Recording Report

good morning all. Why are all our shows great and fun? I always start these by saying how much fun the shows were but of course when you've got John Early busting in you know we're gonna be off the rails and into true all timer territory.  Margo and Jeremy fit right in and now I have more musical friends! I was probably a little punch drunk from working late hours in the studio - on top of that, my wife has been out of town - my mom's staying with us to help out but i'm still doing a lot of kids stuff in the morning, so it's been one of those weeks, just packed with stuff. 

It's going very well though - I came in with 12 songs to record, and we ended up tracking the basic tracks for all of them in 3 days. One song was not finished and I wasn't thinking of trying it, because i hadn't finished writing it, but as we were setting up I was noodling on it and Ian, our engineer was like "what's THAT?" "oh it's just this piece of a song I don't have finished yet." He was so enthusiastic about what I had so far, that I went off and finished it and now it's one of my favorites of the batch! 

Day 4, yesterday, was the beginning of overdubs. It's a fun, but often slow and deliberate process of taking the basic track, and adding good lead vocals, backing vocals (the VGB is a very good BGV ensemble too! ) as well as more guitars, keyboard parts, percussion... all the little fun toys and treats that excite your ear. 

Rado came by see what we were up to and he was really digging our work so far. I had one song that badly needed a really pretty piano performance - I knew it was the job for him. He has such great taste and we both share a deep love of Bruce Springsteen - this song, has a Jungleland/Racing In the Streets vibe to it. He sat at the piano and we played back the track with a chord sheet in front of him and he locked into it right away!  I had a friend come to shoot some behind the scenes and he caught our "Get Back" moment of Rado immediately picking up the song and magically bringing it to life right in front of my eyes. 

The studio is small, but working well for us. There's a lovely big back patio where we can all take breaks and enjoy the fresh air.  It's been so nice to spend time with my Very Good Bandmates. Lots of laughs, and good clean work getting done. 

This record's gonna be weird as hell! There are some consistent themes running through but the songs have a real sonic variety to them. I hope they all make sense together!  

OK, back to work! Peace and Love to you all! - T