We Came, We Rocked, We kicked Ass!!!

Saturdays show at the French Quarter Cafe was great!

It was cool playing nothing but the new record during the initial portion of the set and I felt as if we were a more "seasoned" or "veteran" band when we saved what are now considered "old" songs til last! The set flowed! Real well. I don't think we had any down time.

It felt good to play out again after a few months. We are trying to do another show before Xmas and then it will be show-less until January 15th @ The Rutledge. Atleast there is nothing as of now but that can all change!

The album is almost dome. A few things here and there. Tha D felt that the triple practice and the show last week was enough to get his brain rolling and what to do with some of his remainder guitar work. I've got to finish Gold Rush and then do Let's Go To War and CIA. Hopefully this thing will finished by the end of next week. In the meantime, we are still being productive. The mixing stage is happening as we speak. So far we have been given 4 songs and they sound great!! The album just keeps getting better and better!!

Also, we are trying to put together a bonus disc or EP for the album. I think we may just hand it out for free or put it as a digital only download. We'll see. But for now, I'm polishing some demos of songs that never made it, and listening to some live tracks for inclusion. A little audio clean-up and some extra time, we should have an interesting bonus EP. I'm leaning towards a free giveaway. But we need money. Badly!

More news to come! To stay tuned!

Hallowed Practice

There's always something about coming back together for practice after not playing together. There was something even more about practicing again after focusing so hard on the new songs and going back last night to bash through some Whimsical tunes and the rocking history songs. It was absolutely cathartic to get together to play last night. There's so much of a release in rocking out to those tunes. We're all excited about returning to the stage on Saturday, and we're glad that this week will yield 3 practices to help prepare us. We certainly need it, and we'll be in fine form if we have two more anywhere near what we did last night.

Saturday will be the first time we play a complete set of only history songs, relegating the older songs to the encore. We're even talking about not playing covers, which is certainly a departure from what we've always done up to now.

Daniel Reekay made a visit to give us a CD with four completed mixes. We once again piled into Daniel's car and listened to "Eli Whitney" and "Dear Abbey" before rocking out to "Commodity" and "Know It All." We are so excited. We're about to lose control, and we think we like it.

We rounded out the night with a few more tunes that needed more rust knocked off of them. There's something other-worldly about playing "Gold Rush." It doesn't sound like it's even our song. It feels like a cover. If we can bring it on Saturday like we did on the second run through, we'll certainly have an instant hit.

I was glad my brother was there to make videos of us hanging out and practicing for the documentary I've been preparing. I've got 3 hours and 45 minutes of footage without that, and I have a feeling I'll shoot some more in the coming weeks.

Practice is good. It was so good last night that even Daniel went home and advertised it on Facebook. It's good to know that we'll be practicing sets again after so long of focusing on new material. I think we needed that kind of low stress setting for a while after working so hard on this new stuff. When was last time we had it so nice? Leading up to the Whimsical release? I'll have plenty of other things to blog about for us other than practice in the near future, but it sure is nice to be through the thick of things in making the record to where we can enjoy the fruits of our earlier labors much more. Back to the stage!

Recording Vocals #2

On saturday I went back to the studio to work on more vocals. The plan, as always, was to finish all of them in one sitting. But as usual, this did not happen but in a good way.

I'm glad the vocals are coming together slowly because this is one aspect of the album that has not been put into any perspective. Even with me, I have not put a whole lot of thought into the performance of some of these things, mostly because for the first time ever I have the opportunity to do WHATEVER when it comes to singing. Daniel Rice has pretty much told that whatever I want to do, we can find a way to do it. How cool is that? The feeling of endless possibilities is nice, and time consuming.

Saturday I did all the lead and back-up for Groomed To Lead. The lead vocals were done rather quickly. I did three full takes, and then 2 full takes singing the song piece by piece. After some cut and paste, we moved into the back-ups. The "bops" didn't take long. We did one track with the root note and the other with a high octave. So the fused low and high sounds pretty smooth up against the lead vocal. We also did some nice three part harmony. This was a task that required some thought but once we figured out a way to have a guide while I sing, the takes we done fast and easy. The "ah's" inbetween the chours are smooth! I didn't know I could sing like that!

We then moved back to Gold Rush. The only real serious problem with doing the high three part harmonies on the chorus is the last note is too high for me to reach. But its ironic that without the backing trakc splaying, I can do it every time. The more relaxed and chilled I become, the easier I can do it, but the song itself is so intense, its hard to relax! Being that it was towards the end of an already 5 hour day, we decided to stop and call it a day. Next time, I think I can finish out Gold Rush with no problem. All this stuff is just practice as well. The performance is set in stone, I just need to get it down.

