The Frozen Land of Nador

While I wouldn't call today super productive, it was fun, pretty productive in my personal affairs and mildly productive from a musical stand point.  My expectation today was to not record anything at all and possibly tinker with drums.

On the non musical front, I was shocked from slumber this morning by my mom in my house interrogating me about if I'd paid my taxes.  It was odd because I had just been having a dream that involved her berating me about something else.  I don't recall exactly what I told her but since I thought I was dreaming, I think I was pretty curt.  She left and slammed the door.

I got up and did some laundry while making some breakfast (bacon, eggs, coffee) and since Trip always texts me random weird videos, I thought I'd return the favor.  Now I'll share with you.

As I was eating a I got a text from my uncle asking about my plans for the day.  I told him and promptly received the message "Are you naked?"  I was curious for a few seconds then assumed he was in the driveway so I went outside to investigate... And then he told me "So my voice recognition software didn't pick up the last word of my text so I was editing it.  After you said you weren't naked, I said Drew and I are here..."  Think about it.  Nice.

They came and hung out for a bit, pillaged the last of my coffee and bacon and Jesse showed up as I was giving them a sneak preview of the country album.  Micha told us we could use his song about fat chicks wearing sleeveless shirts for the next country album and we bid he and Drew farewell.  Down to business.

Drum track programmed, acoustic guitar recording

We finished up a drum track for Two Friends of Mine (which is really just a working title since we aren't sure if we're going to change the lyrics or semi-official name yet) and much to my surprise Jesse said he wanted to get the acoustics for that song done before our gig tonight.  So we started recording when I heard a ruckus in my kitchen.

Apparently my mom wasn't too peeved at me when she left this morning because she showed up and installed the waterline for my refrigerator so now I have an ice machine again.  Yay! 

Jesse laying down acoustic guitar for Two Friends of Mine

Managed to get both acoustics, bass and a guide vocal for TFoM before Jesse decided it was time for a hot chocolate break.  I whipped up two majestic cups of chocolatey goodness served in tall penguin mugs.  While we sipped that we discussed our next move and since I didn't feel like my backing vocals were that important for TFoM I convinced Jesse to lay down an acoustic track for Two Bowls of Porridge so I'd have something to go by for laying down fretless.

About an hour later I managed to write a mandolin part and record it and a fretless part.  The fretless may get swapped over to a 5 string bass upon another listen though.  It didn't fart out and swell the way I thought it would when I recorded it so for the sake of intonation I made redo that.  

At this point, it's 5:15.  We are done recording for the day and we go to Casey's house to play the gig in 15 minutes.  Unless I decide to re-record the bass part for Two Bowls of Porridge or we decide to actually record Riding in a Boxcar, I am done with all the instrumentation that I have to do for this album.  The elation is tremendous.  

Hopefully Kory will be available for drums on Wednesday.  Hopefully tomorrow we can finish up all of Two Bowls and Two Friends.  Hopefully we can do that early enough to record some vocals.  There are so many hopefully's.  Let's just hope that some of the hopefuls happen because the sooner it all comes together the sooner we can get it out to you guys.

And if it happens soon enough we might not be forced to eat Sir Robyn's minstrels.   

Happy harvests in 2013 from the Cowboys of Porridge

(Unfortunately only three of us were present at the photo shoot so this is the closest I have to all three of us in one picture.  Jesse's finger is in the bottom right hand corner)

Photo courtesy of Michael J. Oxbigg and Francis Gaylord Balsworth

Paging Willie Mays

This is where the magic has been happening.  Or at least where we've been recording.  There are apparently 11 stringed instruments in this picture.  I know this because around 3:00pm today Jesse was sitting on the bed while I was mixing something and he said "There are 11 stringed instruments in this room right now.  We should take a picture of that."  Little did he know I had already snapped one at 9:00am this morning.  Should have grabbed the other three instruments in the house.

2 Acoustics, 1 Mandolin, 1 Strumstick, 1 Fretless Bass, 3 Electric Basses, 3 Electric Guitars

I didn't feel like today was very productive but when Jesse commented that he was happy with today's progress I realized I may just be ready to be done with this.  We fixed a guitar part Jesse wasn't happy with on Mowin' the Shoulder, tweaked Ropin' the Wind, fixed the drum loop for Two Bowls of Porridge and recorded all of Tears on the Pavement as well as changed the ending to a Freebird style jam that is going to fade out.  I told Jesse to play until he screws up and we'll just make the song fade out right before that.

