weather: awesome

listening to: the who - who's next, def leppard - high n dry

watching: true romance

eating: yogurt

drinking: coffee

as i type this alec is stacking a bunch of computer monitors on our back porch.  great, now we are officially the neighborhood freaks.

we've started to do some live tracking, which is exciting.  we've recorded all of the songs live probably dozens of times each - perfecting parts, tones, arrangements, etc.  we won't be using any of these takes but now that we've got some kickin drum, bass, and guitar tones we are closer to doing final takes.  

this way of recording is so different from how we've recorded in the past.  it's an exciting and eye-opening experience.  our mega-producer johnny k is forcing us to take our time and do everything right.  and that means everything.  this is a good thing.  it's really easy to want to just jump right into tracking these songs.  we've had some of them written for over a year and we're all pretty anxious.  but we're going to do this one right, and that's going to take a while. (by day 20 of the last record we were about 2/3rd's done tracking. we haven't really even started yet!) we've been working every day, all day and all night, and it will be worth it. 

we've been listening to a lot of great rock recordings to get pumped up.  boston, the who, def leppard, van halen, etc.  these records were done the hard way, no computers to fix every little thing, with guitars and bass bleeding all over the drum mics and such.  yet, sonically they are far and away better than many rock albums coming out now.  take the focus away from the computer, put it back into the playing, the vibe, the band.  that's the goal.  

and now, some random pics from my cell phone:

most recent amp setup: 

raw power:

my sisters dog digging a hole:

-tom

Day 15 of Preproduction: Round 1 is complete.

Johnny K has opened all 10 of our eyes (12 if you count my contact lenses, 11 with all the winking) to the errors of our song-writing ways, namely songs where the pre-chorus skips the chorus heading straight into the post-chorus (wtf?) or using celebratory guitar solos as a way to avoid writing anything else (which we all secretly think is still kind of sweet, don't worry, there will not be any missed guitar solo opportunities). 

That said, we have this: 

A collage of excellent songs, still slightly rough on the edges but a mere mega break-through or 19 away from this:

Can I end this post here? Stay fresh, unlike Alec and I after throwing up some major weight. 

jake