Same song on a different day

I've got this Lauren Turner tune stuck in my head.  It's a great tune.  But I hear it once every 3 or 4 months when I go to Trip's so I only know the chorus.  It's very irritating.  The song sounds like it should be the theme to the next Bond movie.

I digress.

Went to Trips house the other day and recorded my parts for Mowin' the Shoulder.  Trip ended up veto'ing the "Ooh" that Jesse and I slated for me.. which was not the Ooh that I originally sang.  He said the harmony didn't work so I went back and sang the Ooh that I originally wrote, which we had assigned to a girl.  Confusing yet?  Trip recorded an Ooh and I recorded an Ooh and then he recorded one of the staggered lines and I recorded the other...  Only thing left now is for a girl to do the even further staggered harmony and that songs backing vocals will be done.

Jesse and I have discussed releasing a single on bandcamp under the In Liquid page.  I think we have agreed that we'd rather Mowin' the Shoulder not be the first thing we release, but I suppose that opinion may change depending on how long it takes us to finish the other backing vocals.  It's been almost a year now since the instruments were recorded.

With that in mind, I had a girl record harmonies for WH Bonnie today.  We tried some stuff that I wasn't sure was gonna work and by itself I don't think it will so I'm going to have to man up and sing some high backing vocals to bridge the gap between her and Jesse to make the harmony work.  Another trip to Trips.  That man is going to be so tired of seeing me by the end of this year.

With luck that song can be done within the next two weeks (one week to record the harmonies and one week for Jesse to get a final mix on it) and we'll have something to show the world.  Like most things, don't hold your breath.

Also, we've arrived at a second guitar player for live gigs.  Josh Zerangue formerly of... to many bands to name, but most recently Noyola.  He'll be picking up the slack live playing all the random instruments, most likely.  Going to try working out a practice with him in the near future and if I can swing it, we'll be taking CoP on to the clubs during the week sans Jesse to try out the songs on the unsuspecting public.  Might be mounting up before the albums released.  That'd be nice.

That's about it for now.  Hope your winter crops are planted, summer harvest is about over!

It's a bittersweet symphony

Nothing like being woken up by a small child who runs into the room and says quiet loudly "I came to see if you guys were awake!"

Anyway... This is an iPhone update as I'm in transit to San Antonio to go to the original Schlitterbahn for the first time in... I'm not sure how many years but the last visit was well before I could drive.   I think it was on a church trip with my friends back in middle school.

Once Jesse showed up at the chateau the first order of business was to review what we had come up with yesterday. Scrapped the rough harmonies from yesterday and rerecorded them. Jesse came up with a few specific harmonies for the verses and we arranged who would be singing each part to make sure we could do it logistically with the vocals we were allotted. As Jesse pointed out, vocal tracks are a premium if we aren't going to be layering one person over themselves

The next order of business was ... Supposed to be WH Bonnie or Dead Mans Curve. However my computer doesn't have the final lead vocals for those so we moved onto Mowin the Shoulder. Jesse had no ideas for harmonies on that song other than that he wanted some ooh's on the bridge and some harmonies on the chorus.   I sang a couple between lines that Jesse liked and the chorus came together pretty quick with a low harmony, two high harmonies that double each other and an even higher staggered harmony that we are going to have to get a girl to sing. (taking volunteers).

Then came the oohs. We'll just say guitars are wonderful and oohs are surprisingly difficult.  Three part ooh harmonies with varied melody lines came together faster than would have happened without a guitar.

After arranging the Mowing the Shoulder parts into "people" we loaded up Riding in a Boxcar.  Trip had laid down some beach boys harmonies on that track the other day that at the time we weren't sure would work. After listening to the oohs on mowing it was kind of a no brained to use the idea and just have our additional singers to sing the additional parts instead of having trip do 5 tracks.

Kory was originally aged to do some leads on this song so we culled my leads and Jesse sang the parts I wanted Kory to sing and then we worked on harmonies.  We came up with a couple really cool ideas for the final lines of the verses that are both really musical and slightly dissonant. Think if Alice in chains wrote happy music.

Still have a few more songs to arrange but with all the parts written, the actual recording should be a lot easier next time we get together. Now it's just a matter of learning.

As I mentioned earlier I am blogging this from my phone while in transit and I get super car sick... And now that we've hit traffic my girlfriend is swerving the car like a crazy person so I'm ending this update before I toss my cookies!

Stay tuned and stay wet!




Jesse and I reviewed our ideas about harmonies on Two Friends of Mine this morning.  Changed a few harmonies and then worked on Mowing the Shoulder.

I was in love!

Woke up one morning with this tune in my head, sometimes I wish that I were dead, but sometimes, the hardest part is getting up!

No wait.  That's a 2bit Losers tune. The hardest part is actually singing.  I suck at singing harmonies.  Despite that, today was somewhat productive.  

Jesse came over around 10, brought some Chic-Fila.  I made coffee.  It was nice.  Game plan for this week is to get my harmonies done since Jesse can probably accomplish his at his house without my help whereas I need strong coaching to get them right. 