We were going to work on Riding in a Boxcar today but I'm thinking of saving it for the intro to the next Cowboys of Porridge album.  I'm not sure.  It's a silly 1 minute long ditty that I wrote for a solo show I did back in 2006.  The lyrics were originally about my friend Rybear and his band and have subsequently been changed several times.  If we save it for the next album we still have 10 songs for this one and already have an intro for that one... plus I can add train sound effects to it if we wait!

Jesse playing Riding in a Boxcar while I take a hot cocoa break

The crux to that is it's the last confidence booster we have to record.  Not that the last two are hard otherwise being Two Bowls of Porridge and Two Friends of Mine (yeah, I know).  Two Bowls will be played on fretless theorhetically which is going to be difficult since it's one of the more noodley bass parts.  Two Friends I still have to program a drum loop for.  Most likely taking tomorrow off.  We are playing an acoustic gig at our "managers" house for New Years.  He's asked us every year to do it but since I've been working anywhere between 10 and 18 hour shifts for New Years the last few years we haven't been able to.  

But we shall see.  Maybe I'll lay down all my Porridge tracks tomorrow before we play the show and Jesse can record his at his leisure.  My main goal for the New Year is to have a nonsexual encounter with Kory Fontenot in my garage and get (drums) laid!

The hour approaches and the oats will be ready for harvesting!

Photo courtesy of Richard Jakman and Francis Gaylord Balsworth

He Slimed Me

Last night we had a stress reliever gathering.  There was fire, gin, jager and eventually a visit to KD's, which while I'm sober I despise.  I was fairly belligerent last night.  I do remember cooking bacon at 1:00 in the morning right before we went to KD's though.

The fellas sitting around the fire

While yesterday felt pretty productive that feeling diminished today.  I woke up around 8:00, showered, programmed the drum loops for Two Bowls of Porridge, recorded the bass line and a scratch vocal for Ropin' the Wind and then waited for Jesse.  His text of "I'm going to lay in bed for an hour then I'll be over" at 9:30 was unintentionally deceptive.  Since he was laying down I decided to as well.  Watched some Psych and a terrible movie called Girls Gone Dead (though it's not as bad as the 1 star rating netflix gave it led me to believe it would be) and fell asleep.  Not necessarily in that order.

Jesse rolled on by around 2:30.  He apparently fell asleep too.  Then he wanted to listen to the Mowin' the Shoulder tracks.  I thought it was going to be a standard listen: "Yes, what we did yesterday was great, lets move on."  I was wrong.

There's a diminished chord during the chorus to Mowin' the Shoulder.  I'm not a great fretless player.  These two facts didn't sit well with Jesse so we punched in all bass parts for all the choruses.  It's two notes so it doesn't seem like it would be that big of a deal, however, because Jesse's guitar parts were also sub par, no matter what I played it sounded like crap.  We didn't discover the acoustic guitars were the culprits until we'd been at it about 2.5 hours.

Then we worked on electric tracks, which Jesse still isn't happy with.  So much for the agenda I made yesterday.

Theoretical recording schedule for C.o.P.

We did work on Ropin' the Wind though.  Unless Jesse shows up tomorrow morning and can't stand the guitar parts or I write some mandolin parts for it, it's done.  It is the first song we've finished up that I've found myself disappointed on though.  Something about it just isn't doing it for me at this point.  Maybe it's the computer drums.  When we play it live I love it.  It's super fun and up beat but the recorded version just doesn't have anything to make it "special" yet.  I'm thinking a harmonica solo.

Tomorrow we move onto Riding in a Boxcar and Tears on the Pavement.  Tears should come together pretty fast and I intend to record most of the guitars for Riding in a Boxcar before Jesse gets here tomorrow so that everything is all ready.  He can just lay down solo's and do whatever it is that he wants to do.  

Yesterdays blog mentioned the back story for Ropin' the Wind.  I'm already feeling long winded in this post so... You'll have to wait for another day when I don't have anything to say!

