and George helped pull it all together.

Once we had it rehearsed and felt comfortable we started playing it live. One of the hardest things about writing original instrumentals is coming up with names for the songs. The Set-Up was originally called Overlander, named after a particular model of vintage Airstream travel trailers. Just before I had written the song I had purchased an old Airstream trailer. I thought it would be cool to name an instrumental tune after some Airstream reference. We called it Overlander for several weeks, and some City Champs fans may even find bootleg recordings of it from our tour in February 2010 with the North Mississippi Allstars. When it came time to choose cuts for the album, Scott Bomar, our label owner and producer, wasn't crazy about the name. It just didn't sound like the song. So I came up with a list of alternate names. The Set-Up seemed the most obvious of the bunch, and it ended up being the title of the album. It makes for a much better album title than Overlander.

In addition to the influence differences on the second album, we also decided to add some horns and percussion that weren't present on the first record. The Safecracker is a true organ trio with just the three of us taping live. We recorded the second album as a trio, live and straight to analog tape, but also brought in some friends to add a little depth to some of the tracks. We felt like The Set-Up single didn't really need horns or congas. But this song did greatly benefit from the masterful tambourine playing of legendary Jack Ashford of Motown fame. Little known to a lot of people in Memphis, musicians included, Jack lives in nearby north Mississippi. He still tours with the Funk Brothers and makes an annual trip to Europe, but he rarely gets called to do studio work in Memphis. Scott had known that Jack lived here and had been waiting for the right time to call him in and work with him. He came in to add tambourine to a few tracks on the album, and The Set-Up ended up being one of those tracks. The tambourine on The Set-Up is absent in the first two minutes of the song, but when it comes in it just brings the song to a new level. Something that seems so simple added so much. Plus, it was just a pleasure to work with Jack. It was one of those special musician moments, not just the recording together, but listening to his stories from the Motown days. It also completely changed the way I listen to those old Motown tracks. The tambourine is the first thing I hear now when those songs come on the radio.

Now that you know the story behind the song learn more about the album - right here!

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