After some extremely long, drawn-out sessions in late 2007/early 2008, I’ve actually managed to shoehorn in quite a few new records, some of which are just about ready to see the light of day:
I’ll be taking a break from recording in August — in particular, Katey and I are taking a much-needed vacation to Vermont, Montreal, and New York (to see the huge The Ex/Getatchew Merkuria/Alemayehu Eshete/Mahmoud Ahmed/Extra Golden show at Lincoln Center). I’ll have a couple of quick sessions in September, then I head out with The New Year and Tre Orsi for quite a bit of touring, though Thanksgiving. I’ll get back into studio work more fully in December.
A litany of stuff:
A couple of years ago, I recorded an album for Peter Schmidt & His Gentleman Scholars which never saw an official release. Quite a shame, as I personally think it’s Peter’s best work in an already-impressive 20 year music career. Recently, though, he posted a track from the album, “Who Will Forgive You?”, on MySpace.
As you probably know, Peter’s been at the helm of many important Dallas bands over the years (Three On A Hill, Funland, and Legendary Crystal Chandelier), as well as having a hand in Bedhead (filling in for Tench Coxe as “Substitute Schmidt”) and The New Year. I hope the rest of this impressive album finds its way out into the world eventually.
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.
I’ve made a half-hearted attempt at updating my audio resumé, for those interested. This isn’t everything (not by a long mile), but it’s at least a little more complete than before.
Shearwater’s Rook LP is out this week on Matador. Also, Deep Snapper’s Into The Ugly is available directly from them. I’m pretty happy with the way both of these records turned out.
I’m taking a much-needed, though brief, vacation out to Ray Roberts Lake tomorrow night. Myself, my band mates in Tre Orsi, and Dave Willingham are biking out Saturday afternoon and staying overnight. Man-camping is a fine substitute for touring these days.
Austin band, The Distant Seconds, came up for a 4-day session last week. We tracked 12 songs, finishing everything but a few lead vocals and an overdub or two. They’ll be back at the end of the month to finish tracking, then mixing.
This was my first full project done on ATR Magnetics 2″ tape. (I’d previously used their 1/2″ on Shearwater’s Rook album.) Suffice to say, I’m very happy with the performance: no shedding or sticky residue like the recent RMG stock, and it handles well in the transport. Despite the expense ($289/reel, about double what we paid for Quantegy or Emtec before the plant closures) I couldn’t be happier.
We still have a few reels of 2″ Emtec 900 in stock (replacements for Shearwater’s failed reels), and 8 reels of 1/4″ Emtec 911 that actually seem fine — the 2″ will be relegated to rental reels for bands without the budget for tape. Otherwise, all new sessions are getting ATR, and once the 1/4″ stock runs out, I’ll get cases of ATR 1/4″ too.
Finally this past weekend, we put the final touches on and mixed American Werewolf Academy’s new album. This has been a long time coming, and I’m not ever sure how many days we ended up spending in the studio on this. The band tracked all drums and some other stuff on 1/4″ 8-track in their shed, then we did tons and tons of overdubs in the studio. Howard is all over some of these songs, adding reverse, treated piano, lap steel, organ, and a full box of percussion. The guys are going to sit with the mixes this week, then we’ll print everything to 1/4″ next weekend and ship the reels off to Carl Saff or John Golden for mastering, most likely.
In between these two sessions, I started sorting through piles of broken equipment in our storage area. I repaired a bunch of cables and headphones, and starting boxing broken mics up to be sent off for repair. This week I’ll be going through discarded rack gear and finally getting that stuff up on eBay.
Will have more coming soon, including details on The New Year’s upcoming tour.
For a variety of reasons I’ll not go into here, I was planning on sitting SXSW 2008 out. I was kinda looking forward to staying at home for once and forgoing the insanity/inanity of the whole spectacle, but at the last minute a friend passed a gig on to me and so there ya go — tacos and sweat and beer and annoying haircuts for the weekend for me!