Here's what we've got so far for the album

Intro
Mowin' the Shoulder
Flying J
Dead Man's Curve
Holy Man
Billy the Kid
Ropin' the Wind

With these left to do

Two Bowls of Porridge  <-- Monday - Fretless Bass, Mandolin
Tears on the Pavement <-- Sunday - Fretted Bass
Two Friends o' Mine <-- Monday - Fretted Bass
Riding in a Boxcar <-- Sunday - Fretted Bass, Mandolin

Hope you're as excited as we are and I leave you with this wonderful image

Photo courtesy of Michael J. Oxbigg

Animal Enema's

Another short but productive day.

Lacking anything relevant to put here today here's a gratuitous picture of Stud

Jesse showed up around 11:00 after I ran some errands, like getting milk, oj, eggs and the money I owed the contractor for the floor in my kitchen.  He said he needed to eat lunch before his headache got worse so we could probably finish up Flying J and do 1 acoustic track for Mowin' the Shoulder before that.

He managed to get his electric parts for Flying J redone in one take then I had him do some fancy leads, which took significantly longer.  That's largely due to the fact that when I say "play a squibbley deet doo right there!" Jesse usually thinks I'm being a crazy person.  Maybe I am.  The runs turned out great though.

Then he laid down a scratch vocal.  It shouldn't bother me.  I told him to sing it however he wanted and I muted my guide vocal so he didn't have anything to go on... And he sings it different.  It bothers me a little, it shouldn't.  I'll get used to it and it'll be fine.

After Flying J, Jesse was so elated that he apparently forgot about lunch.  He laid down all his guitar parts for Mowin' the Shoulder pretty quick and then we hit Casa Manana for lunch where we discussed what song to move onto next.  Ropin' the Wind.

Ropin' has a back story that will most likely be discussed in tomorrow's blog.  For now, it's the only song I've gone out of my way to try and find a guest musician for.

Laying down fretless on Mowin' the Shoulder

After lunch we came back to the house and I laid down my fretless part on Mowin' the Shoulder.  I'm not going to say it went down in one take but it went pretty smooth.  Luckily Jesse had already laid down a scratch vocal for this months ago when he sent me the demo so it's done until it gets real drums and fiddle.

It's 4:30 now and we've been done recording for an hour.  A short day, but productive.  Another song in the bag, a indefinite but definitely weird theoretical structure to another song resolved and a guest musician added to the agenda.  Today is short by the way because we are doing our third family Christmas in an hour.  

But until tomorrow, remember to vote yes for animal enemas on November 7th!  They need them because they don't get enough oats.

Photo courtesy of Richard Jakman

The Cold Autumn Breeze

So it finally happened today.  Jesse was ready before me.  Maybe that 7th bottle of wine we went through last night wasn't a great idea after all.

Strumstick and Mandolin

Today far more productive than previous ventures.  Jesse showed up around 10am (when I woke up this time) and brought breakfast which was awesome since I was feeling sub par.  Got started around 11 with the strumstick song which started out as quite the nightmare.  Apparently when I wrote and recorded the demo I decided to do arbitrary things like have the progression under the solo change three times and to make the last verse start over a bridge and go into the verse progression before the final chorus...  Then there's the strumstick solo... 

I wish I had a video of us working that out, but no one was around (the way we like it) to sneak one.  I imagine it was funny to watch; it was a blast to record.  After the strumstick song was knocked out we decided we deserved lunch and headed for Izzo's. 

Super sized Illegal Burrito on Cayene from Izzo's

It turns out a lunch break was a good decision because it gave me the opportunity to get in touch with the elusive Kory Fontenot.  I'd talked to Kory several times about doing the Cowboys of Porridge album with us and he was always interested but since I hadn't heard from him in a couple weeks I was starting to think he was just humoring me.  It's possible he's still humoring me, but he gave me his email address to send over some mp3's and said he had some free time next week to do some stuff so we'll see how that goes.

