September 2, 2009 - Recording update 3

Five days of recording time are behind us. I spent Monday and Tuesday recording lead vocals. I can never completely explain how tiring this process is. It's not like the old days of The Beatles where you hit something in one take. These days you have to do it over and over and over again to get perfection. Thank God for some recent advances in technology that can give some of us hacks a bit of a break.

Today Marc Cannata of Far From Finished came down to the studio and laid down some backing vocals for me. Some of it I could have done but it would have sounded whack with me backing up myself. Some of it I couldn't even think about doing. He has such a beautiful voice and an amazing sense of note and melody. And he writes all their tunes so you know he's creative as hell. So he laid down some foundations and Brit will build onto those when we take up phase two of this project in about two and a half weeks. I'm listening to some sample rough mixes right now and I'm feeling pretty excited about what we're building here. It's 8 songs that run about 24 minutes in total. Too short to get boring and that's how I like it.

Now there are all sorts of other things to start planning. Sequencing of songs. A music video. A new website. Artwork for the CD. Release dates. All that crap. I can start thinking about those now since the majority of the hard work is done.

More to come soon.

Mark

August 31, 2009 Recording update 2

Three days of studio time are down. We've tracked basics for eight songs and I've completed lead vocals on two of the songs. With a little luck then I will be done with lead vocals tomorrow. Then I'll do some backing parts Wednesday. We'll be back in there on September 18 and 19 wrapping up backing vocals, group vocals, acoustic guitars, some extra lead guitars, and some B3 organ (all of this before I jet up to Maine for the Ducky Boys' shows). And we mix on September 26 and 27. It should be a fun month.

Steve, Jay and Mike played perfectly. Everything is exceeding our expectations and we're looking forward to getting these songs out to you guys some time in the relatively near future.

August 28, 2009 - New recording

We start tomorrow on a new record at The Outpost in Stoughton, MA. The Outpost is where we did "Dark Days", "The Sky Is Falling", "Three Chords and the Truth", "The War Back Home" and "The Truth Can Be Brutal". It's also the studio that has produced the best of Blood for Blood, Ramallah, Dropkick Murphys and The Unseen.  No idea on a title for this one or when it will be released or even who will release it for that matter. But we're taking it back. We're going back to the old days when albums were 7 - 9 songs and bands focused on quality instead of quantity. Not sure of the exact amount of songs that will be on the release but it won't be a lot. Hopefully we've done a decent job of making each song strong and worth your time and $$.

Some of the working titles are as follows (and they are subject to change):
No One to Cry To
I'll Be There
The World is Fucked
Wasted Years
Cold Hearted Son of a Bitch


We'll report more as it unfolds. Wish us luck!