By Stefan Rogenmoser

The Explorers Club

Through some strange act of magic or alchemy the famous Micky Dolenz, a former lead singer of the famous band the Monkees, asked up-and-comers the Explorers Club to track the music of two songs for his upcoming album, his tribute to the famous Carole King. The details concerning the origin of the project were never made clear to me, so I’m guessing alchemists were involved, or maybe just monkeys. . . .

Jason and I departed early on the morning of Thursday, March 5 for Atlanta, where we would spend the next two days and nights recording at our producer’s studio.

When we arrived, slightly late, the first thing we did was go to lunch at a Mexican restaurant (the Explorers Club and those associated with it only dine at Mexican restaurants). Mike, Jason, Troy (the studio’s mutli-talented, mutli-instrumentalist), our producer Matt and I shared many laughs at lunch… And I tire of Mexican food fast, esp. on the road, unless we’re in Texas or California.

About a week earlier the band was touring somewhere in the Midwest when Mike predicted all this would happen: a long lunch where people would mention who engineered what song on what take in what year that was better than the released version, and so on, instead of focusing on the task ahead. I found this terribly funny at the time and again a week later when it really happened. Ha, ha, ha.

At the studio we listened to the original versions of the famous Carole King songs we were set to record as well as some other songs that Jason and Troy planned to make them sound like. The Carole King songs we were doing for Micky Dolenz are “Take Good Care of My Baby” and “Go Away Little Girl.”

When we’re through these songs will sound like parts of the famous “Wichita Lineman” and more parts of “Wichita Lineman”, the famous “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” and possibly even parts of “Do You Love Me”—not the Explorers Club song of the same title, but the famous Dave Clark Five version of the famous Contours song that goes like: “Do you love me, now that I can dance . . . watch it now.”

Jason, Troy and Mike worked on the basic musical and vocal arrangements like they were trying to catch the last train to Clarksville. They tried out a few different things, Matt joined in the fun by playing his drums (our producer is also a drummer) with various beats; some worked, some didn’t. All the while I was trying to glimpse at the chord charts for the two songs so I could at least have basic idea of what to play and which piano chord voicing to use.

We had a few short, fun jams in the big studio recording room: Mike on bass guitar, Matt on drums, Troy on elec. guitar, Jason on acoustic guitar, and occasionally I’d hit a piano chord or two (at this point I still hadn’t learned the songs—and I was exponentially outclassed by all the other musicians in the room, who—unlike me—are excellent at their instruments).

A piano tuner found that he could tuna piano but not a fish while the rest of us were in the control room working out arrangements. The piano was going “ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding . . . ping, ping, ping, ping, ping, ping . . .” until the 88 tones were pitch perfect.

The drums were recorded first to a scratch acoustic guitar track Troy played, so Matt could follow along. Matt quickly tracked both songs as easily as a pleasant valley Sunday.

Mike tracked the bass like the spirit of Peter Tork was in the room with him. Mike played his P-bass through a loud vintage Gibson amp.

Then the acoustic rhythm guitars were tracked: the three best guitar players I know, Jason, Troy and Mike were all playing the same chords in the same room at once. (I think Mike Nesmith would be proud). It was cool. It even took them a few takes, which makes me feel better about being an inadequate musician in the presence of great players.

They worked into the night as I watched their every move like a someday man, a maybe child. As I was daydream believing and coughing through my cold, which seemed to be getting worse, little did I know I was giving my Martian Death Flu to Mike.

Troy tracked three piano parts for “Take Good Care of My Baby”; his inventive playing made me take a giant step outside my mind, which was thinking: “What’s the use in trying, all you get is pain, when I needed sunshine I got rain.”

I guess The Explorers Club will need a third keyboard player if we ever plan on doing that song live.

We went to sleep in the studio bedrooms upstairs.

Day Two began with Jason and I sneaking out to get breakfast. I was so tired I poured syrup into my coffee while waiting on the pancakes. The syrup in the coffee was actually good. What better place to have syrup based drink than Atlanta, Ga., the home of Coca-Cola.

Dave showed up from Greenville, S.C. and everyone else was gathering in the studio.

Jason, Mike and Troy worked out vocal arrangements most of the day as I got bored enough to add tons of people to the band’s Myspace page.

I got lost trying to keep up with their arrangements, they were over my head, over my vocal range, I’m not a singer in the band, and of course they would never let me sing anything anyway. Hence massive boredom. Even if I’d had anything to read I would’ve been too tired to read.

