官网上新版的Biography,关于All That Echoes的介绍

Working at the famed Ocean Way Studios in Hollywood, he started with an
all-star core band: drummers Matt Chamberlain and Abe Laboriel Jr., the latter
having just come off the road anchoring Paul McCartney’s band; bassist Chris
Chaney came from Jane’s Addiction; in-demand guitarist Tim Pierce joined with
credits ranging from Madonna to Dave Matthews, and keyboard player Jamie Muhoberac has worked with the Rolling Stones, Fleetwood Mac, Seal, My Chemical Romance and many others. To this, the producer added the secret ingredient, a trio of the top orchestral session artists in L.A. in cellist Dane Little, violinist Charlie Bisharat and harp ace Gayle Levant.
And then, to provide as fertile an environment as possible, he gave them and
Groban a sense of complete freedom.
“We tried this experiment,” Cavallo says. “We got the best — the best
guitarists, keyboards, bass, drummers, and then got the best harpist, cellist
and violinist in L.A. and got them to play together so they would be sensitive
to each other. We tested it out, didn’t know if it would work. And it worked
great! Everyone had to listen to each other and react and play accordingly. Josh
was the leader. Everyone’s chemistry came together at that time. Really made for
passionate vocal takes. What you’re really getting now is a very pure type of
truth from Josh. Very pure.”
Arrangements were worked up collectively,The rhythm section came in ready to rock,” Groban says. “The orchestral guys came in controlled, and the nice balance was the that the rock guys brought out a real edge in the orchestral players and the orchestral players brought out a real sense of control and nuance to the way the rock guys would play. To see Abe Laboriel play with a harpist was great! And Gayle said that it hasn’t been since the Sinatra days that they were able to improvise with a rhythm section. So when they said to me, ‘Your mic is ready,’ it made it inspiring for me to sing on top of that, add my element, the three worlds blending together.”
Most of what’s on the album was from the first few takes of each song, with
the spontaneous spirit intact. Even the full orchestra parts, added later,
expanded directly from the music created by the three strings players in the
initial sessions.
And the vibe extended outside the studio.
“It’s a musical camaraderie, not just showing up for a gig,” Groban says.
“That all starts at the top with Rob. And it wasn’t just the playing, but the
joking around and the dinners — we all got to know each other so well. Sometimes
that magic that happens when you’re off the clock, so to speak, when you’ve
technically done your job but think you can do it better. Got that extra oomph
from everybody.”
It went literally outside the studio in the case of “Hollow Talk,” a song
that originated with the Danish indie band Choir of Young Believers.” It’s a
song of complex musical turns and intertwined emotions, building from an intimacy to a big, expansive sound with orchestra and bagpipe. Groban remarked in the studio that it brought out the vision of a lonely girl walking down the street — and engineer Allen Sides, inspired, took a microphone out onto Sunset Boulevard to record street noises.
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“We’re hearing the cars go by and going, ‘I don’t know why this would work,’
but it really does,” Groban says. “And it turned out awesome.”
Groban was inspired to push himself as a writer, expanding on the achievements on
Illuminations, the first album to be centered on his own compositions. “Brave”
saw him team with long-time collaborator Tawgs Salter and singer-songwriter
Chantal Kreviazuk.
“When Rob was saying, ‘Let’s widen the lane,’ you still don’t want to sound
out of your element,” Groban says. “‘Brave’ represents one of the higher energy songs, but never felt out of place to me. Never felt this was out of my world.
It represents the kind of energy I had on stage. I would want the lights going
crazy and the band rocking out and something that blows the hair back and moves
me. This to me represents every adjective Rob and I thought of in that meeting
in Chicago.”
The lyrics and melody for “Below the Line,” co-written with Salter and Simon
Wilcox, were formed on the day Groban participated in Life Below the Line, for
which people subsist on $1.50 for a day in order to understand the levels of
true poverty.
“It was not fun,” says the singer, whose own Find Your Light Foundation has
focused on much-needed arts education programs. “A can of beans was my food,
half in the morning and half at night. Somehow a song came out of it. It’s not
necessarily the full message of the song. The vibe is, ‘We’re not helping
ourselves until we’re helping others.’”
Another regular collaborator, Lester Mendez (who also produced two songs on
the album), teamed with Groban on “False Alarms” and, along with Salter and
Italian lyricist Marco Marinangeli, “E Ti Prometterò.” For a second Italian
song, “Sincera” he reunited with acclaimed producer-composer Walter Afansieff
(who produced the song) and Marinangeli.
Such personal bonds and connections abound throughout the album. Groban and
Irish singer-songwriter Glen Hansard, co-writer of “Falling Slowly” and
co-creator of both the movie and musical Once, have built a friendship — the
musical even includes a winking joke at Groban’s expense and the singer
introduced its segment at the Tony Awards show. Laura Pausini, Groban says, “was
the first global superstar I ever met,” an encounter that happened when he was
just 17 and attending the MIDEM conference in the south of France. A friendship
grew and both kept hoping there would be an opportunity to collaborate, which
finally came with “E Ti Prometterò.”
A few years back, Groban found himself sitting next to one of his heroes,
iconic writer Jimmy Webb, on what turned out to be a harrowingly storm-tossed
New York flight. Here, he steps up to tackle Webb’s “The Moon is a Harsh
Mistress,” a song of complicated emotions that has tantalized with past
interpretations by such stars as Judy Collins and Linda Ronstadt. And the
haunting traditional Irish song “She Moved Through the Fair” came to him while
“having my late-night glass of wine and trawling YouTube” via a live solo
version by English folk-rock legend Richard Thompson, another long-time Groban
favorite.
“Having grown up on Irish music, I thought, ‘Let’s give it a try,’” he says
of the song, which has also been recorded by artists including Van Morrison and
Sinead O’Connor. To give it the right tone, Levant switched to Celtic harp and
Groban brought in another old friend, Eric Rigler, virtuoso on the Irish
Uilleann pipes. “After writing sessions, trying to be clever, it’s nice to be
reminded by songs like this that just sit in a place that’s right.”
And to tie it all up, the album ends with the Stevie Wonder classic.
“Talking about the light and dark and trials and tribulations of love, no one writes about that better than Stevie Wonder,” he says. “It’s about how imperfect we can be, how many lessons we can learn. ‘Even though I messed up in the past and have done things wrong, the next time love comes my way, I’m not going to let go.”
Groban’s voice brings a truly personal stamp to the song, with the band and
full orchestra joined by a full gospel choir. And the end of the song again
captures the spirit that fueled the whole of the All That Echoes sessions, with
Groban drumming (!) and singing a “big, stupid finish, unabashedly saying,
‘There it is!’”
“To me,” he says, “after all the messages we put on the record, there was no
better way to start than ‘Brave’ and no better way to finish off than this.”