Ten days inside Blackbird Studio with the amps cranked low and the coffee pot running hot — Elise Moreno documented every late-night vocal take, every torn-up lyric sheet, and every argument about the snare sound for album two.
The band booked Studio A for its live room: a converted church with sixteen-foot ceilings and a Neve console older than any of them. Producer Dale Whitmore wanted the whole outfit tracking together — no click, no headphones, just four guys in a circle watching each other’s hands the way they do on stage. Elise moved through the room like a ghost, shooting from the control-room glass, from behind the drum riser, from the floor looking up at the fretboard.
Tracking Days
The tracking photos carry the weight of repetition — the same four bars played twenty times until the groove locked. Travis swapping guitars between takes. Hank marking bowing patterns on masking tape stuck to the upright’s fingerboard. Drummer Billy Ray Scofield taping a towel over the snare at 2 a.m. because the neighbors called twice. Every small decision shows up in the final record, but here you can see them being made in real time.
After Hours
The best frames came after midnight. Cody alone in the vocal booth with the lights down, singing into a ribbon mic that cost more than his truck. Travis sitting cross-legged on the control-room couch rewriting a bridge lyric on the back of a pizza box. The hallway littered with empty cans and crumpled chord charts — the debris of a record being born the hard way.
I’ve photographed sessions in rooms ten times this size. But these four played like the walls were made of people, not plaster. That energy is hard to fake and impossible to miss through a lens.
Elise Moreno, photographer
Full gallery available in the album liner notes when the record drops this fall.