Mike and I kept getting sicker, coughing harder, coughing more things out of me that I didn’t know my body could produce.

At one point I left the control room, went upstairs and took a 30 minute power nap. It helped.

When I got back they had started recording the backing vocals, since of course Micky Dolenz will be singing all the lead parts.

Eventually Mike had to leave for a gig with some other band. Dave sang the bass vocals in the big studio room. He was getting sick too. We were still shivering off the cold weather we’d experienced in the Midwest not more than a week ago. Our bodies were almost thawed out at this point.

Then we went to dinner. Ate some of that food stuff.

Back in the studio it came to pass that Jason recorded some vocals in the big studio room. Dave left at some point. It was getting late. Time in the studio is long hours spent waiting to play your part.

I surfed the internet, found out that our pal Dev from Lightspeed Champion—a British band we toured with in the summer of 2008—was in Atlanta recording an album. The rest of his band members were elsewhere. Anyway, we didn’t have time to catch up in person, but we communicated through his blog.

Eventually it was my turn to play something, to record something! The moment I’d waited for two days and nights! It was here! Finally! I hate exclamation points (and myself for ever using them)!

Matt and I tried to find a cool organ sound on his computer, but it wasn’t happening. Nobody wanted to pull out the Hammond B3 organ his studio, which I would love to play, since they’re the greatest electric organs ever made, and probably the most expressive and diverse musical instrument around.

Anyway, Matt found something cooler for me to play: a Multivox MX-20 synthesizer. It was probably from the 1970s or 1980s and probably the coolest keyboard ever invented. I love vintage gear, it sounds so real.

Troy found a cool sound for it to make and taught me a lead part to play. Matt put the MX-20 synth though an old analog delay effect, essentially a big box he had to hook up to the sound board. The lead part sounds a bit like the famous “Telstar” instrument by the famous Tornados. The part also sounds a little like the song “Greensleeves.”

The first few takes were complete failures on my part. My timing made me feel like a Randy Scouse Git. With some coaching from Matt and Troy, I eventually recorded something useable, even though the timing was still slightly rushed. Jason kept encouraging me, and without meaning to do so, it almost made me feel like I was being patronized. I thought of the famous John Lennon’s lyric in the somewhat famous Beatles song “Hey Bulldog” — “You don’t know what it’s like to listen to your fears . . .”

After a few takes on the coolest synth in the world I was done. I had taken two days off work and essentially drove Jason to and from Summerville to Atlanta, sat around the studio for two days and nights doing nothing, to record a mondo-awesome MX-20 keyboard part that would last for about 10 seconds during the bridge of “Take Good Care of My Baby.” This is for a Micky Dolenz album, mind you. Dolenz was a lead singer for the Monkees, one of my favorite pop bands ever.

At one point in the studio (where days blur together in anyone’s memory) Troy thought of a few things Micky might say when he hears our tracks. “Do you guys think you’re the Beach Boys? I know the Beach Boys,” Troy said in a mock Micky voice that made Jason, Matt and I laugh uproariously.

We also found out that Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, who played guitar for the Doobie Brothers and Steely Dan, recorded one of the other track’s for Micky’s album. We talked about how much more we’re going to rule. Hahaha! “Take that, Skunk!” we shall boast when our track prevails.

While the MX-20 synth was still out Troy decided to sneak in the melody form the famous Carol King written song “One Fine Day” onto the end of our version of “Take Good Care.”

Since the song wasn’t on Matt’s computer in his humongous music library, We listened to the YouTube version of “One Fine Day” as made famous by the famous girl group the Chiffons. The piano mix on the YouTube recording is loud, somewhat out of time and inexplicably stops playing about 12 seconds into the song. After spending two days and nights in the studio with timing Nazis, this recording seemed hilarious to us. The session piano player must have got really excited about something. And the producer must not have really cared. The song was an enormous hit, it even had a movie named after it that was made in the 1990s.

We closed out the night with Jason playing great guitar licks on Troy’s Fender Esquire, one of the greatest guitars ever made. Jason tried a few different licks. I liked them all. There was a nice amount of fuzz coming out of the amplifier Jason played through. The amp was in the main studio room. Jason was in the control room with us.

That was it. We went to bed. Whatever else needed to be finished, Troy would do later with Matt. The next morning Jason and I drove back home. All it takes to do a song for a Monkee is a little bit me, a little bit you.

"One Fine Day"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8LmTaVrPl8