I’m heading down Friday morning in order to catch a bunch of shows here in Denton. We Shot JR has a good overview of what’s going on in DDFW, but these are my picks for the week:
(The Human Bell LP, I cannot recommend her highly enough. My fave of the year so far.)
Stuff I hope to catch while in Austin: Fucked Up/No Age under the bridge, My Dad Is Dead, and Chris Brokaw. Anything else is just gravy.
Recent work-related stuff: my 3rd sinus infection of the winter has postponed things, but I’m currently mixing an LP for Valencian band Individual, mastering another Esopus Magazine compilation, and continuing work on the new American Werewolf Academy and The New Year LP’s. Tre Orsi has started fine-tuning some older songs in preparation for an April session. Also mixing the tracks I recorded for Last Men (formerly Douche), plus mixing a Notes From Underground LP and recording a new Shiny Around The Edges LP.
Big disappointments of late: no more episodes of The Wire (though Simon tied it up nicely enough), not being able to do the upcoming Destroyer tour, sinus infections.
Did yet another overnighter in the studio last night, sneaking in around 10 PM after Dave’s session was over so that I could mix Deep Snapper‘s new LP. We started tracking last weekend, giving ourselves three days to record and mix 12 songs. As is often the case, we got behind schedule and had to find a gap, however brief and ill-timed, in the studio’s calendar to finish up. We started at 10 PM and the band was out the door, master tapes in hand, by 9:15 AM. Rather than drive through a dense fog (“throoough a dense fawg”, as Complete would say), I crashed in the studio apartment for a few hours.
Mastering for Shearwater‘s Rook LP was last Friday at Sterling Sound with Greg Calbi. Jonathan offered to fly me up, but I felt it best to stick around Texas and catch up on housework and hang out with the wife. Apparently it went well — the band and label are happy — and the masters required very little in the way of rescuing. I’m going to wait until the vinyl is in my hands before listening, though — after months peering at this record through a microscope, I need a break. I’ll try and write another follow-up post on this album by the time it hits the street.
Starting this weekend, I’m recording a new LP for The Great Tyrant, then afterward finishing up American Werewolf Academy‘s new one. Come March, Bubba and I will be finishing up the new New Year LP, and there’s lots of potential stuff, unconfirmed as of yet, on the horizon past that. It’s looking to be a good year for me, studio-wise.
Tre Orsi will have a busy spring: we’re playing shows in February with Nina Nastasia (Ft. Worth and Austin) and Joe Lally (Denton), then a 5-date run through the Midwest with Minus Story and the Coke Dares in April, followed by more recording. For those with an interest, we keep up with such things on the Tre Orsi web site.
Due to scheduling crunches and other constraints, I’ve started mixing Rook on my partner Dave’s Cubase system. Dave and I mix the songs, then send references to the band. They make notes, and I make modifications to the mixes and send more references. This goes back-and-forth until everyone is happy and confident in the final result. In January, Jonathan will come up and we’ll spend 5 days in The Echo Lab, running the mixes through our console and outboard gear and onto 1/2″ analog stereo tape.
This process is convoluted, but for a record as complex as Rook (so many harp overdubs!) and with so many logistical constraints (people in 3 different cities, a completely packed studio calendar) it makes sense. It gives the band members time to become comfortable with the mixes before signing off on them.
Typically, I prefer to record and mix records fully analog, tracking to 2″ and mixing to either 1/2″ or 1/4″ stereo tape. (Which format to mix to is usually a question of budget.) Since most records I make take between 3 and 5 days, and are basically documents of a band’s live sound, this is a really efficient way to work.
Rook is a different beast. Because the band is spread out across 3 cities, they only practice before tours. Of the 14 songs we initially tracked, they had played maybe 5 of them as a band before. Arrangement decisions were being made in the studio, rather than during practice. Lots of overdubs were added to fill out songs. It’s very much a studio creation, rather than a document of a living band. Because of this, mixing is more complex and requires a lot back-and-forth to find the right mix.