Extremely Grateful!

It typically resembles the original part but might be tweaked a little bit to represent the recorded parts better.

The additional songs I finished were “Fuel Fire” and Love Crashed Down. We did a bunch of parts for Love Crashed Down through a Fender Bassman for a warm and cleaner sound. Love how it’s working for that tune. Then to wrap the day for guitars, I laid down the solo for Miss Michigan and think it turned out great. It’s always difficult writing melodic solos (as opposed to more rock type solos) because you have to live with them forever… so they need to fit very well, are not distracting and be somewhat memorable. Then the other 3 guys have to like it. A tall order! When we busted the Classic 30 back out it wasn’t behaving. We decided to whoop it upside the head boy and it seemed to shape up.

After wrapping up guitar tracking we began working on a few miscellaneous things like arguing over 1 measure of dead space in a cut out. We ended up adding a ‘bass drop’ which is a very low note to feel and not really to hear unless you have a subwoofer. It will add a neat affect that is not distracting.

The piano tuner ladies came so we had to be quiet for awhile. It ended up kind of killing the end of the day so we’re going to stay a bit longer tonight to make up. Jake (engineer) took us out for dinner to a place called The Beach Bar. It was a nice and quaint place that has been around for 50 years or so, famous for clam chowder and tomato soup. They had Dogfish Head on tap which was the cherry on top.  They closed at 9 or we would have been all over Big Buck Hunter II

We’ve also been watching a LOT of Arrested Development. Though we’ve each seen every episode, it’s amazing how funny it is again, how much you forget. Just a brilliant brilliant show. So excited to somehow see the upcoming season.

Day 6 was productive. We decided to track 2 additional songs on drums, currently titled Love Crash Down and “Fuel Fire” (working title). Fuel Fire proved challenging for drums but Craig prevailed, as usual. After a quick couple runs of Love Crash Down, it was in the bag. Lunch followed by guitars set up. I brought my Classic 30, one of the only great amps from Peavey. Sorry Peavey, most of your gear is just not pro, but the Classic 30 is a great amp. First part of Hold On (The River / Can’t Outrun The Sun) I tracked the second half of the song with the Classic 30 and it sounded lovely. Or loverly as some Brits say it. At the end of the evening we started into Losing Touch and will finish it up first thing tomorrow morning.

Dinner was good, copycat PF Changs lettuce wraps and we nabbed some veg fried rice from the local Chinese joint to round it out, over a couple ‘sodes of Arrested Development.

Oh, and by the way Bridesmaids was pretty funny.

Three songs would be completed for guitar on studio day 5. They were Undefaio, Sun Goes Down and Feels Right. Here is my editorial on these three songs:

• Undefaio: could be an incredible song but it just doesn’t quite have everyone’s buy in yet. I’m not sure how to make that happen yet, but hopefully something sparks the love because I think it is a catchy song with a lot of potential. We seem to have trouble working out more ‘rock’ tunes than we do more emotional tunes. Sometimes it’s fun to just rock out though.
• Sun Goes Down: the current front runner for first album track. This song is flat out rocking. Verse groove I’ve loved from moment one. Translates well into a good set opener as well, just like we opened with it at our recent show in GR.
• Feels Right: The most difficult song to track for everyone thus far. It’s a great song but we’ve struggled with getting all the pieces to fit and “feel right.” We dialed back the tempo from the original of 90 down to 85.5 bpm and it’s feeling pretty right. Love the vibe of this song. You might notice a little Counting Crows / Tom Petty influence especially on this one, but as far as guitars go you may notice a Counting Crows influence woven throughout. Not sure why but I felt that those were the kinds of parts that would make the best record this time around.

After wrapping up guitar tracking for the day, we packed up and headed home for a few days to take care of the real life things like family, work and hunting. We made it back to Tecumseh last night (Friday) about midnight. Continued on the next post…

After awhile Craig and I had to take a break from the pounding listen back because the subwoofer was making our heads hurt. We played catch with the football in the road and ran some really pro routes. Problem was that the power lines running to Jake’s house kept getting in the way! After a refreshing time outdoors, we ventured back inside to listen while Josh finished up the day.

We went inside the house (house and studio are separate) and prepared some shepherd’s pie for dinner. Something was amiss because there weren’t nearly enough potatoes. We decided to make more and just watch another episode of Arrested Development. It ended up being yummy, albeit, there were too many potatoes.

The exciting thing about this recording project is that tonally, we’ve never sounded so good. That’s what you get when you have pros help you. The drums and bass – which are always the foundation – have never been stronger. That rocks.