All is coming along very nicely. The mixing has begun and will continue throughout this week. Tha D is planning on using the two practices and the show this weekend as lubricant to go and finish all his guitar. I think after next week, everyhting under the sun will done. Not bad I should say. Not bad at all.

Recording Vocals

Kelly and I met with Daniel Reekay at the studio for the seventh day of recording, only to put in about 3 hours.

I began by discussing mixing with Daniel and mention some specific places in certain songs where I had questions about what I was hearing in the rough and about specific parts. We went through the editing a bit before Kelly arrived.

We began by working on "Election: 1800." Kelly did several takes on them and finally got what he was happy with. We talked some about the guitar we've wanted added to it, but ultimately we declared the song finished with the stipulation that if Tha D gets in the studio and records something before it's time to mix it, he can add something else.

We then did several takes of "Gold Rush," which just seems to have fallen on the back burner since it hasn't been touched since its initial tracking date. Kelly got the verses the way he wanted, and we then focused on the chorus. We want it to sound like its inspiration, an un-named Poison song, but I quickly felt like we fell short. What we have sounds pretty dense with so much falsetto over Kelly's lead, but it was still shy of what we wanted. Kelly had to split as three hours had gone by so fast, and Daniel and I played around with the song after he left to see about creating the sound we want. Daniel showed me how his vocal tuning software worked, which I found very interesting.

Our deadline of November 1st is three days away, and it's safe to say we won't make it. The vocals are going more slowly than we'd hoped, which is good since we're happy with them but bad in terms of cost, the factor that is now working its way to the forefront as our biggest challenge. I think Daniel's guitar sessions will also take some more time than we originally planned, and so we could have worked up quite a bill even before we add in the mixing.

The bad thing about all this is that now the Jan 1st deadline to have the CDs in hand won't happen. This makes it harder to think about release shows and other ideas until all those details are more worked out and closer in sight.

The best we can do for now is get in there and do what we can while we pay for what we can and work to complete the album as quickly as possible. Nine tracks are completed. Four more to go.

44:13

The 25th has come and gone, and the busy schedules we're all living leave us little time to think about blogging. We did indeed go to the studio on Sunday. We tracked "Groomed to Lead" and "Central Incompetence Agency," both of which took much more time than we had hoped. There's always a difficulty adapting to the new locale of the studio with headphones and buffers and more distance between us, and that combined with the lack of practice really made it tough. The end results still sound great, but it was a rocky road getting there. Spirits were low by midday when we had only done one song and were questioning whether we were happy with it. Things picked up in the evening, and we finished the second song and began working on other tunes. We put finishing touches on four songs quickly enough, leaving the engineers a total of eight completed songs to begin mixing.

The remaining five songs need both vocals and some further instruments. No word from the D yet on when he'll go out there. I was hoping I could join him for a session, but I won't be there if he decides to go this weekend. Kelly and I return tomorrow to do some vocals and hopefully round things out with some other instruments.

There was much discussion earlier about running time, but the concern faded once we hit thirteen songs. The current running time is 44:13, but with about 6-20 seconds to shave off of most songs for the roughs I have, it will probably be right at 43 minutes in the end. Bullseye.

The 25th Needs to Get Here Quick!

The 25th is going to get here soon enough!!

Aside from my nightmares, I have good feelings about this upcoming session. I also hope its the most productive with the mad dash to finish all the necessary tracks. With the way things are, the record won't be out until after Xmas but that doesn't mena we can spend more time. There things to to that take time and unfortunately too much time. So there are no problems in the art department and we have narrowed which company to get it pressed at to just two or three. I have a phone meeting with another company later today but so far its looking like we may go with the company that sponsors us on Itunes. Thats if we can get the this done in time to cash in on the super-mega-money-saving deal they have right now.

Practice is going good. We are playing at a less-loud volume which is making the 2-3 hours alot easier and less headachy. With the show coming up, the last two practices have been intense in terms of playing. We seem to be doing these at "show intensity" which is good because I like the excitement of being back on the stage and taking the music to the masses.

No tracklisting yet but you can expect these to be on the album: Eli Whitney, Bring Out Yr Dead, Whiskey Rebellion, The Great Stink, Bob Dole, Dear Abbey, Election:1800, Commodity, Groom To Lead, CIA, Gold Rush, Know It All, and Let's Go To War.

Thats 13 songs! There may be a 14th that acts like an intro. Josh had some more idears on that one on the drive home, so we may put a few of those into practice.

Tha D will be out for a week but when he returns, it's on!!!

Oh...and I got a new guitar! Come to the show on November 7th to see it!!!

Lawsuit Dream

I had a dream last night we got sued over "Eli Whitney." The details are vague but we were freaking out. Glad it was a dream. But a faux lawsuit might get us some press.