So this morning we worked on "Intro".  That's the low hanging fruit since I had already written a pretty good harmony for that when we were recording the demos.  The only thing standing in our way, getting me to sing it again with low line noise.  It took longer than I would have wanted but it's done.

Then we wasted some time on Mowin' the Shoulder.  Jesse isn't sure what he wants to do here and even though I hear where harmonies should be, I have no idea what they should be.  It's Jesse's baby though so when he decides what he wants, we'll tackle that.  

We moved to the next low hanging fruit, Two Friends of Mine.  I get to learn the harmonies that Jesse sang on the demo we did 8 years ago when the song was a complete joke... 1 chorus is down and I think a keeper.  The next two Jesse changed the phrasing and therefore the harmony has to change ever so slightly.  We didn't have time to finish that since Jesse had prior engagements with Mr. Easton to do Dark Side of the Lake practice.  My homework, to learn how to sing the last two chorii on Two Friends.

Tomorrow, I go out of town until Thursday but we'll theoretically have about 5 hours to get the final harmonies on Two Friends done (including the falsetto parts) and hopefully I can knock out the chorus vocals for Two Bowls of Porridge.  I actually know those, since we play that live.  Hopefully it will be all creamy goodness.

We shall see.

No pictures for this session.  Rapid fire what not.  Eat more bacon!

Wambola Porridge

It's amazing what you can get done when you spend all day doing it.

Due to strange circumstances at work I was off on a Saturday this week so Jesse and I got in touch with Trip and decided to spend all day at his house finishing up lead vocals for Ridin' Steam.  Trip said anytime after 11am so I stayed up til around 2 last night playing video games, got in bed and watched a movie then went to sleep thinking I'd get to sleep in.  Nope.

My mom always seems to call or come over when I'm the most tired.  Today she brought donuts and milk around 9, after she woke me up by texting me at 8.  So much for sleeping in.  At least I got breakfast.  Jesse came over around 10:30 and we gathered our stuff and headed to Trips.

When we arrived Trip was just waking up, Sarun was heading to the store to grab groceries.  We went to the backyard so Trip could have a cigarette and some Pocari Sweat, which is apparently Japanese Gatorade that "tastes like a flat fresca".

Trip mixing up some Pocari Sweat before we get started

Heading back into the house we loaded up the mixes, which this time I had conveniently labeled correctly this time.  By luck of the draw we worked on Flying J first.  This was supposed to be a Kory Fontenot tune. Kory has been unable to make it to any sessions so Jesse decided to go ahead and record leads on it so that when all the backing vocals are done, if we want to go ahead, we have something.  If Kory still wants to record on it, at this point that's cool, but we're ready to push forward.  Jesse got done in about 5 runs.  There was some contention about which one sounded best.  Trip had saved takes 3-5.

It's sort of Goldilocks syndrome.  I liked 3 because Jesse had the least amount of grit in his voice, Trip liked take 5 because he had a lot of grit in his voice and Jesse likes take 4 because the grit was just right.  It's his voice, I don't care which one he picks, in the grand scheme of things they all sound fine.

Then Sarun returned with sushi

To make quick progress, Jesse wanted to move onto "intro" next.  This song has 2 verses and including crackling fire and wind sound effects is about one minute long.  I think we spent an hour on it.  It wasn't completely frustrating, there were actually very few takes.  I think Jesse took 2 main takes and punched in one phrase on the first verse... about 4 times.  Not because of pitch.  The line is "Listening to the cool autumn breeze, warm bowl of porridge between my knees".

Apparently when you sing warm bowl of porridge it sounds like "Wambola" which lead to trip sampling that phrase, cutting and pasting it, doing loopers, delays and splices and all sorts of comptech lunacy.  It was pretty amusing but mostly just burned 30 minutes.  So after we had fun with that for a while, we tried different lines... "breeze... bowl of porridge between", "breeze... warm bowl of porridge tween", "breeze... warm porridge between".  Jesse couldn't even make it through the line without the bowl.  He got to warm por and burst into laughter saying "it's gotta be in a bowl".  Apparently he got the mental image of a warm oatmeal spread between his thighs in some sort of sexual oat conquest.  Disturbing.  I really liked the contrast between cool breeze and warm porridge.. which I voiced, and then was picked on about writing 'high art'. Ah well.  The porridge is no longer warm.  We have no Wambola.

To end the song Trip wanted Jesse to sniffle like he was sad.  We took more takes on the sniff than the vocals.  "Give me more drama in the sniff".  It's not a phrase I would have ever expected to hear.  And trust me, when you do hear it, and the person saying it is serious, it's really hard to be serious and not laugh afterwards, no matter what the sniff sounds like.

After Jesse finished having the sniffles he wanted a break so we did Riding in a Boxcar.  I originally wanted Kory to do a call and response on this one with me.  Since I still had lead vocals on it either way, I ran through all of them and much like Flying J, if Kory makes the time to come over and record we'll happily put him down, but in the meantime, we can push forward.  Jesse and I have completely different vocal timbres, so after a few quick mic swaps and preamp tweaks I was ready to go.  Most of the song went pretty straight through.  Before we started Trip said "lets work on your annunciations first."  I resang the first line the way I knew he wanted me to and he got excited and yelled "Lets go!"  I guess you work with someone long enough, if you're paying attention you learn what they want.  Things went pretty quick except for the last line which I always knew needed to be there, but I hadn't ever decided what the line needed to be, nor had I written a melody.  That single line took longer than the rest of the song.  Oh well.

