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