Thursday, April 26, 2007

Days 29 - 40 - The Home Stretch

Dear all –

Once again I apologize for the tremendous lag in our blog postings. I promise that in the future I’ll be more on top of the ball. Things have gotten a little crazy and busy. Maybe a lot crazy and busy. I’ll boil down some of the recent happenings:

April 18th: We played our first show in a month, and our first official non-showcase LA gig at the Viper Room, the Sunset Strip’s famous decadent rock club. It felt great to play live again, despite our studio rustiness. The label types, producers, and booking agents all showed up in addition to many strangers, all of which had very nice things to say. It was also nice to drink again. We drank many tequila shots, which I hereby christen the Liam and Me party drink of choice. This should come as no surprise to most of you.

April 20th: We’re hardcore into the vocals, and a bit behind schedule. Jeff and Matt have gone above and beyond the call of production duty, investing time and energy to the point where it’s encroaching on upcoming projects. Thanks to flexibility and improvisation, we have an extra week of studio time where I’ll do vocals with Christopher James in his studio space, freeing up Matt and Jeff to play catch up and do some edits. Mr. James is our mixing engineer, who also did the Hellogoodbye record, was Self’s keyboard player, and has a long and rich pop /rock /R&B pedigree, including a little platinum on the wall.

April 21st: Today is my birthday. This morning I drove the rest of the band to the airport. Larkin and Briks are returning to Philly to prepare for our tour, and McKenzie has his grandfather’s funeral. After dropping the rest of the band off, I returned to our now empty hostel suite to enjoy some rare privacy. It was great. I lounged around all day, read books and drank coffee. Later that evening I saw my friend Sam’s band The Jackal Headed Front play, which I’d been looking forward to for about three years. It was a great time with lots of prog production trickery. Then I had some Whiskey drinks. Delish.

April 23d: Started vocals in Chris James’s place. It’s a great studio that used to belong to a film scorer. Huge SSL board, great outboard gear, a custom designed space with sexy dimmers, and a massive screen for projecting films, TV, or protools sessions. It was slightly unusual adjusting from Jeff’s production style to Chris’s, but were tearing through at record pace and getting some good shit done.

April 26: The producers and managers (John Davis, Jeff Surnow, Gary Richards, Matt, Jeff, Chris) all got together to listen to the tracks and talk strategy. I was forbidden from attending (they didn’t want to have to coddle sensitive artist types). Apparently everyone was extremely excited about the material, and we’re going to have a finished product by June 1st. Excoiting stuff. Had lunch with Davis, Jeremy Levy arrived in town to hang out before our friend Dan’s bachelor party.

There is much work to do and a relatively short time in which to do it, but everyone should expect a great record with fabulous sounding tracks.

Updated celebrity encounters: Shirley Manson, Alain Whyte, and that guy from that one movie you know, yeah, that one.

More updates soon. I’ll see you on the road…

Matt

Sunday, April 15, 2007

Days 23 - 28 - Vocals / Piano / Guitar

Sorry for the infrequent updates. We're coming down to the wire, having finished out the guitars, adding the last few instrumental flourishes and ripping into the vocals and piano. We've been split up into two different studios all week, which has proven to be very effective.

Jeff and I are in the main studio working on synths, vocals, piano, rhodes, and assorted other stuff. Matt has Dan, Jon, and McKenzie in his fabulous home studio working on all manner of guitar craziness and elaborate percussion arrangements on certain tracks. We're operating at maximum efficiency.

The good news is, pretty much all the instrumentals are finished and sounding fantastic. The sound is rocking and powerful with an extremely diverse array of tones and dynamics. The guitar arrangements drive with synths and pianos filling in the gaps. A&R Peter Torres stopped by on Friday and seemed very happy with the sound of even the raw tracks.

The bad news is we have about a week to knock out vocals for 11 tracks, and under the studio microscope the quality of my voice can be hit or miss. I had a great day on Thursday and knocked the hell out of "Pretty Black Dress". Friday things weren't feeling quite as magical vocally, but we did git done the bulk of piano work.

This weekend our good friend and fabulous guitar player Aaron Kipnis flew out to LA specifically to play one glorious guitar solo on the record. I have yet to hear it, but apparently it rules so hard that no one will shut up. I can't wait.

Otherwise we've been workaholics, keeping our social lives responsibly low key. On Friday night we kicked it in the home of producer Jeff Turzo. We drank beer and wine, and Jeff was inspired to make everyone gourmet cheesesteaks at 1am, after someone made an offhand comment about Pat's and Geno's. Also, we learned that Jeff has not one but two hot wives. Who would have thought that the more demure producer maintains a harem? Later Larkin and I attended an after hours speakeasy in Silver Lake replete with secret password and attractive Japanese servers.

The rest of the weekend was spent quietly entertaining Mr. Kipnis, consisting largely of LA-only fast food joints, drugs, sex, rock and roll. He leaves tomorrow morning full of In n' Out Burger and happy memories.

Back in the fracas tomorrow morning. Wish us luck...

Matt

Sunday, April 8, 2007

Day 21-22 - Easter Eggs, or lack thereof.

