Friday, July 8

Album 4: Day 3

And the hits keep coming! Another whirlwind of a day. I'm totally pooped but ima gonna write this here note anyway.

The shape of the day was dictated by Mark's gig at Zona Rosa with his funk band, Multiphonic. We were going to lose him in the afternoon, so we started at 9am. We smacked out basics for two songs (I Guess I'll Never Know and You Don't Exist) before taking a lovely lunch break at Cupini's, during which Mark and I shared a dainty little plate of artichoke salad with extreme masculinity.

I Guess I'll Never Know featured my most elaborate guitar tone ever, leveraging my telecaster Bass VI, two amps, an A-B switch, an outboard spring reverb unit, built-in tremolo and reverb in the other amp, the electro-harmonix POG, a Line 6 delay and my 1970s ROSS flanger. This combination sounds awful in concept but I promise it is quite luscious in execution. For serious!

I must also mention that Steve's drum sounds on this record are phenomenally good and widely varied. He's doing some really unorthodox things with mic placement and each track has its own truly distinct take on the same kit (albeit with snare drum swaps, rods vs. brushes vs. sticks, etc.), producing results that range from the immense to the intimate. I should also mention that in addition to his producerly gifts, Steve is available for birthday parties!

After lunch, Mike Miller (head honcho at West End) regaled us with stories of The Road To OzFest, circa early oughts. Then we put the smack down on another tune, called Welcome Home, which our over-achieving rhythm section flat out aced on the first go. I did a bit of guitar clean-up and we called it good, and Camry helped out by manually operating my vibrato pedal!

Around 4, Mark took off for his gig and we released Daniel to visit Cindy in lieu of their traditional Saturday-morning breakfast (thanks for being flexible, Cindy!) while Steve, Mike and I transferred the first eight songs from tape to Pro Tools. Then Camry, Steve and I walked to Westport for the food truck festival! I had a lovely vegetarian meatball sub and a bean and portabello burrito. Steve enjoyed his second go at Boulevard beer.

Finally, we walked back to West End and Steve and Camry worked on keyboard overdubs while I ran home to put Toby to bed and spend an hour with Steph. I checked in at the studio again around 10 (over 12 hours since we started), locked the place up and we called it a night!

So yeah! Basics done for 8 songs in three days, with both serious tone sculpting and live, band-playing-as-a-band mojo. We're back at it in the morn, bright and early! :)

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