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High School - The Sonora Demos

Added 2023-07-01 14:53:52 +0000 UTC

good morning "y'all"

I'm a broken record, but wow what a fun show! It was great to have vera in and catch up - another natural fit who would be at home on the mic anytime she can fit us in, and then we discovered the weird charm and loveliness of Bar Italia! A fun one for us (although last week made great shows, I was a little on edge for Maron - it was really great but I wasn't as relaxed as I was this week I guess)

Anyway, in celebration of one year of "High School" in the world, I thought I'd put together a little bootleg demo record...

I had written a bunch of songs in the fall of 2020 and started sending them to Jonathan Rado - at the end of the year around the holidays, I went into his studio (Sonora Studio) in Atwater and we cut a bunch of demos. We talked about "a sound" and both felt this the Tom Petty "Full Moon Fever" / Bruce Springsteen "Tunnel of Love" vibe was right - sort of a 90s adult rock mid-life crisis sound - relying on a mix of Linn Drum Machine and acoustic instruments. Keep it simple... Rado had a Linn Drum Machine and right away I fell in love with the way it sounded with a piano and acoustic guitar.

We had the demos but Rado got busy and we couldn't keep working on it, so I reached out to Drew Erickson who suggested we take the songs into Mac DeMarco's studio and we cut the record there, with the 3 of us using those demos as a guide to the sound... a few of these were recorded in my garage and you can probably tell the ones that don't have the tape crunch on them.

I hope you enjoy!

P&L, T

PS, sneak peek for next week: Doug and Vic are out of town for the July holiday but I'm here and I've got Fart Simpson holding down the drops fort AND... John Early and Blake Mills will be In Studio! Whhhhhhaaaa? Gonna be a lovely one.