After we did that Trip said "I hear beach boys on this".

Trip doing his best beach boys impersonation

Trip laid down 6 or 7 vocal tracks doing "ooh woo ooh" underneath the last line of the song and... it's hilarious.  We aren't sure if it's going to stay yet.  To quote Jesse "I want it so I have the option, if it's to gender, I mean genre-bending we'll remove it."  I like the idea of it, but I'm also not sure about the genre bending, although, it really wouldn't bother me if it weren't for that it's 7 tracks of Trip.  My original, probably lofty and faulty, idea was that no one would ever be harmonizing or doubling themselves, which is why it was important to have so many people in the band that sing.  If we can achieve the same sound with Jesse, Trip and Kory (and maybe a few random other people) doing the oooh woo ooh's, I'm all for it even if it does genre bend a little.  We shall see.

The last song to get worked on was Mowin' the Shoulder.  I stepped out to cook dinner at this point so I didn't hear any of the process, funny incidents or even a final take of it so I have no idea what happened, but it's apparently done.  On the drive home I asked Jesse if he was happy with it and he said "Trip made me change the way I sing the chorus so it goes somewhere I didn't plan on it going.  It'll have to grow on me, but I trust the process."  The process being that when we leave Trip's house, Jesse is never happy with the way he sounds and after a few days it grows on him.  We shall see.

At this point all the lead vocals for the album are done and we can start working on backing vocals.  That'll be pretty straight forward since I'm going to attempt to hold Jesse and I both to 1 backing track per song.  He's off this whole week and in town so if I'm in town things could come together quickly.  On the other hand, my girlfriend wants me to go to San Antonio with her for three days and I am not entirely sure about my crazy work schedule.  We'll see how things go.

Ain't no stoppin' us now

Dobro's and Beards and Such

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"More emphasis on the to-ooh-oo's"

So this is a few weeks after the last promised update. A quick update on that... Monday morning rolled around and Kory sent me a message roughly stating "I'm sick. No way I can do vocals today. Maybe dobro." we decided no big deal, we'd get together Friday.  Friday rolled around and there was no word from Kory.  There went out one chance to record his leads before trip went out of town.

Then a few days later I woke up to this text message.

Score!

Kory remained elusive the next couple weeks. Our next contact came surprisingly enough while I was at work. Kory apologized, his schedule had gotten all crazy but he'd be available to record during the week but his weekends were all booked up. Cool. I got in touch with him yesterday to lay down a date. He's good for Monday and Tuesday... As I work an unexpected double Tuesday we'll have to see what we can cram in on Monday.   But that's the future...

With Trip and Jesse in town for the next few weekends we decided to try and get something done.  Trip did a gig last night so we confirmed him being free today to help us out.  Jesse and I headed to MacFarland's and had lunch then headed across the bridge to lay down tracks.  Amusingly enough we showed up and the window to the front room was open; his son, Xander, was playing a new wii game.  It's the wii version of "Wipeout."  I may sneak out at some point during this and go play that with him.  It looks awesome.

Currently, I'm at trips house watching Jesse "the phlegm master" Rauser lay down his leads for the album.  He just finished Dead Man's Curve and is quibbling over lines where he doesn't like the way he sang it.  Ah, recording with Jesse.  It can always be better.  I guess I'd rather him be happy with his performance but I usually can't tell a difference between his second and thirty second take.  There will be a video and picture of what goes on in the studio when you're not the one actually recording.  Lots of waiting quietly.  That will be up once I get home since I don't know how to add those from my iPhone currently. Not that it matters to you, the reader, since the likelihood of you reading this before ice done that is slim.

Continued update on progress after I get home

I'm sure Jesse will be upset with me that this not only exists but is on the internet

<<<pause>>>

As it turns out, the rest of the session at Trip's was somewhat unproductive on the Cowboys of Porridge front.  Jesse did his leads for Billy the Kid, which Trip found hilarious.  Apparently, Lincoln was a county at war (and also a president) was just the funniest thing he'd heard all day.  We tried laying down Mowin' the Shoulder which would have put Jesse essentially done, but the mix we had at Trips for that song had vocals on it.  Not sure exactly what happened there but since we didn't have a mix for Jesse to sing on and we didn't have Kory to sing on anything, we moved onto finishing up In Liquid mixes.  Jesse and Trip made some adjustments to Mission: Bedsore and we basically ended our day there.

Trip said he could be available Monday morning if we could get Kory over there so... That's the current game plan.  Now that I'm home I've made mixes that are ready to go back over to Trips for the final four that need vocals.  Jesse left me his beta58 mic and I got my MP20 figured out to record without line noise so backing vocals can be done at my house at a leisurely pace.  CoP is looking like it's going to be out before the In Liquid album (which has been essentially done recording for almost 2 years now).

For any green thumbers out there, it's a little past planting time, hope you've sowed your oats.  Mine are already sprouting.

Young Guns

It goes so fast, until it doesn't.