Bellies full, the next point of order was to decide what song to do next.  It was a unanimous vote for Flying J.  That is to say, we agreed without argument.  Maybe we should have.  It's 8:00 and we've wrapped up recording for the day and I'm pretty sure we're sick of looking at each other.  In my opinion Flying J is probably the easiest song on the album to play and it gave us no end of headaches... The bass line is super noodley and I got fed up with fighting the fretless and went to the 5 string.  Jesse insisted on several electric guitar parts that I'm still not convinced needed to be there, but it's far easier to let him record for 2 hours and mute it later than it is to convince him he doesn't need 5 guitar parts.  We'll see how those pan out tomorrow with fresh ears.  I'm sure it'll grow on me and he'll want to re-record them.  

I decided to scrap the mandolin part on Flying J.  It just didn't need to be there and would have gotten buried underneath all the guitars.

Tomorrow we lay down a scratch vocal for Flying J and then move on to Mowin' the Shoulder, one of the songs Jesse contributed to Cowboys of Porridge.  It's one of the better ones, thus far, but Jesse mentioned wanting to rearrange it.  I have a feeling tomorrow won't be as productive as today.

But until then eat your oats!

Photo courtesy of Francis Gaylord Balsworth

Runnin' On Empty

Take the good with the bad... In the last 8 years I never would have been able to take 2 weeks during the holidays off to try and record an album... But since I'm unemployed currently, I can do that.  It's also why the below picture represents the last of my coffee stash.

Dunkin' Donuts Whole Bean Medium Roast

Once again, my day started around 9:00am when Stud decided he had enough sleep.  Coffee was brewed and texts were sent.  While waiting on Jesse, I laid down a scratch vocal and some mandolin tracks which we ended up keeping for Holy Man; a song about my oldest friend Matt Guillory.  

Jesse showed up at the house around 11am and with minimal effort we managed to lay down 3 acoustic guitar tracks, 3 electric rhythm tracks and a guitar solo before we took lunch.

Jesse manning the computer while I lay down some bass tracks

There was already a scratch bass track from yesterday but apparently studio one has several different tuners and the one I used was centered on A430, not A440... So the scratch bass track needed to be redone.  It's amazing how much you struggle with something that should be easy.  

By the time bass, scratch vocals and harmonies were laid down it was about 6:00.  Jesse had about an hour left to put towards recording so I voted on the low hanging fruit.  The intro.  One acoustic track, one vocal track, done.  Jesse hadn't played it since we wrote it way back before we had a name for the country project.  I remembered how he used to play it and showed him and he took 20 minutes to modify it more to his current playing style.

Jesse attempting to re-learn what used to be the intro to Two Bowls of Porridge

 Despite changing it up a bit, Jesse got a keeper on the fourth take.  All in all, as of 3 days of recording we've got all the scratch vocals and all the instrument parts for 3 songs done.  Surprisingly, tomorrow Jesse wants to work on the strumstick song.  We'll see how that goes.  

Stay tuned for more and as Mike Oxbigg says, eat  your oats!

Photo courtesy of Michael J. Oxbigg

Merry Christmas

Christmas fare seems to be really similar to the Thanksgiving spread down in the south.

Christmas dinner in the south

As assumed yesterday, not much got done today.  Woke up, went and ate breakfast at the relatives.  Came home for about a couple hours, laid down a mandolin track that was supposed to be a scratch track and headed to Jesse's moms house for lunch.

Tremolo picking on Dead Man's Curve

After lunch Jesse and I went back to the "studio" to give everything we did yesterday a second listen.  Everything seemed agreeable and other than the ending to the chorus Jesse liked the mandolin parts.  Re-recorded those and worked on... Fretless bass solo.  When we originally decided to put a bass solo on this album there were two things different.  Someone else was supposed to be playing bass and more importantly it wasn't supposed to be fretless.  

Jesse was extremely patient and helpful and after way more takes than it took to get the rhythm bass track we got a solo we could live with.  And hopefully I'll never play a fretless bass solo again.

Everything is laid down for Dead Man's Curve that Jesse and I are playing except vocals, which will be last and probably done at T-dub Studios as Trip is referring to his home now.

Hope you guys all had a festive holiday season and ate plenty of oats!

photo courtesy of Richard Jakman

Dead Man's Curve

We may be comin' 'round to Dead Man's Curve... but not at the pace I'd hoped for.  

