Good gravy but were moving along well on this recording thing. Last Saturday we put in nearly 12 hours in the studio. We had expected to maybe get in just the basic tracks but instead we plowed through not only the songs for the Summer EP but also got the basic track down for the lead track for the fall EP. Then on Tuesday we got another 5 hours of work done to put us at nearly done and likely being able to mix the EP this upcoming Tuesday. Pretty impressive by Linus standards.
Running through the tracks here… let’s see… we got most of “The Road” done. It’s an upbeat poppy psychedelic number that left another band who heard us asking Steve if we were working on a Beatles cover. I’ll take that as a compliment. The tracks came together wonderfully and we even got Mlee to add this very nice keyboard part to it on Tuesday that added this sweet quality to the song. The only problem we had was my vocals. The melody line tends to bend notes up and down in some ways that are somewhat tricky for me. The problem came in doubling the vocals as my phrasing would never be exactly the same. Steve went into producer mode and really took me to task commenting that “If you’re gonna Edie Brickell that shit, you gotta hit it right or not at all.” Well, I never got it right that night so this weekend I’ve been having to do something I’ve never had to do and that is actually planning out with a lot more care about how to approach my vocals. Screaming a Stoner Rock or Punk song is easy; singing, on the other hand, is hard. Go figure. With a little help from Clinton and his home studio, we’ll hopefully have it down in time for Tuesday’s final session.
“USA” went pretty smoothly. It’s an straight-up punk song but the ending was a little tricky for us so we had to do quite a few takes to nail it but we finally got it. Kudos on Clinton’s Bob Stinson-like solo which still has me cracking-up. Charlie has to add to the backing vocals and wants to try to add some sax to it but it’s largely in the bag.
“La Jetée” also went pretty well. It’s a chill number that leaves a lot of space and relies a lot on how we approach the feel. It turned out pretty swell. Steve added his dirty John Wetton bass, Charlie added multiple e-bows, and Mlee was kind enough to add in some backing vocals. Steve or Charlie will be adding some electronics sounds next week but that one is pretty much done as well.
Things went so well that we even got in “C is for Cthulhu.” Well, maybe not the whole thing but the basic track of Clinton’s guitar, Larry’s drums, and even a scratch vocal track. The one challenge was to get it under 6 minutes for a 7″ and, as luck would have it, it tracked at 5:50 – just under the wire! Once we tie up the summer EP mastering in a couple of weeks, we’ll be able to start work on this and whatever we choose to add for the B side.
So there you go. A lot of hard work but very productive. Cross your fingers folks and hopefully we’ll have mix-downs done this Tuesday so that we can send off the masters to United Record Pressing before the end of May. If so, this EP should be out in July.
Cheers until next week and here is a slide show from the two sessions…