It has been a while since my last update... It's been a while since we achieved anything worth noting.  I'm not sure today counts as an exception.

I headed out to Trip's house today to do my last set of lead vocals.  I sang the leads for the verses to WH Bonnie today.  Which is funny because the movie that popped up on shuffle last night in my DVD spindle was "Young Guns".  Ah, Lou Diamond Phillips, where hast thou gone?

Anyway, I arrived about 9:15am with donuts as Trip was setting up the mic.  As we were about to get started Trip got a phone call from a one Charlie Frye about various things including Floating Popes situations.    That suited me just fine.  I had donuts to eat.

After the call we tracked the vocal.  For once, Trip liked most of my phrasing and we didn't change much.  I left out the occasional "he" and "the" so I wouldn't have to mush mouth things and Trip critiqued me more on delivery than pitch for once.  Apparently practicing singing the song you're going to be singing does help.  Maybe I should do that.  The only thing we drastically changed was how I sing the last verse which was fine because I really didn't like my delivery on the last verse anyway.  Squared it off, as Trip says, to allow for easier application of backing vocals.  All in all actual recording of my parts took about 30 minutes including listening to parts over and over to make sure Trip was happy with my deliveries.

After I was done, we listened to a new Lauren Turner Overdrive (Like Bachman only with more boobs... and talent) tune.  It is great.  He was having some problems with a guitar line for the chorus so I threw out some ideas and he went to tracking them.  Are they gonna make the final cut?  Probably not, Trip always changes his mind, but it's nice to be listened to.  I digress...

Kory is scheduled to come over to the house on Monday to record some Dobro parts.  Maybe do some backing vocals if he's feeling squirrely.  Maybe write some new stuff.  We shall see.  Trip is on tour with Stolen Babies from April 8th-28th, filling in for their bass player so we are on stand still until then.  But by the time he gets back Jesse should have mostly the basic sound of the album fleshed out and recording vocals will be all that's left to be done.  A dual CD release for In Liquid and Cowboys of Porridge mid-summer is looking more likely.  If mid-summer looks likely, I'll put my money on August.  Hey, maybe 2014.

For the farmers out there, it is planting season

Mixing Business With Pleasure

Nothing specific or grand to report today so much as I can provide the few of you reading this with a preview of things to come.

The songs that have final vocals have been uploaded to Jesse's server so he can do mixing in Baton Rouge during the week.  He's got tears on the pavement to almost where I want it... I'm not sure where it stands in his mind, but I usually have to assume that if he sends me a mix, he's happy with it.  The Ballad of Two Friends of Mine is still not there yet and I don't believe he's worked on anything else, but we'll get there.

So anyway:

A long (long time ago in a galaxy far away) time ago Jesse and I took some photo's for a Cowboys of Porridge album which at that point was still just a joke between us and Don.  Then we did some photo shop magic to make the album cover.

Well in my Educational Technologies class this semester, one of my assignments was to create a tutorial on how to do something.  I was thinking about doing a StudioONE tutorial on how to do the assignment that I still have to do for "Cluster C" which is all about sound editing, but the FirePod has unsynced itself with my laptop and I'm, darn it to hell, just to lazy to reboot at the moment.  So I made a quick tutorial on how we made the Ridin' Steam album cover.  I made sure to have a Cowboys of Porridge song playing in the background so people could get a preview of what the albums going to sound like, that is to say, this is what it would sound like if you were hearing it over the phone.

Creating the CoP - R.S. Album Cover

So there is the link to the tutorial on how we basically made the album cover.  It's missing final tweaks to make the final image a duplicate of what's below but the filters are essentially the same. There is a snippet of Dead Man's Curve playing in the background.  Not an exciting update I suppose but it's all I have to report for now.  Hope you enjoy!

Oh Yeah

Not much to report today.  It's Valentine's Day.  But obviously, as I'm blogging, there is something.

I was cheated from slumber today as I hearkened to the ring ring ring of my telephone at a early hour of 10am.  It was Rick calling.  He wanted to borrow an old Sigma acoustic guitar that was sitting around in my room.  He wanted to hotrod it into a "campfire beater."  I said okay and got dressed, apparently he was around the corner when he called.

Anyway, that wasn't that big of a deal.  I was already 2 hours more into sleep than I was planning on since I told my girlfriend to wake me up at 8am when she woke up... She woke me up and instead of hanging out with her like I had originally wanted, my sleep deprived body said "okay, have fun, I'm going back to sleep." I haven't been sleeping well.

I made a doctors appointment and ran some errands and headed over to Trips house about noon.  I was picking up the final mixes from the In Liquid album.  Have to do some final listens to make sure the whole album sounds roughly the same.  I haven't had a chance to listen yet since I left Trips house and immediately went to work and just got home from that.  While I was used to working 9-10 hour shifts for the last 4 years at the casino, this past month of working 4 hour shifts has left me unprepared to actually work 8's again.  I'll be burning cd's for Cheesy, Jesse and I in the morning so we can each listen and make commentary.  Which will most likely end up being Jesse making commentary since Cheesy seems totally disinterested in the whole process and I simply lack the ear.

