I apologize for the lack of updates lately. Sometimes typing on the internet has to take a backseat to for-real life. A brief update:

• Tre Orsi played our first-ever out-of-state shows, a 5-day mini-tour with our friends Minus Story. (The Coke Dares played the first three shows with us and destroyed everything they came into contact with.) We’re taking a break to work on new songs before playing out and starting work on an LP. Also have some touring planned for the Fall, but details will have to wait.
• Finally finished The New Year’s new LP. Take it with a grain of salt, but I think this is the Kadane brother’s best work to date. John Golden has mastered it, I’m just waiting to hear the reference copy. It comes out in September on Touch and Go, with ACTUAL U.S. and European tours to follow. The last New Year tour longer than 4 days was the summer of 2004. 2004!
• Still have a bunch of half-finished projects waiting for studio time: American Werewolf Academy, The Great Tyrant, and a great new Shiny Around The Edges LP. I’m starting a new record for Austin band, The Distant Seconds in May, too.
• Relating to a lack of studio time, we’re planning on building a B room at The Echo Lab. No ETA yet. Will be a much smaller place, suitable for overdubs, mixing, and smaller sessions, but with the same attention to slapdick quality as the big room.
• My brother and I are heading off to London, Amsterdam, The Hague, and Paris this Thursday. It’s his first time ever outside the U.S, and really my first time in Europe solely as a tourist. Looking forward to sight-seeing with Jason Molina in London, Dirt Music w/ Chris Brokaw in the Hague, and meat comas in Paris.
• Been on an amazingly huge Trumans Water kick lately. Anyone have a good quality vinyl copy of Spasm Smash XXXOXOX Ox and Ass they want to sell for cheap?

For a variety of reasons I’ll not go into here, I was planning on sitting SXSW 2008 out. I was kinda looking forward to staying at home for once and forgoing the insanity/inanity of the whole spectacle, but at the last minute a friend passed a gig on to me and so there ya go — tacos and sweat and beer and annoying haircuts for the weekend for me!

I’m heading down Friday morning in order to catch a bunch of shows here in Denton. We Shot JR has a good overview of what’s going on in DDFW, but these are my picks for the week:

• Tuesday: Times New Viking @ Strawberry Fields, Neptune @ Fra House
• Wednesday: Human Bell @ Good Records
• Thursday: STNNG @ Wisconsin (formerly The 8th Continent), Harvey Milk @ Andy’s

(The Human Bell LP, I cannot recommend her highly enough. My fave of the year so far.)

Stuff I hope to catch while in Austin: Fucked Up/No Age under the bridge, My Dad Is Dead, and Chris Brokaw. Anything else is just gravy.

Recent work-related stuff: my 3rd sinus infection of the winter has postponed things, but I’m currently mixing an LP for Valencian band Individual, mastering another Esopus Magazine compilation, and continuing work on the new American Werewolf Academy and The New Year LP’s. Tre Orsi has started fine-tuning some older songs in preparation for an April session. Also mixing the tracks I recorded for Last Men (formerly Douche), plus mixing a Notes From Underground LP and recording a new Shiny Around The Edges LP.

Big disappointments of late: no more episodes of The Wire (though Simon tied it up nicely enough), not being able to do the upcoming Destroyer tour, sinus infections.

This month has flown by. Quick run-down of what happened:

• Turned 31 on Feb 5
• Tre Orsi played two shows with Nina Nastasia, which were really really great experiences
• Worked with The Great Tyrant, American Werewolf Academy, Drink To Victory, Notes from Underground, and Douche
• Started ramping up for the next Works Progress release

Tre Orsi is playing at Rubber Gloves this Saturday with Joe Lally and Edie Sedgewick. March is mostly devoted to finish The New Year’s new LP. April is a quick Tre Orsi tour, then recording.

Ok!

Did yet another overnighter in the studio last night, sneaking in around 10 PM after Dave’s session was over so that I could mix Deep Snapper’s new LP. We started tracking last weekend, giving ourselves three days to record and mix 12 songs. As is often the case, we got behind schedule and had to find a gap, however brief and ill-timed, in the studio’s calendar to finish up. We started at 10 PM and the band was out the door, master tapes in hand, by 9:15 AM. Rather than drive through a dense fog (”throoough a dense fawg”, as Complete would say), I crashed in the studio apartment for a few hours.

