This past weekend we setup our drums and amplifiers inside the library of good old Columbus Ave Kindergarten in Freeport. This is also the place where we recorded 90% of the instruments for Signal Corps, but this time we got Phil Douglas from Small Arms Dealer (you might recognize him from the now defunct Latterman) to engineer the recording instead of using a 16 track Korg portable studio with Rob and I not knowing what the hell we're doing.
Friday night we set up microphones and got some levels so that Saturday we could begin as soon as we got in. Of course that didn't happen until late in the afternoon, but we still banged out about 10 songs of live takes on the first day. We borrowed a sweet American Fender P-Bass and Mesa Boogie cabinet from Danny of The Fad to make sure everything sounded top notch.
On Saturday night after we were done we ate Green Cactus, and listened to everything from Leatherface, Weezer, and Garden Variety, to Tom Waits and The Beatles White Album. Duncan, Rob, Phil and I all decided to sleep inside the school cuz we really didn't feel like driving home. Not much sleeping happened but a lot of debauchery did happen. After I went to sleep at 5am, everyone else decided to go up on the roof to watch the sunrise until 7:30am. Needless to say, we didn't get an early start Sunday morning. We tracked 3 more songs for a total of 13 songs, did our punch-in's for anything we fucked up on the live takes, and broke down our stuff on Monday.
I really wish we brought a camera because the scene inside this library was pretty hilarious. The drums were set up on a pretty little blue rug with hopscotch and cute animal drawings. To stop some of the bleed from our amps, we placed bulletin boards in front of them with happy sunflowers and kittens on them. There were lots of sunshine books and big pencils on the wall and paper dinosaurs everywhere. Duncan took some video with his camera, and maybe if we can figure it out (and if it's not too incriminating) we will post it up here. Sometime next week, we'll be starting vocals in the Hobo House where Phil and Rob reside. This record is gonna shit on Signal Corps.
-Joey