But while I was at Trips, I did manage to do something CoP related.  I laid down a lead vocal for Holy Man.  Lots and lots of "oh yeah" in that song.  I didn't snap any pictures for today's blog so you'll all just have to imagine me yelling "oh yeah" into a mic and Trip trying not to giggle and he says "uh... okay, do it again, watch your pitch on yeah."

It was funny.  Trust me.

So that's about it... In Liquid album almost done, Cowboys of Porridge album about 50% done on lead vocals...  Still trying to get Kory to do a lead vocal on something.  Beginning of March not looking like a good release date anymore, but maybe the end of March.  We can release it for my birthday.  Maybe on March 29th, the same date Stephen Lynch is playing the House of Blues in Houston.

Happy Valentine's day to all your lucky oatlings out there and may this years harvest be as bountiful as lasts.

Old Cat's Do It The Best

Today was excitingly productive.  Which I suppose it needed to be for those of you keeping up with this since it's been almost 3 weeks, I think, since my last post.  Well, things stagnate.

Rick came by today and laid down some fiddle.  I set up the room with a chair and condenser mic in the usual place behind the computer and set up a condenser way off in the corner for a little more open airy sound.

To be appropriate, we started with the intro.  First take was good but not what I was looking for so I had Rick redo it and he razzed me because I'd been telling him "play whatever you want, I don't know how to play fiddle so I can't tell you what to do"

Okay, so I know what doesn't sound good... that doesn't mean I know what WILL sound good.

Dead Man's Curve tracking screen

After that we moved onto Dead Man's Curve.  You know, the end of the album.  Actually the logic was do all the songs that don't have harmonica yet and we'll see how things go.  Dead Man's Curve just happened to be the next track in the list that didn't have harmonica.  It took a few tries, three I believe, and that one was in the bag.  We moved on.

It was a little more peculiar working with Rick than Kory or Tim.  I've known Rick a lot longer than the other two guys, but probably talked to him less over the last 10 years than I have Tim or Kory in the last three months.  That's not a problem so much as it's odd.  The really peculiar thing is that while I told all the musicians the same thing "I want you to do what you do best and what you feel comfortable with and unless it's terrible, you play whatever you want.  I'm probably not gonna tell you any different," each musicians has become increasingly... less confident?  That's probably not the accurate word but the point is:

Tim showed up, played his thing, had ideas, did takes, said he was or wasn't happy with stuff, gave actual feedback as if he were an active member of the band and these songs were every bit as much his as ours.  It was great, he really took ownership of the songs and there were songs where he said he just wouldn't fit in and he would ruin it by being there.

Kory didn't have that option, being on drums, but he had almost the same approach, just a little more unsure about himself.  Kory came in, played his parts and wrote a few that were different from what I'd programmed and would stop me in the middle of recording saying "I can do that better, I know I can."  We'd redo it, but even when he takes were perfect he always had the question "Is that what you're looking for?  Was that good enough?  Do you want me to do it again?"  I quickly learned Kory always thinks what he played could be better so I just assured him it was fine when it was and we moved on.

Rick warming up to some random fiddle part

With Rick, things were different.  He loves the tunes, thinks some of them are going to be hits and just wants us to "remember the little guys when we go places."  Optimistic indeed.  I like that.  Also, an amazing player he didn't need much coaching but he didn't seem particularly pleased or disturbed by any takes.  It was "here's what I got" and lets go.  I asked him if he wanted to do a solo on Mowin' the Shoulder and he said "Umm, sure I can try that."  He finished and I asked how he felt about it he said "I'm not sure, we can listen."  We did it again, same question, response: "I think it was better."  We did it again, same question, "I think it was better.  Is that what you're looking for?"  

Again, Rick is amazing and I was just pleased as punch to have him come play (and he expressed flattery at having been asked) and I'm not displeased with the experience but I feel like I wasn't the right person to be producing his parts.  I think had Jesse been here we'd have come up with some different stuff, of course we'd have probably recorded 2 songs in the hour and a half we worked today, not 6.

But to not leave everyone on the edge of their seat, here's a preview of what to expect for the album.  This is Rick warming up for Two Bowls of Porridge.  This particular cut didn't make it onto the album but you'll get the idea.

Hope to see  you in the fields, the reaping draws near!

A Parting of Ways

Today was a sad day for all Porridge kind.  We had to part ways with our fiddle player, Masson Dixon.

The day started so pleasant.  I made sausage, eggs, toast, coffee... Masson showed up on time.  Everything was awesome.  Jesse came by and we discussed what we expected to get done before he went off to practice with the other band he's in called Sugarskull.

Breakfast... mmm...

First we pondered which songs to do first.  Masson had played on a few of these songs at practice before and he had told me last week he'd be ready to record sometime earlier this week.  It being the end of the week now we assumed he had been hitting the wood shed and would be ready to record.

Masson absorbing Mowin' the Shoulder before getting started

Apparently we were not 100% correct in our assumptions.  Masson was super excited about being a part of the album but whenever it came down to putting down his fiddle parts he seemed reluctant.

