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On a cold January Saturday morning at his home in Oshkosh, Wis., Stephen McCabe was suddenly struck with the idea of reaching out to legendary Chicago musician/recording engineer Steve Albini about the possibility of recording his band’s (Redshift Headlights) fourth album at Albini’s Electrical Audio in Chicago.

He was happily surprised when within the same hour he had sent the email, he received a reply from Albini saying he’d be happy to work with the band.

Besides founding and fronting the influential bands Big Black and Shellac, Albini’s list of production credits include Nirvana, The Pixies, The Breeders, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Fugazi, PJ Harvey, Shadowy Men On a Shadowy Planet, Man or Astroman, Superchunk, The Fleshtones, The Stooges, Veruca Salt, Bush, Robbie Fulks, Silver Apples, Plant and Page, just to name drop a very few of the thousands of recording sessions that Albini engineered since the 1980s.

Albini shunned the title of producer and preferred to be called a studio engineer. He was there to record a band’s sound, not influence their sound.

All very fine company for Redshift Headlights. And it didn’t hurt that Albini’s analog recording philosophy matched up with the band’s plan to record the new album as if playing it live.

So with Albini in on the project, McCabe now had to break the news to the rest of the band – Dean Hoffman (vocals/bass), Jay Spanbauer (guitar), Justin Mitchell (keyboards) and newest member, drummer Chris Sasman, who joined the band a year ago this summer.

“It was awkward because we kind of had a plan to just make the record,” McCabe said. “Both Dean and I have our own studios. We’re totally equipped to make a record and we don’t have to pay anything. At a certain point, I was kind of feeling like, gosh, this is going to be a lot of work to engineer and mix and tinker, so I sent that message and then got the response.”

And their response?

“It wasn’t immediately met with, OK, let’s do it,” McCabe said. “Everybody was very rational and like, OK, this raises a lot of challenges. It’s going to be expensive, and there’s a lot of pressure.”

“I’m more of a practical kind of guy, so the first thing I thought about was the money,” Hoffman said. “We didn’t have a ton of money in our band fund at the time. And then, on the other hand, I was intrigued, because it’s Steve Albini, of course, and I love the recording process. I looked at it as sort of a learning, educational thing, and kind of rationalized, well, you know, I wouldn’t mind spending a little personal money on something like this.”

“I don’t want to say who it was, but one person wrote ‘That’s a terrible idea,’ I think for all the reasons that we’re thinking about here, like this is a new twist in our plan,” McCabe said. “Jay was like, let’s just record this one ourselves, and then we’ll do the next one with Albini.”

But the band ultimately decided to record at Albini’s studio and booked time for March 8-9. They brought with them, with Albini’s permission, PBS Wisconsin videographer Colin Crowley.

 “He shot our wedding photos, so I’ve known him for years,” McCabe said. “He also is a musician and a huge Albini fan. When he saw that we were going to record with Albini he messaged me saying he’d love to come capture the session. He got about five hours of footage.”

It is some of the last footage of Albini at work in his studio. Just two months after the recording session, Steve Albini died of a heart attack at age 61. He died just 10 days before To All Trains, the sixth Shellac studio album, was released.

So, suddenly, Redshift Headlights found themselves in an unusual position with a new record engineered by the late, great Steve Albini and five hours of professionally shot video in Albini’s Electrical Audio.

Enter music promoter Krista Vilinskis of the Bloomington, Minn.-based Elephants and Flowers Media (yes, the name is a Prince song from Graffiti Bridge).

Her husband, Eric Lodahl, is an Oshkosh native and longtime friend of both McCabe and Hoffman.

“Steve is one of my husband’s best friends and I’ve known those guys for years,” she said.

Ironically, she works with another musician, Stephen Jacques, who recorded with Albini the month before Redshift Headlights.

“Stephen Jacques told me a cool story about how Steve (Albini) will answer the phone himself all the time, no matter who the person is, and he’ll just answer the questions and give them his rates, and, you know, he’s just not a jerk. He’s a kind man who really loves what he does and didn’t have any ego, basically. So, when I heard that Steve McCabe was recording with him, I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I have to hear this album, because he’s so good at what he does.’ And you know Steve (McCabe), he’s an engineer himself. So I thought this would be awesome to have two nerdy studio guys, where Steve could actually relax and have a good time recording with his band, versus being stressed out and worried about every little thing.

“He was the perfect engineer for their band,” she continued. “Because I know how Steve (McCabe) is. He’s kind of a perfectionist, right? And clearly Steve Albini is too. You could tell the connection was there.”

The band’s plan was to release the title song from the album as the first single, with video that includes Albini.

“I got goosebumps the minute I heard that, and I said, ‘Dude, you got to let me pitch this. I want to pitch this for a video premiere’,” Vilinskis said. “It’s so amazing. Sure enough, just as I suspected, I had a couple publications fighting over the premiere. And so I ended up doing this thing where Glide magazine got the U.S. premiere, and Spill magazine got the Canadian premiere. So they got a double whammy out of it. And it’s just such a great, great song and video.”

See it here: youtube.com/watch?v=LNPZjURUwPs

“Krista’s awesome,” McCabe said. “She just knows the landscape of promotion. We’re kind of ham handed at all that stuff.”

In the past, Albini preferred that bands he recorded did not use his name, but McCabe said he had softened on that and they had asked his permission to include his name on the record.

“We’ve talked about it,” he said. “It’s awkward. It’s one thing to use his name when he’s around. We’re not trying to lead with that, but it’s kind of the reason some people have listened to the record or are writing about it, so it obviously comes up. And the other thing about us, we’re not trying to jump on a tour with anybody or anything. We don’t have big aspirations. We were trying to make a record. And we enjoyed it. It was fun. We wanted to have a good experience.”