Tag: studio

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2 Oct: studio

KING SHAM
me – vocals
Rob – guitar, bass
John Cerreta – organ
Pete McDade – drums

It’s October 2, 2001. I began this whole process on October 29, 2000.

It does bother me. Objectively I know it’s not as if I’ve actually spent a year on it… even apart from the lack of recording between April and September when we have been in studio it really only amounts to one or two days in a week, punctuated by a couple of weeks off. Hopefully, I’m going to be able to give him a lump sum within the month, and we’ll set aside a block of time to wrap it up. I can’t say enough about Rob and the fact that he has been so willing to work with me on doing this, given the frequency with which he’s actually getting paid by me.

All that said, we began work on song #7 of 11 last night. Pete came in last week and laid down the drum tracks. Last night with a scratch guitar track and the bass already done I did the vocals. One take with a couple of punch-ins, and then doubling it. I could already hear the backing vocals, which is always reassuring. There’s nothing worse than not hearing anything, like staring at empty paper with a deadline looming. Then Rob and John did the intro to the song, a kind of warbley (I love trying to type a word like that… like “wonky”) guitar and organ bit.

Basically things went really easily. I wasn’t absolutely crazy about the song, and I hardly ever play it acoustic. But when we rehearsed the band a couple of weeks ago I brought it out and the version we hashed out sounded great (and I had sort of known that it really was a band song). When I was doing the vocals last night the song wasn’t grabbing me much, I was thinking it might end up being a weak point, but as things fell into place it really started to sound great.

It’s hard at times to keep myself excited about the CD, just because the process has taken so long and has had so many long breaks of no activity. The CD is really meant to be a whole entity (what they euphemistically refer to as a “song cycle” instead on “concept” record, sort of like calling a comic book a “graphic novel,” it just serves to make you seem desperate to not sound uncool) so it’s hard to keep a grasp on it with so much time passing between songs. But I am eager to get it done and out, I want to have a SECOND CD… it’s hard to explain. It’s hard to keep saying that what I do during the day isn’t my real “job,” that what I am is a musician, when I look and only see one CD sitting there. I want development.

Don’t get me wrong. I feel good.

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recording with weaklazyliar

I went out to Jeep’s studio to do some backing vocals for weaklazyliar on Saturday. They’ve kept most of the music on this new CD secret, they haven’t played much of it at shows. I wish I had that much material to not be playing my new stuff at shows, I like the idea of it all being new when the CD comes out. Anyway, the one song they wanted me to sing on I had heard a few times, so I was relatively prepared when I got there. Got those done in a couple of takes, and then they asked if I wanted to do any more. Of course, the answer is “yes” because I love to sing and harmonize, and I love being on other people’s records. So I did some work on another song, whose title I will keep silent because I’m not sure how much info I’m allowed to reveal. They didn’t make me sign any confidentiality agreements, but you never know.

So, now seems as good a time as any to talk about weaklazyliar. The first time I ever played with them was at this very strange club in Marietta. This is early on during the Radiant City days. Gerlinda actually was playing solo that night, because at that point the band name was wholly accurate and she’d book shows that then she’d end up having to play solo because she couldn’t get the band to play. I remember she played “Rocketpop” that night and I was very jealous.

Weaklazyliar are an amazing band, and a group of great people. I really like the idea of our names being sort of intertwined as far as recognition goes. We’ve played a lot of shows together, I’ve sung with them at some of their shows, and we had a really great show last December where we just swapped songs, sang on each others stuff, and in general had a really comfortable time on stage. In my perfect utopia of a pop scene in Atlanta, where it’s a community that really strengthens each band involved, it always begins with our two acts, because we’ve been doing it for a while now.

Yeah, if I’m a little goofy right now it’s the pain medicine, people. Just bear with me. Years from now I’ll be able to read these and remember those wacky days in the late summer of ’01 when I was totally incoherent.

Go to amazon.com and get a copy of weaklazyliar’s “Yesterday Night.” It’s very good, very delicate (in a not at all annoying way) stuff, and you deserve it, you know you do. The work they’re doing now on the new CD is not only amazing and another step forward, but is also balls-y as hell, because of how they’re going about it. You can visit their site to get a sense of what they’re trying to do and how they’re doing it, and I suppose at some point they’ll really spell it out for everyone, but it really seems to be coming together in an amazing way.

Yeah, yeah, I’m shutting up now.

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13 Aug: studio

OVERTURE
me – guitar

HITCHCOCK BLONDE
me – guitar

This is the worst point in recording a song for me. I don’t consider myself to be an accomplished guitarist, although I have improved over the past few years, and I can play a song well. I don’t know theory or any of that, I know the names of some chords and the rest I’ve simply stumbled onto and tried to figure out what they were later. On acoustic guitar my hand cramps badly if there are too many barre chords. But I think, in general, I am a dependable guitarist. Recording acoustic tracks usually means doing it a few times for each song, even assuming you nail it the first time, just for double tracking and making a fuller sound. So the process for me can become very painful. Plus, the song at this stage sounds the most bare, usually just the drums and a scratch guitar track and a scratch vocal. So, you don’t get a feeling of accomplishment very often at this point, because even when you’re done the song sounds pretty weak, although you can see the vague shape of what it might become.

Luckily, tracking on these went well, and there aren’t any overdubs for the acoustic on either, so both were one take with a punch-in on one song at the end.

We were all sort of lackluster overall. Rob was tired, I think, and of course there’s me. I will be on Percocet for the entire week because of the kidney stone. Which amuses me to a certain extent, because it means at least part of this CD will have been recorded under the influence of strong depressants. Maybe I should put that on a sticker on the outside.

An added bonus was talk about more rehearsing for the band, so clearly the feeling across the board is that this is a real band and a going concern.