Masson working out the intro to Mowin' the Shoulder

Masson played a few takes for the intro to Mowin' the Shoulder and I double tracked him to cover up a few intonation problems, but he was agitated and when I told him I thought he could play better, his response was "I don't have a whole lot of time to keep playing these parts."  At first I was a little irritated.  I was upset because I thought he was just half assing a fiddle part that he was going to call good enough because he didn't want to take the time to do it right.

We had a chat about it and what it boiled down to was Masson isn't interested in being a fiddle player.  He's not.  He's a guitar player, and he always has been really, however he was recruited to the Cowboys because he had displayed interest in it... In fact, he may have volunteered his services because I'm not sure how I would have ever known he even had a fiddle if he didn't.  At some point between being recruited and the recording process he lost his oats.  We discussed him working on harmonies for production but we are stalemate on that.  It's looking right now like we are going to have to part ways with Mr Dixon, at least for the album.  If the Porridge ever hits the big stage, we'd love to have Masson come play guitar and do backing vocals, possibly even some leads, but having another person to pay on a project that most likely isn't going to turn a profit is looking like a bad investment.

I'm calling in some favors to hopefully getting another fiddle player; a real one.  There's a band called Kingfish.  My dad is friends with their fiddle player.  He's done some work for me before and hopefully he will again.  We might be breaking the "everyone has to sing rule."  There just aren't a lot of options now.

To make the day not a total waste though, I got in touch with Trip and we laid down some finals on vocals.  I did 2 songs; Jesse did 2 songs.  I'm halfway done.  Jesse isn't.  :)  They turned out great.  Hopefully I'll finish my leads this week and get some fiddle on the album.  Next weekend Jesse is out of town, the following he has a gig.  Not sure what that's going to do to the anticipated release date, but I think March is still realistic.

Laying down vocals on Tears on the Pavement

It's almost 1am and I have class in the morning.  Yes, morning is Sunday and I have class.  So for now, plant your oats and remember, the reaping draws near.

Missed It By "That" Much

EDIT: As it turns out this blog did post as Tuesday instead of Wednesday.  Apparently blogspot does not run on central time.

I'm starting today's entry 7 minutes late of what would have been the last possible moment to have updated my blog for the day.  So now today's blog is actually yesterdays blog, but since today there won't be any recording, I suppose the phrase is moot and since the album won't be out for several months still...  Moving on.

Today started so much like a "normal" day recording with Jesse.  I woke up around 9:00am and made coffee and cleaned up around the house.  Kory and I had agreed to work on drums around 10:00am today and I said I'd make breakfast.  I elected to go with breakfast burritos since they are both delicious and portable.

Duncan Donuts Turbo Blend (left) and Breakfast Burritos prior to cooking (right)

Trip shot me a text while I was making breakfast saying he was in town dealing with a tire issue and could swing by to help with production if I wanted so I said cool and just as I was rolling up the last burrito he arrived.  He went to tinkering with the 3 songs we did yesterday.  He determined that we had a minor phase issue in the overheads and went to moving things around.

Trip tinkering with StudioONE compressors

Kory arrived as Trip was tinkering, which was just as well because there was no way I was going to sit behind his kit to get sounds for Trip.  He took a tape measure and measured out the distance from each mic to the snare, turned around the overhead, which I was apparently using to mic the ceiling, not the drums and fiddled with some compressors.  We then ran through about an hour of hit-and-honk drum tag teaming where in Kory would play 2 bars of something while Trip and I fiddled with the inputs on the firepod trying to make sure things were loud but not clipping.  Being that the songs are very dynamic, it was tedious.  But at last Trip understood why the level on the snare was very low and life continued.  That was after we realized I had the tracks mislabeled.  Silly me!

Kory and Trip making a go of getting a good room sound for the drums

After Trip left Kory and I put some good time in recording.  The drum sound from yesterday changed dramatically but the tracks we did yesterday were almost all side stick and very mellow so the current hope is to not have to re-record them.  That being said, until we do another listen to the drums and decide that they aren't good enough, Kory cranked out 7 good takes on drums today!  I could tell by the end of the day he was getting frustrated about not having written parts for the songs but I assured him it was good and what he was playing was fine.  

I snagged one video while he was recording but that was all I managed as I was guiding him through the songs with ridiculous hand gestures.  It make the process more amusing for me as I got to do more than just hit buttons, but probably doubly frustrating for him as he had to decipher on the fly not only what part of the song I was gesturing for but also what that meant he was supposed to play.

Kory laying down the chorus to Billy the Kid

All in all I'm pretty excited about how things went today.  Kory recorded an entire album (of songs he'd only heard twice) worth of drums in two days and I think the most takes it took him was 15, which includes takes where I just stopped him because I thought a fill sounded sloppy.  As an aside, Kory is super cool to work with and really takes criticism to heart.  He never appeared to have a problem with any of my commentary and gave every suggestion I had a try, even after several of my suggestions proved to be bad ideas.  I wish it was always that easy.  

Another day, another part down.  Time to get in touch with Mason Dixon and get some fiddle down.  Time for another harvest.

Photo courtesy of Michael J. Oxbigg

Bang A Gong

Drums!  We did drums today!

Today was awesome!  I woke up, watched an episode of Psych on netflix, went to a chiropractor appointment and had a cute girl send electric shocks through my back, came home and watched a few episodes of Lie To Me, went to a job interview, came home and cued up Cowboys of Porridge for drums.

