Matthew J Barnhart

Finally, after a relatively mild start, the miserably humid Texas summer I know and love is here. I was up by 7:00 this morning (thanks to the 3 month-old pup at the left here begging for breakfast), and took an hour-long bike ride. Even at this ungodly hour, I was drenched in sweat halfway through.

Work at the studio has been steady, a nice combination of recording/mixing sessions (with Deep Snapper and Tre Orsi), mastering work (Last of the Interceptors, a solo record from Aryn Dalton, formerly of the Paper Chase), and studio upkeep and upgrades (a new rack, lots of re-arranging and fixing up of stuff). Along with all of that, I’ve been occasionally filling in at the House of Blues in Dallas. Most of the shows there aren’t exactly up my alley, but the equipment is top-notch and the crews that come through are generally easy to work with and pleasant to be around.

Upcoming sessions include more work with Shiny Around The Edges, White Drugs, The Angelus, and Les Americains, as well as (finally!) finishing up the Tre Orsi LP. After all of this studio time, I’m looking forward to hitting the road for a while this Fall.

Oh yes, about the pup: her name is Lomax. She’s a Heeler/American bulldog mix, about 15 weeks old, and of course, is the cutest thing in the world. We’re very happy to have her around. (Well, Katey and I are happy — the cat is less than thrilled. C’est la vie.)

I’m currently home on a week-long break between legs of the AC Newman North American tours. The first, West coast, leg went exceptionally well. Everyone in the band is gracious and funny and supremely talented. I look forward to having a few less-than-9-hour drives on the East coast with them. I’m also looking forward to a devastating meal at Au Pied de Cochon in Montreal.

I had planned on recording a new Deep Snapper LP this weekend during the break, but Katey’s and my beloved dog, The Chicken, is battling late-stage lymphoma, and I decided to postpone the session in order to spend as much time with her as possible. (She’s the bundle of joy in the image next to this.) Katey has had this dog for, I dunno, 12 years, and she’s been my adopted buddy since 2003. She will be sorely missed when she finally passes on.

I just received a 9-pound box of LPs and CDs I had shipped from Aquarius Records in San Francisco that I’m going to sort through now. Some Randy Newman, Rusted Shut, Ashpool, new Lungfish side-projects, Nigerian psychedlia — I’m in for a busy night.

My year has been off to a slow start, thanks to a wicked case of the plague that’s been going around Denton for the past couple of weeks. Rather than writing songs for the new Tre Orsi album, practicing, and fixing stuff at the studio, I’ve been home, congested, watching Netflix movies and playing poker.

I have managed to accomplish a few things: I spent four long days tracking with Nervous Curtains. The amount of overdubs and edited planned meant that we went straight into Cubase rather than to tape. Typically, when a band has an ambitious list of overdubs and very little time in the studio, I get worried, but the band was on top of things at all times, and tore through their to-do list like an army. Hats off to them.

Mixing for that album will be done by Sean’s Paper Chase band-mate, John Congleton. I’m really excited to hear the final album, especially their transcendent cover of “Jesus and Tequila”.

I’ve also been doing a lot of prep work for the A.C. Newman tours — creating itineraries, scheduling flights, arranging instrument rentals, etc. Most people would find this tedious at best, but I actually enjoy this kind of work. It looks like the band will be great, including Jon Wurster (of Superchunk and the Mountain Goats) on drums. I’ve never met Jon, but his Scharpling and Wurster comedy records (on Stereolaffs) get a lot of play in the Tre Orsi tour-wagon.

Next weekend I’m doing an EP for The Distant Seconds, which I’m very excited about. I really enjoyed making their full-length, Spectral Evidence, which just got a great review in the blog, Austin Sound. (I don’t particularly hear the Silkworm influence, but I’m a little biased.) Until then, I’m going to sit on the couch and watch Space Balls over and over again.

I’m back from vacation, well-rested and looking forward to a very busy Fall.

Vermont was gorgeous, of course. NY was fine and dandy. Montreal was all too brief of a trip. Lots of good food, good people, and almost no work. (I did sneak in a few hours here and there, advancing the upcoming tour for The New Year.)

I only did a few sessions in August: a couple of days with You and Me from Dallas, and another two days with Tre Orsi. Bubba Kadane of The New Year was co-producing again, and it was a much more productive session than our last attempt, in April. We did 5 songs, and I’ll be finishing up tracking and mixing for them next week. Most likely these will make their way onto a limited tour-only EP for our upcoming dates.

This Wednesday is my last day as an employing at the University of North Texas, where I’ve been working for four years. I’m now finally out of debt and can devote all my time to the studio and touring. To say I’m excited about this is an understatement.

This week: recording new Dallas band, Les Americains (former members of DARYL), finishing up the Naptime Shake and Tre Orsi recordings. After that, The New Year’s Western US tour starts. (I’ll be blogging about the tour here, on Twitter, and over at Food About Music.)

(Please forgive the nerd talk and whining about first-world problems in the post herein.)