This is the pace at which are we recording

While I admit... my original hopefulness about how much Jesse and I could get done in a week was probably a tad optimistic, I still feel let down today.  Jesse voted to start on Dead Man's Curve as that's the song he said he was most familiar with.  As an aside, we play several of the other songs live... and we don't play that one... 

My day began at 9:15am.  I got up, sent out the text that coffee was being prepared and proceeded to get the room more conducive to vibe.  Lit incense, threw away trash, stocked fridge with soda and water... 

10:30: "Cool, I'll be over after I shower and eat." 

So I finished my pot of coffee and played some Dragon Warrior II while I waited for what I presumed would be about 45 minutes.

Around 11:30 I got bored of DWII and started cleaning up files on CoP tracks, restrung my acoustic guitar (even though it isn't being used to record) and mandolin and laid down a fretless guide track for the song we were doing.

~2:00 Jesse shows up.  No biggie.  It's his vacation.  I would have liked to get started earlier but it's day one.  We have plenty of time and the songs are easy.

DMC is about 4 minutes long.  2 hours later, we have 2 acoustic guitar tracks.  

Jesse doing the finger picking track for Dead Man's Curve

I laid down my fretless track in one take with 2 minor punch ins and then we moved onto getting an electric sound.  Luckily we spent significantly less time getting the electric guitar track down and had time to mess around and add a short solo.  Jesse was surprisingly amiable even after I told him "you're playing to many notes."

All in all, track sounds pretty good and all the basic parts are down.  Still needs a scratch vocal and mandolin before it is ready to be sent out to Mr. Fontenot for drums but tomorrow is Christmas and I don't think we'll be getting much done.  Mandolin may get done in the morning while the mistress is at work but Christmas is always family day at the Rauser abode and retrieving Jesse from the catacombs is not a likely prospect.  

              Tomorrow's update will likely be very short, but until then, eat your oats!

Photo courtesy of Michael J. Oxbigg and Richard Jakman

Heading for Tomorrow

Yes.  Title cliche.
Font.  Trebuchet.

Not only is it the best looking for the available default blog fonts, it's also a medieval weapon which makes it far superior to all other fonts.  Now to the point.

photo from original album cover shoot

So tomorrow we (Jesse and I) embark upon the exciting adventure of attempting to record "Cowboys of Porridge".  This isn't really being announced so if you've happened upon this blog on 12/23/12 consider yourself... in a small group of people with not much to do.  We're going to attempt to record a 12 song album (approximately 40 minutes) in two weeks.

For those of you reading this that are really into "In Liquid" you might be disappointed.  We are taking the Tom Petty route with this album which is "If a song is hard to play, it's not there yet".  That being said it's also going to be a departure in terms of tonal quality and mood.  Jesse is going to be limited to three guitar tracks per song, 1 electric, 2 acoustic.  I'm going to be playing mostly fretless bass with a little fretted 5 string on the "heavier" of the songs.  We'll also be adding fiddle and mandolin to the regiment as well as a little strumstick which is essentially a dulcimer.

Now the big question, why Cowboys of Porridge?  Well, the name came about at Jesse's house when I was moving something and... like so many things, I have no idea what he really said but what I heard was "Cowboys of Porridge".  He giggled and decided it was funny and since most of what I was writing at the time sounded like country music, I decided to use that as the moniker if we were did anything with it.

Why the music?  Because it's simple, it's fun and we like it.  Also, it was an excuse to get more musicians in without making In Liquid not a three-piece.  Oddly, CoP was originally a three piece.  The plan was for Jesse to do all the vocals and electric guitar, I was going to do acoustic and backing vocals and Don Slater (now a member of Battlecross) was going to do bass.  We had alter egos' and we did a silly photo session (pictures of which will be dispersed intermittently).  The bands album line up was shaping up as follows:

Jesse Rauser: Guitars, Lead Vocals, Backing Vocals
Dustin Duffy: Bass, Mandolin, Strumstick, Lead Vocals, Backing Vocals
Frederick Mason Lemiux: Violin, Keyboards, Backing Vocals
Cory Fontenot: Drums, Percussion, Backing Vocals

With special guest Tim Smith on Harmonica and General Badassery.

We'll see how all that pans out.

 Tune in tomorrow and remember to eat your oats!

photo courtesy of Michael J. Oxbigg and Francis Gaylord Balsworth