I sent Trip a few texts asking for advice on drum mic placement and as I finished prepping the room Kory showed up.  I offered incense, beer (not wine) and candles, and we got busy setting up drums.

Kory setting up his drums for the first recording session

First song I set up was Two Bowls of Porridge.  I figured, start at the start.  Silly me, apparently I hadn't emailed Kory that song!  We checked levels and moved onto Dead Man's Curve instead... the last song on the album.  If you ain't first you're last, right?  It was actually just coincidence.  DMC happened to be next song in the list of "recently opened sessions" on StudioONE.  

We moved onto DMC and after some piddling around with what Kory was going to play, we decided to be unhappy with the drum sound.  Kick sounded great, overheads were good, room mics were whatever, not much different from overhead really, but the snare wasn't doing it.  Kory tightened up the snare and it sounded better but it still wasn't there so I hooked up a shure SM57 and it was at least there.

Kory nailed Dead Man's Curve with minimal difficulty and after a quick run through to make sure he liked everything he played we moved onto Tears on the Pavement.

Tears proved a little bit more challenging than Dead Man's Curve.  But not for the reasons I would have expected.  The drum loop I programmed for the intro to Tears is... unconventional at best.  It's got some rim shots on the up beat... it's just weird.  I don't write drums the way a drummer would play them usually... I'm not a drummer.  I write drums just to have things on beat with what I'm playing, so they usually come out weird.  When we play live, all I listen to are hi-hat and fills.  Having something weird to work with and me telling him "Play whatever you want" made things weird for him.  But he came up with a cool syncopated drum beat for the intro and I told him to just go ahead and keep it upbeat after that.  There's a part towards the end where the song goes form 75 bpm to 90 bpm though and it's not a slide and there isn't a count in, it's just very abrupt and Kory nailed it like it was nothing.  I was so impressed and the song really rocked out after that.

Kory laying down some mean side stick on Tears on the Pavement

After tears we layed down Mowin' the Shoulder.  It was getting to be late and as much as I wanted to do a really rockin' song I figured we could lay down the songs that were mostly side stick tonight and not piss off my neighbors and do to the more up-tempo songs tomorrow.  We went over Mowin' a few times and Kory was unhappy with what we played a couple of times per part and he kept apologizing.  He's such a sweetheart.  With reassurances that it was totally cool for him to do as many takes as he wanted we moved on and tracked the whole song and it came out really nice.

With the three songs down we started listening and I really wasn't feeling the drum sound we had achieved, but it was still raw, no reverb, no eq, not even panning, so I moved all the drums to one bus and found a "DRUM BUS" present in StudioONE and oh my... how things changed.  The drums which I was satisfied with previously suddenly became superb.  Before you could tell they were recorded separately from all the other instruments and they sort of stuck out.  There was "to much room."  With a little reverb and compression everything came together and I didn't know I could feel so relieved.

After recording Kory and I popped open a few more beers and had a brief conversation covering everything from disc golf to musicians we are compared to and with that he went on his way.  I went to Albertson's to procure breakfast for tomorrow.  Tomorrow we get started about 10:00am.  Trip will be here to supervise.  I'm feeling good about it.  

We have all day to knock out 7 songs and then the only thing left will be fiddle and vocals.  March is looking good.  

Until then, eat your oats...

Shake Your Body Line

While I normally try to make everything in my blog relevant to actual recording, today is going to start with a bitter rant which will lead into something more relevant... 

I'm not sure if it was yesterdays indulgences of beer and cigars or caffeine withdrawals, not having had any in several days, but after Tim left yesterday I developed a massive headache which I did not recover from until about 6:00 this morning... And this guy had to go to MSU for a class (that didn't happen by the way) at 8:30am.  I got my sleep deprived shivering body up before the sun was shining, drove to a wet little parking lot devoid of all other cars and parked, and waited.  Then I walked around the building and all the doors were locked.  Then I checked (via iPhone, which is a pain in the ass) my MSU mail, the MSU calendar, my personal calendar and the portal assignments for my class.  All say class this morning.  As I was getting ready to leave, I hit the "handicap" button and... the doors popped open.  I ran inside before they closed.  The cold air and light drizzle at this point had me pretty awake so I found my classroom and played some games on my phone to kill time.  Maybe someone would show up.  I feel like the fool because when I left, just before 9:00, no one else had shown up yet and no one was in the parking lot.  I gave a longing glance at McDonald's as I drove by thinking a cup of coffee and a sausage, egg and cheese biscuit would be awesome but I restrained myself and headed home, where a warm bed was still calling my name.  To cut this already long story short, I did not get to take a nap prior to Tim showing back up today.  I was engaged in a number of other less desirable tasks, other than prepping fajitas for dinner tonight, which will be the third most exciting thing I do all day right behind recording and going back to sleep.