I’ve had my 8GB iPhone since October, and I love it dearly. It’s a great phone, and with the iPhone 2.0 update and the App Store, it’s even more useful/addictive than before. With it, I can travel (even in Europe and Canada) without a laptop, for the first time in years. The only real burr in my ass has been how to pick and choose what songs are synced to it from my ~35 GB of music in my iTunes library. Read the rest of this entry »

Currently in the studio, mixing The Great Tyrant’s new LP. This is an incredible band, such a wonderful mix of influences: Magma, Scott Walker, Neurosis, and much more obscure stuff I couldn’t even try to name. We did a few more overdubs yesterday and mixed the first song, “Adorable”. (Best line: “We are all accidents/you have an adorable accident”.)

The original tracks were recorded at the beginning of February with my usual calibration: 24-track, 15ips, CCIR equalization, +6/250 nWb/m, no noise reduction, using RMGI Emtec 900 tape. For overdubs and mixing, we transferred the tracks into Cubase at 24-bit, 96kHz. (Deron had to do a synth overdub on one song that is basically in free time, and needed to see the drum hits to play in time.) I’m using Cubase as a glorified tape machine, doing the actual mixing on the console rather than using plug-ins, and everything is going down to our Otari MTR-10 1/4″ machine with RMGI Emtec 911 tape, 15ips, CCIR, +3/250 nWbm. I’m really, really looking forward to hearing and seeing the final release of this.

Locally: Mark Burroughs soundly defeated the inept, borderline-malfeasant Perry McNeill, becoming our city’s new mayor. This is the first time in 20 years an incumbent mayor has lost an election. From everything I’ve seen of Burroughs, he will be a thoughtful leader with his attention on the community, something desperately needed for the 9th-fastest growing city in America.

And finally, Tre Orsi played the Denton Humane Society’s “Cats and Dogs” benefit at Rubber Gloves last night, which I neglected to mention or list anywhere. Ooops! It was our first show since April, and we had barely played together since, but it was lots of fun, and I was able to introduce my signature drink, the Red Hot, to a few new folks. (A Red Hot is a mix of Goldschlager and cranberry, on the rocks.)

Back to work.

My, I wish being so ill was more exciting. All I’ve done is whine and have my wife fetch shit from the store for me, despite the fact that she’s busy cleaning the entire house in preparation for our friends and house guests Chris, Kathy, and Joshua, who are coming into town for Rock Lotteries 9 and 10 this weekend.

Turns out we need to replace the evaporator coil in our AC unit. $1500 and some plumbing. Totally sweet, being a homeowner.

Whoopee, I have pneumonia!

We managed to print a mix for another song, “Body And Soul” and had started on “The Idea Of You” before I couldn’t take the aching and the loopiness anymore. It wouldn’t be a Kadane Brothers-related happening if someone didn’t fall violently ill, right?

The doc put me on antibiotics and ordered me to stay home and do jack-all, which I’m pretty good at anyway. Of course, Katey and I had just decided to cancel the cable, so I’ve been reading these things called “books” (The Unfolding of Language right now) and periodicals (my subscription to the Texas Observer just started up, lucky me). Yeah, and watching the bonus features disc of Knocked Up.

I figure while I’m laid up, I also might as well see if Richard Lloyd can teach me how to play guitar right.

A few things I’ve been up to:

• I start mixing a new New Year record tomorrow. As with The End Is Near, they tracked with Steve Albini at Electrical Audio, and we’ll do overdubs and mixing at the Lab.
• Had a couple of tremendous meals, first Saturday night at La Mexicana with the Tre Orsi, MagElecCo, Dave Bazan, and Casiotone crews, then Sunday morning at the Taco Lady with Tre Orsi, Bazan, Casiotone, and Rob G + Melanie. Camaraderie is a beautiful thing.
• I’ve (finally) started working with the Querencia Community Bike Shop
• Over the past few months, I’ve given serious thought to leaving UNT and going back full-time to audio work. If all goes as planned, I should be leaving just in time for the ensuing Shearwater and New Year tours in 2007. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel and I embrace its warm glow.

Flew back home from Baltimore last night, where we spent a long weekend attending our friends’ wedding and catching up with lots of people. Lots of food, lots of drink, a nice walk around Ft. McHenry, lots of of new babies running around, and no work whatsoever. I’m finally starting to get used to taking actual vacations, not working vacations. ’tis a good feeling.

We visited the Sound Garden record store on Sunday — man, I miss record stores (just not enough to start up my own) — and picked up some great things:

• Angels of Light We Are Him CD
• Goodbye, Babylon box set of early 20th-century gospel
  Incredible packaging! A cedar box holding 6 discs, a book, and small balls of cotton.
• Molam: Thai Country Groove From Isan Vol. 2
  Another amazing, essential Sublime Frequencies release. Even better than Vol. 1.
• Fucked Up Year Of The Pig 12″
• The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of comp

More to come…