For those who have been keeping tabs on our blog, you are no stranger to the frustrations we have been facing in the studio. That said, in an attempt to blow off some steam by accompanying our producer Jeff to the sold out HelloGoodbye show, we may have made a grave mistake. Filled with screaming, hysterically adoring fans, both on stage and off, HelloGoodbye put on a hell of a show, complete with Beastie Boy Cover songs and Confetti streamers shot into the sea of open armed young girls. Seeing all of this, the excitement and the rock, the show accomplished two things. First, it instilled unto each of us an intense desire to hit the road and get on our own tour, and second, it forced upon us the realization that 2-3 weeks of intense recording still stand in the way of our doing so. For now then, we must resign such desires and focus on the task at hand…but maybe we will go to the beach first.
Moving on to business in the studio, I have been given a vacation of sorts, and Matt has been thrown into the hot seat as we begin the recording of synths and keyboards. Now, while I do admit that it was nice to get a little time off from recording, I came to the realization this past Saturday that things can get a little slow in the recording studio when you aren’t the one actually recording. To enlighten you as to the happenings of the day, I watched McKenzie take on Star Destroyers and help the Rebel cause via Star Wars for Playstation 2, listened to Jon programming his beats on his laptop, and I incessantly surfed the web for hours, while occasionally practicing guitar in my little corner of the studio. However, whatever lack of excitement there may have been in the lounging areas of the studio, the work Matt completed on Saturday, as well as the potential the recordings all have in general, more than make up for it. It is finally getting to the point where we can really see the songs nearing completion, especially now, as Matt plans on starting vocals tomorrow.
And, while I have enjoyed my time off, I must admit that I am excited for tomorrow as well, for as Matt and Jon remain in the studio to continue working on Keyboards and vocals, McKenzie and I will head to Matt M.’s house to (hopefully)finish up the remaining guitar work. Hopefully this splitting of the group will catch us up on any lost time, and with any luck we may even be able to soon say that there is a light at the end of the tunnel…maybe. We will of course keep you posted.
In closing, we want to wish all of you a very Happy Easter, and pray that you all had fantastic breakfasts/brunches. If not, remember that we all had a single bagel apiece, so, barring a few exceptions, you probably all fared a little better than the lot of us.

Cheers,
Dan

Friday, April 6, 2007

Day 17 - 20 - Holdups Galore

Sure, we have a lot of ambitious guitar arrangements. But for reasons mostly beyond our control, this shit is taking forever as we enter our second week of goddamned guitar tracking. The primary issue is tuning. We're forced to go back and painstakingly retrack parts chord by chord because frets are simply not staying in tune for sections played high up on the neck of the guitar. Its just barely, barely off, but enough for the discriminating listener to hear the twang.

Matt M and Jeff remain patient, focused, and positive as we work through this stuff, but we band members are going mildly nuts. Matt Mahaffey brought in a flat screen TV, PS2, and collection of bizarre games and DVDs which has dulled the pain - McKenzie and I are in the midst of our second conquest of the Star Wars universe in Battlefronts I.

We had Thursday and Friday off. Thursday Jeff had some things to finish up and editing to catch up on. Friday we were kicked out of our studio by Donna Summer. Diva! Would have been nice to meet her though.

Briks, Larkin, and McKenzie had been talking about a visit to Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles, an LA only chain, for months. We finally went for lunch on Thursday. It was a delicious and strange combination, leaving us with that warm, greasy feeling on the inside. Seeing we were close to the Hollywood sign and seized by an adventurous need to work off some fried chicken, we hiked a trail that led right around the back of it. Seeing as the sign is covered with an array of cameras and motion sensors, we chickened out of climbing over the fence and down the rock wall to touch it. But we did manage to peg the letter H with a rock. Take that, I guess.

Tonight we're heading to the Hellogoodbye show with Jeff, and tomorrow we're back to work on Synths and Vocals. Tour dates are filling in rapidly! Check out our myspace for details.

Updated celebrity encounters: Tommy "Tiny" Lister - http://us.imdb.com/name/nm0001474/

Matt

Tuesday, April 3, 2007

Day 14, 15, 16 - Back on Track

We had a relatively relaxing weekend again, with two days off for Jeff to continue work on the tracks. Nothing too outrageous this time around, but we keep finding more and more old friends and random acquaintances through small degrees of separation.

Friday night our friend Kevin Welding came to visit - he's getting his doctorate in economics and California girls at UC Santa Barbara. We boozed and rode golf carts on the Paramount studio lot with my friend Wes from school, and later attended a formal cocktail affair with some other ex-Philadelphians, horribly under-dressed of course. Saturday we were invited to a BBQ with other east coast transplants, some smart and insane Princeton kids working mostly in entertainment. Jon ran into a high school classmate who just happens to be writing with our friend from home. Later in the evening I just happened to bump into my ex-College roomie at a diner at 3am.
Peter Torres and his lady took us out for all you can eat Korean BBQ on Sunday and we closed the place down. Our hostel friend Alad won his film festival. Good times.

We're now back in the studio on the guitars, moving along nicely. At this point, half of the tracks are ready for keys and vox with the remaining songs about 60-80% knocked out. Its all still a bit disorienting, but there's light at the end of the tunnel. The quality of the sound is light years beyond our previous efforts, and the record is really starting to take shape. Exciting stuff. Exciting, maddening stuff.

Production note - some fret on any guitar will always be the slightest bit out of tune and it will fuck your shit up.

Updated celebrity encounters: Maggie Gyllenhaal, that dude who plays Lloyd on Entourage.

Matt