[Insert Picture of Tim in his Vehicular]

Around 3:00pm, Tim Smith arrived and rescued me, like a tiny steam knight riding in a bright white steed, from my loathsome piddling.  He informed me that he'd been jammin' the mix I sent along with him yesterday and had some ideas.  He really wanted to lay down some electric harp for Flying J to give it that good ol' dirty grit sound.  I was stoked!  He brought a tiny little Fender Champ and a Green Bullet mic.  "The classic blues combination" as he referred to it.  We mic'd him up and he laid into Flying J.  The solo to that song wasn't coming together the way I'd hoped and after he put some harp behind it, it was really rocking.  Or as much as a low key song rocks.  

Tim tweaking getting his electric harmonica set up

That was the only song that really needed a whole lotta harpin' (and not of the boont variety) so I requested a little shake shake for a couple songs.  He put down some shaker on a few songs for me and that was the end of the day.  I love it when a plan comes together.

Tim laying down some egg shaker on Flying J

A short pow wow later with me assuring Tim he'd be kept in the loop (and a link to this blog assures that he has the power to do that himself if I prove unreliable) and he was off, driving his noble steed into the distance to save some other Maiden... Fan.

So that's it for a few days.  Tomorrow evening may see a little drum recording, possibly Tuesday.  Details with Kory at this point are still vague but if all goes according to schedule vocals should be getting cut by the 14th and mixing should be getting done by the 21st.  That puts this album at a very optimistic Valentine's Day release.

Cross your fingers and pray for oats!

Photo from original album cover shoot

Ropin' the Wind

It's been a great two days off and I have to say, surprising.  Kory and I have been in constant contact and he's most likely going to come over for drums Monday at this point.  Mason says he's been listening and wants to come over during the week next week to record his fiddle parts and that he is almost certain about what he wants to do on most of the tracks.  But!

As many talented musicians I've ever hung out with, I don't know that I've ever had a chance to sit down and just hang with someone as "vibe" oriented as Tim Smith.  We didn't talk about vibe per se and I didn't light up any incense or candles like Jesse and I used to do, but he definitely "feels" the music and understands where his role needs to be.  It was really refreshing.  

Tim laying down the blues harp on Two Friends of Mine

He told me he'd show up around 3:00 or 4:00 in the pm and much to my delight arrived right at 3:00.  It was a drizzly, dreary display of weather and he lugged his bag of harmonica's in the house in short order.  After grabbing a smoke and a beer we started tracking Two Friends of Mine, since he'd played that with us before on a few occasions.

Nailed it, I believe first take but we ended up punching in the ending because I wanted him to play a little harder and do a solo of sorts to end it.  He had been laying back because he didn't want to miss the ending.

Then Cheesy showed up.  I was actually forewarned that he would be coming by and it wasn't a problem, the more the merrier.  He posted up on the love chair, basked in Tim's glow for a bit, took some pictures and jet.  

Cheesy hanging out watching Tim work his magic

Next song we worked on was Tears on the Pavement.  This song really needed something to start it off and Tim worked on it a bit before he found what he wanted to do.  We got his parts in a few takes and Eric snapped this picture while he was recording.

Tim laying down some blues harp on Tears on the Pavement while I man the computer

Another beer, another smoke and 20 minutes later and we were moving on to another song again.  Billy the Kid (the strumstick song) was next.  Tim was totally feeling this one and he laid down the whole song in a couple takes.  We weren't feeling the solo section though after a listen and I grabbed the strumstick and we worked out a few parts.  I don't want to spoil it for you, but it's awesome.  Nailed it in 3 takes and we wrote the book on the Billy the Kid song.  It was off to Ropin' the Wind.

Ropin the Wind has Tim momentarily stumped

 While it was in the same key, Ropin' has a totally different feel from the strumstick song and Tim wasn't sure what he wanted to do.  He knew he needed to be in there and he knew where he needed to be but wasn't sure about what to play.  After being stumped about 10 minutes, he went out for a smoke break.  I went to tidy up the kitchen while he was out there and started feeling the house shake and a low thud...

Tim burst in through the front door: "I got it!"

Tim working out what he wants to do on the bridge for Ropin the Wind

Since we're tuned down half a step all these songs are a little difficult for Tim.  He's gotta use harps he's not used to playing and some of the ones that he has aren't in the octave he wants... He was making due but he wasn't happy with the performance at first.  I set the bridge on loop and let him got at it. We ended up snagging a good take pretty quick.

With that we called it a night, 4 tracks in the bag and probably only 2 more getting worked on tomorrow.  I burned Tim a CD of the tracks and we had a good conversation about what I expected from him.  His thought was "these are your tunes, what do you want" and my response was "I don't care about it, play what you want".  

This confused him at first but it's not that I don't care what people play so much as, I don't know what's going to sound good until it's there so I'm not going to shoot anything anyone does down until there isn't any way to make it work.  The Cowboys of Porridge tunes are supposed to be fun and in the moment and while I've scripted out certain parts for Jesse and I and I have a general feel for what I want drums to do, I'd rather have the players on the album be happy with what they've put forth than their creativity stifled by my dictatorship.  Roger Waters I am not.  I kind of wish I were... but I am better looking, I suppose.  

But I digress.  

I want everyone on the album to have fun and be proud of the project they helped create.  He got it and is totally stoked for tomorrow.

After all, at some point this is all the band was:

Jesse and I doing a Cowboys of Porridge tune at a family reunion