I’m ready to get back into working on “Rook”. Jonathan, Thor, and the harpist are driving up tonight, and we’ll commence overdubs tomorrow morning.

During the break, Jonathan and Mark Sonnabaum (our string/woodwinds arranger) have been piling on the arrangements, and our to-do list of overdubs has become, shall we say, ambitious. We are recording through the 9th and reconvening for final mixing in January. Dave Willingham is going to assist me with mixing, which will provide some much-needed perspective and oversight after spending more than 4 weeks in the studio working on these songs.

Last night, Bubba Kadane came up and we did some guitar overdubs on The New Year’s new record. In between our mixing sessions in September and October, he and Matt went back to Electrical Audio for three days w/ Albini and tracked 4 more songs. Matt will be in Texas for Christmas break, when we’ll do his vocals and extra guitars, and start mixing the remaining songs. All told, we’ll have spent maybe 15 days in the studio just mixing and recording overdubs.

I’m very excited for 2008: both Shearwater and The New Year will release these new albums, and hopefully I’ll be along with them both for the tours to follow. On top of that, I’m doing new records for Deep Snapper, The Great Tyrant, and American Werewolf Academy — all great bands I’ve recorded before, and all of the records much shorter affairs than The New Year and Shearwater, much to my relief.

Howard and Bryan both have new Tre Orsi songs in the pipeline, which we’ll work on tonight. We’ll start recording in March or April, w/ Bubba wearing the producer’s shades again.