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
Showing posts with label LA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label LA. Show all posts
Thursday, April 26, 2007
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
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
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
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
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Day Seven and Eight - Miller Time
So the drums are done, and Matt and Jeff took the weekend to edit tracks, spend some QT with their families, and fix a few noisy channels at the studio. This left Liam and Me off the leash for a long weekend to pursue our true passion – drugs and partying.
LA is a mythical land of excess and historic celebrity overdoses, and who are we to fight it? We got a giant pile of weed, giant pile of coke, giant pile of meth, giant pile of assorted barbiturates, added a fifth of Jameson and some heavy cream as a base, hit puree, and hit the town.
On Friday night Briks and I went to the Roosevelt in Hollywood with some friends where we bought $13 drinks and talked to hip strangers. Later the band united with some Philadelphia ex-pats at a laid-back house party at the Baron’s house in the Hollywood Hills. In bed promptly at 6am.
On Saturday we hung out at producer Matt Mahaffey’s house/studio in Sherman Oaks. He has a great space with some awesome gear, tasteful Balinese décor, and two spoiled Dalmatians. We ordered BBQ, watched Star Wars and some of Matt’s live performance DVDs (solo and with Beck), and had a good bonding experience. Geeking out on bootleg original session files from some of our favorite classic albums was probably the highlight of the weekend. From there we went to an Agency Group party in Silver Lake and met some fine Americans and rock and roll types. It took us back to SXSW. In bed promptly at 3:30am.
Updated celebrity encounters: Eva Longoria, Kelly Osbourne, Amy Winehouse, guitarist from Jet, Josh Frankfort.
Tomorrow we get back into the studio for bass tracking. McKenzie’s time to shine.
Matt
LA is a mythical land of excess and historic celebrity overdoses, and who are we to fight it? We got a giant pile of weed, giant pile of coke, giant pile of meth, giant pile of assorted barbiturates, added a fifth of Jameson and some heavy cream as a base, hit puree, and hit the town.
On Friday night Briks and I went to the Roosevelt in Hollywood with some friends where we bought $13 drinks and talked to hip strangers. Later the band united with some Philadelphia ex-pats at a laid-back house party at the Baron’s house in the Hollywood Hills. In bed promptly at 6am.
On Saturday we hung out at producer Matt Mahaffey’s house/studio in Sherman Oaks. He has a great space with some awesome gear, tasteful Balinese décor, and two spoiled Dalmatians. We ordered BBQ, watched Star Wars and some of Matt’s live performance DVDs (solo and with Beck), and had a good bonding experience. Geeking out on bootleg original session files from some of our favorite classic albums was probably the highlight of the weekend. From there we went to an Agency Group party in Silver Lake and met some fine Americans and rock and roll types. It took us back to SXSW. In bed promptly at 3:30am.
Updated celebrity encounters: Eva Longoria, Kelly Osbourne, Amy Winehouse, guitarist from Jet, Josh Frankfort.
Tomorrow we get back into the studio for bass tracking. McKenzie’s time to shine.
Matt
Friday, March 23, 2007
Days Five and Six - Hostile in the Hostel
Good Morning,
It is my distinct pleasure to announce that yesterday, at approximately 10:00 PM, Jon finished tracking drums. After 4 grueling 12-hour days trapped within a cave like room filled with a sea of microphones criss-crossing in varying directions, he triumphantly emerged, and will now be taking a much deserved vacation from the studio's hot seat. So, with this first step complete, and our producers working feverishly on perfecting the drums tracks before moving on to bass, we have all been givin the day off for some R&R. And, aside from a planned trip to Thrive's office to check in, as well as a lunch date with our booking agent, the four of us are face to face with a vacant day, filled with possibiity and potential.
Currently, while the others are getting ready for lunch, I find myself seated in the main room of the Hostel, watching other Hostel residents watching the movie Hostel, which, admittedly, is somewhat disturbing. And so we are off to enjoy the city, keeping our eyes peeled for movie stars and important-esque people at all times. Hope all is well with everyone.
-Dan
It is my distinct pleasure to announce that yesterday, at approximately 10:00 PM, Jon finished tracking drums. After 4 grueling 12-hour days trapped within a cave like room filled with a sea of microphones criss-crossing in varying directions, he triumphantly emerged, and will now be taking a much deserved vacation from the studio's hot seat. So, with this first step complete, and our producers working feverishly on perfecting the drums tracks before moving on to bass, we have all been givin the day off for some R&R. And, aside from a planned trip to Thrive's office to check in, as well as a lunch date with our booking agent, the four of us are face to face with a vacant day, filled with possibiity and potential.
Currently, while the others are getting ready for lunch, I find myself seated in the main room of the Hostel, watching other Hostel residents watching the movie Hostel, which, admittedly, is somewhat disturbing. And so we are off to enjoy the city, keeping our eyes peeled for movie stars and important-esque people at all times. Hope all is well with everyone.
-Dan
Monday, March 19, 2007
Day One - SXSW to LA
Dear all:
In an unprecedented attempt at web diligence, Liam and Me will try to keep a studio journal in order to keep everyone updated on our progress / setbacks / victories / defeats. We will be as honest as possible to give you an accurate perspective of our creepy lives.
Having just returned from dinner with our A&R, Briks and I are currently sitting in the “lobby” of our “hotel” in LA. Its actually more like a youth hostel with private suites, but it’s a pretty nice setup. Good location in West Hollywood, two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a TV that doesn’t work, bunk beds. Ballin. We are surrounded by good-looking collegiate backpackers from Britain and her former colonies. We are completely exhausted and looking forward to a full night’s sleep.
From March 14 until today, we were in Austin, Texas for the SXSW music conference. This year’s was apparently the biggest one yet, with 25,000 crazy people descending on the city for 4 days of showcases, parties, drinking, eating, and deal making. It’s fun to the point of brutality. Widespread indulgence and alcoholism probably shaves a few weeks off your life. Well worth it. Liam and Me played a few great shows – Purevolume’s nightly party shortly after we arrived, an afternoon showcase for Burnlounge on Saturday, and a super hot set at the Viper Room later that night. We also did our first ever videotaped interviews for Havok TV and Stim TV, filled our rented minivan with 14 people, received and gave lots of free schwag, got kicked out of a hotel room, and enjoyed the finer things in life with the staff of High Times magazine. Our Emmy nominated friend Glenn Anderson videotaped much of the madness, which we will share with you soon.
Great bands we saw: Buzzcocks reunion, Kings of Leon, Lynden, New London Fire, Stock Market Crash, Young Love, Junior Senior, Zack Hexum.
Fabulous celebrity encounters: Perry Farrel, James Iha, Wayne Coyne, Breckin Meyer, the cast of Human Giant, that chick who plays “Maybe” in Arrested Development, Albert Hammond Jr.
This morning on two hours of sleep, we left Austin TX at 9:30am, picked up our manager, and drove 3 hours to Houston, and flew to LA. Tomorrow we meet our producers and see the studio for the first time, and maybe start tracking the drums.
Matt
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