A litany of stuff:

• Spent last weekend recording Denton band, Handbrake. They tore through 10 songs on the very first day, and we were still done by 7:30! Great guys, really interesting, occasionally captivating guitar work. We’re doing vocals and mixing this coming weekend, then we’re done.
• Also this week, been in the studio finishing up mixes for both American Werewolf Academy and The Distant Seconds. In both cases, the workflow has been similar to both the recent New Year and Shearwater albums: I do mixes “in the box” with Cubase, then the bands listen, make notes, and I tweak the mixes, then send another round of references. Once all is approved, I buss the tracks out through our console and to tape.
• It’s been a while since our MTR-10 1/4″ stereo machine has seen service, so I sent the heads off to JRF Magnetics for an evaluation. I hauled our old Otari MX-5050 1/4″ stereo machine out of storage, to use in the interim. I honestly don’t remember the last time it was used (there’s a Post-it on it that says, “Setup for Quantegy 456 –mb, 31 Mar 2001″), but after cleaning it up and setting it up, it’s as solid as ever. It handles tape like a bouncer handles drunk, but whatever.
• Greg Norman of Electrical Audio recently rebuilt both The Echo Lab’s Neumann CMV 563 mic systems. They now run on 120V power, have new mic connectors, new tubes, and were generally cleaned up and brought back to spec. They sound phenomenal.
• Doing four shows running sound for Bottomless Pit and the Kadane Brothers (of The New Year/Bedhead) next week. NYC, Boston, Montreal, and Toronto. Come say hello!

A couple of years ago, I recorded an album for Peter Schmidt & His Gentleman Scholars which never saw an official release. Quite a shame, as I personally think it’s Peter’s best work in an already-impressive 20 year music career. Recently, though, he posted a track from the album, “Who Will Forgive You?”, on MySpace.

As you probably know, Peter’s been at the helm of many important Dallas bands over the years (Three On A Hill, Funland, and Legendary Crystal Chandelier), as well as having a hand in Bedhead (filling in for Tench Coxe as “Substitute Schmidt”) and The New Year. I hope the rest of this impressive album finds its way out into the world eventually.

Currently in the studio, mixing The Great Tyrant’s new LP. This is an incredible band, such a wonderful mix of influences: Magma, Scott Walker, Neurosis, and much more obscure stuff I couldn’t even try to name. We did a few more overdubs yesterday and mixed the first song, “Adorable”. (Best line: “We are all accidents/you have an adorable accident”.)

The original tracks were recorded at the beginning of February with my usual calibration: 24-track, 15ips, CCIR equalization, +6/250 nWb/m, no noise reduction, using RMGI Emtec 900 tape. For overdubs and mixing, we transferred the tracks into Cubase at 24-bit, 96kHz. (Deron had to do a synth overdub on one song that is basically in free time, and needed to see the drum hits to play in time.) I’m using Cubase as a glorified tape machine, doing the actual mixing on the console rather than using plug-ins, and everything is going down to our Otari MTR-10 1/4″ machine with RMGI Emtec 911 tape, 15ips, CCIR, +3/250 nWbm. I’m really, really looking forward to hearing and seeing the final release of this.

Locally: Mark Burroughs soundly defeated the inept, borderline-malfeasant Perry McNeill, becoming our city’s new mayor. This is the first time in 20 years an incumbent mayor has lost an election. From everything I’ve seen of Burroughs, he will be a thoughtful leader with his attention on the community, something desperately needed for the 9th-fastest growing city in America.

And finally, Tre Orsi played the Denton Humane Society’s “Cats and Dogs” benefit at Rubber Gloves last night, which I neglected to mention or list anywhere. Ooops! It was our first show since April, and we had barely played together since, but it was lots of fun, and I was able to introduce my signature drink, the Red Hot, to a few new folks. (A Red Hot is a mix of Goldschlager and cranberry, on the rocks.)

Back to work.

I’ve made a half-hearted attempt at updating my audio resumé, for those interested. This isn’t everything (not by a long mile), but it’s at least a little more complete than before.

Shearwater’s Rook LP is out this week on Matador. Also, Deep Snapper’s Into The Ugly is available directly from them. I’m pretty happy with the way both of these records turned out.

I’m taking a much-needed, though brief, vacation out to Ray Roberts Lake tomorrow night. Myself, my band mates in Tre Orsi, and Dave Willingham are biking out Saturday afternoon and staying overnight. Man-camping is a fine substitute for touring these days.

Austin band, The Distant Seconds, came up for a 4-day session last week. We tracked 12 songs, finishing everything but a few lead vocals and an overdub or two. They’ll be back at the end of the month to finish tracking, then mixing.

This was my first full project done on ATR Magnetics 2″ tape. (I’d previously used their 1/2″ on Shearwater’s Rook album.) Suffice to say, I’m very happy with the performance: no shedding or sticky residue like the recent RMG stock, and it handles well in the transport. Despite the expense ($289/reel, about double what we paid for Quantegy or Emtec before the plant closures) I couldn’t be happier.

We still have a few reels of 2″ Emtec 900 in stock (replacements for Shearwater’s failed reels), and 8 reels of 1/4″ Emtec 911 that actually seem fine — the 2″ will be relegated to rental reels for bands without the budget for tape. Otherwise, all new sessions are getting ATR, and once the 1/4″ stock runs out, I’ll get cases of ATR 1/4″ too.

Finally this past weekend, we put the final touches on and mixed American Werewolf Academy’s new album. This has been a long time coming, and I’m not ever sure how many days we ended up spending in the studio on this. The band tracked all drums and some other stuff on 1/4″ 8-track in their shed, then we did tons and tons of overdubs in the studio. Howard is all over some of these songs, adding reverse, treated piano, lap steel, organ, and a full box of percussion. The guys are going to sit with the mixes this week, then we’ll print everything to 1/4″ next weekend and ship the reels off to Carl Saff or John Golden for mastering, most likely.

In between these two sessions, I started sorting through piles of broken equipment in our storage area. I repaired a bunch of cables and headphones, and starting boxing broken mics up to be sent off for repair. This week I’ll be going through discarded rack gear and finally getting that stuff up on eBay.

Will have more coming soon, including details on The New Year’s upcoming tour.

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.