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