Mastering for Shearwater’s Rook LP was last Friday at Sterling Sound with Greg Calbi. Jonathan offered to fly me up, but I felt it best to stick around Texas and catch up on housework and hang out with the wife. Apparently it went well — the band and label are happy — and the masters required very little in the way of rescuing. I’m going to wait until the vinyl is in my hands before listening, though — after months peering at this record through a microscope, I need a break. I’ll try and write another follow-up post on this album by the time it hits the street.

Starting this weekend, I’m recording a new LP for The Great Tyrant, then afterward finishing up American Werewolf Academy’s new one. Come March, Bubba and I will be finishing up the new New Year LP, and there’s lots of potential stuff, unconfirmed as of yet, on the horizon past that. It’s looking to be a good year for me, studio-wise.

Tre Orsi will have a busy spring: we’re playing shows in February with Nina Nastasia (Ft. Worth and Austin) and Joe Lally (Denton), then a 5-date run through the Midwest with Minus Story and the Coke Dares in April, followed by more recording. For those with an interest, we keep up with such things on the Tre Orsi web site.

Due to scheduling crunches and other constraints, I’ve started mixing Rook on my partner Dave’s Cubase system. Dave and I mix the songs, then send references to the band. They make notes, and I make modifications to the mixes and send more references. This goes back-and-forth until everyone is happy and confident in the final result. In January, Jonathan will come up and we’ll spend 5 days in The Echo Lab, running the mixes through our console and outboard gear and onto 1/2″ analog stereo tape.

This process is convoluted, but for a record as complex as Rook (so many harp overdubs!) and with so many logistical constraints (people in 3 different cities, a completely packed studio calendar) it makes sense. It gives the band members time to become comfortable with the mixes before signing off on them.

Typically, I prefer to record and mix records fully analog, tracking to 2″ and mixing to either 1/2″ or 1/4″ stereo tape. (Which format to mix to is usually a question of budget.) Since most records I make take between 3 and 5 days, and are basically documents of a band’s live sound, this is a really efficient way to work.

Rook is a different beast. Because the band is spread out across 3 cities, they only practice before tours. Of the 14 songs we initially tracked, they had played maybe 5 of them as a band before. Arrangement decisions were being made in the studio, rather than during practice. Lots of overdubs were added to fill out songs. It’s very much a studio creation, rather than a document of a living band. Because of this, mixing is more complex and requires a lot back-and-forth to find the right mix.

Quickies:

• Been knocking out vocals. Soundelux 251 is ruling for the croony stuff.
• “Century Eyes” now sounds like Suicide meets The Ex meets Yo La Tengo, sorta. Still waiting for the Half Machine Lip Moves moment, but oh yes, it will come.
• “Jolene” by Dolly Parton sounds INCREDIBLE vari-speeded down two and a half steps. Unreal. Definitely releasing this into the wild.

Friday night, Howard and I went out to the studio to go over the existing takes, talk about overdub ideas, and free up tracks to make room for said overdubs. This involved erasing unwanted takes (extra vocals, misguided cowbells) and sub-mixing some drum tracks. (The original drum recording used separate tracks for the toms and cymbal microphones. These 4 tracks were mixed down to 2 new tracks, then the originals were erased, leaving us with 2 more free tracks.)

On Saturday, Thor and Elaine (the harpist) arrived around 11:30, and we got started on harp overdubs. We tried a few different microphones in various positions before settling on two Avenson Audio omnis taped to the soundboard of the harp and an Audio-Technica Pro37r about 10′ away for ambiance. (Steve Albini used a similar technique on Joanna Newsome’s Ys album, but used four Crown GLM-100 mics up and down the soundboard for increased detail.) These were all run through John Hardy mic preamps and bussed through our Manley ELOP limiter to a single track.

Elaine ran through 7 songs in a matter of hours. A really wonderful experience for me, this being my first harp recording and all.

After we finished the harp overdubs, she packed up and we headed for dinner. 5 bowls of curry later, Howard and I returned and started in on his large list of overdub ideas. For the first time in my life, I recorded a flanged tambourine. (I feel liberated, honestly). We did a lot of extra guitar and organ bass pedals before calling it a night at 3:30 AM.