• 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?

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.

• 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!

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.

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.

• 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.

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.

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.

We’ll reconvene on Dec 1st to do strings, woodwinds, brass, and any remaining overdubs. Then we mix and put it to bed. In the interim I’ll be doing a little more work on the new The New Year album. And sleeping.

With fewer people in the studio, it’s more tempting (and easier) to experiment with sounds, mic technique, and effects. The Ibanez AD-230 analog delay is playing a big, but subtle role on this record, which is common for me. We got it years ago for cheap from Erik Woffard, and I haven’t made a record in the last five years without it. It distorts beautifully, and creates the most wonderful, wooly slapback and doubling.

Most overdubs so far have been pretty typical, technique-wise, save for some backwards piano added to “Rooks”. (In true “great minds think alike” fashion, Howard and I came up with the idea for this independent of one another.) The Studer A827 24-track can playback and record in reverse, so this was pretty easy to do, except for the last hit of the song — because the drums had stopped by that point, Howard had no way of knowing exactly when to play. We got around this by recording the part (which was late on recording, and therefore ahead of the beat on playback), then using a delay to put the part in time with the song. I then bounced the delayed piano to another track and erased the original.

I dunno if any of that is interesting to anyone else, but it just means that’s one fewer thing that won’t be done w/ a computer. So far, we’re stayed completely analog (save for making safety copies of some takes in Cubase), including all edits and effects, and my goal is to keep it that way.

These three days kind of blazed by — we got a lot done, but I’ll need to revisit my notes to remember exactly what we finished and when. My memories are a haze of beer and fire.

On Monday, we did an alternate take of “The Lost Boys” with acoustic guitar instead of electric. Thor tried various drum parts before settling on a simple kick and snare pattern, with no cymbals. The rest of the night was spent watching this video:

Tuesday night, our pal Margaret come out to hang with us, and she took some scandalous photos. The band tried several takes of “Rooks” before calling it a night, thinking they would try it again the next day. The next morning the band decided that the previous night’s takes were actually perfect, they had just been too wiped out to embrace their beauty or something. I dunno, I was making coffee and watching Star Wars: Episode II while they discussed it.

The rest of Wednesday was spent trying some alternate electric guitar and bass sounds for “Rooks”. We switched between Jonathan’s main Princeton amp and his old one, which he sold to the studio a while ago. We tried some takes with the amp in the iso booth before moving it out into the large playing room, where I recorded two close amp mics (a Sony C48 and a Beyer M26), as well as an AKG C414 for room ambience.

We called a halt for the day at 6:00 PM so that the band could pack up and head to Austin for tonight’s show at UT. Normally I would be in tow to run sound, but I haven’t seen my wife in 10 days, so. . .

We’ll resume Friday night around 7:00 PM or so. In the meantime, I’m going to get on the phone with this guy from RMG and talk about exciting things like the chemical makeup of their tape and why it isn’t holding onto the oxide. Poo poo.

Both “5/4″ and “The Lost Boys” were done w/ Jonathan playing guitar in the room w/ the drums. I used a Sony C48 and a Beyer M260 through Wunder Audio mic pres. The Sony has a fuller low-end, while the M260 provides midrange detail and clearer top-end. Mixing the two signals will allow us place the guitar in the mix without using a ton of EQ.

Jonathan plays “Home Life” on acoustic guitar, so I moved him into the iso booth with Kim and moved the KM84’s from the piano to his guitar, one on the neck and another on the lower right of the body. I left them patched into the Daking pres and the Manley ELOP limiter, and the result was a nice present sound with plenty of detail and clarity.

Not much else to say!

Once the edit was done, we tried a take of “Century Eyes”, but abandoned it thinking that the drums need a radically different treatment to be effective.

We moved on to piano, where Jonathan laid down a solo take of “The Hunter’s Star” to a click track. For this recording, we opened the lid, raised the mics a little, and added an ambient (Earthworks TC40k) mic 6 feet from the end of the piano. After the piano was done, Thor played through the song four or five times before nailing a performance.

The rest of the evening was spent trying “Leviathan” at a variety of tempos, but none of the takes felt right. The band gathered in the live room and played through different arrangement ideas, while I called it a night and headed to Rubber Gloves to see Celebration, who were incredible.

Final drum mic choices were:

• Kick: D112 on resonant side, GLM 200 on batter side (through an RNC, with the snare mic in he sidechain)
• Snare: KSM 141 on top, Beta 98 on bottom
• Toms: ATM 450 top and bottom
• Overheads: Sony C17’s, spaced and 39″ from the snare
• Ambient mics: Stapes, 8′ equilateral triangle.
• Gag mic: TC40k

Tape (at this point) is RMGI Emtec SM 900. 2″ 24-track. 15 ips. CCIR EQ. No N/R. +6/250 nWb/m. 3.5 db overbias @ 10k.

I missed Dokadema Doa’s reunion show at Cool Bean’s. I was not Fat Rollins for Halloween.

Day 2, Nov 1: After tweaking the piano sound a bit, we started takes on “The Snow Leopard”. After the first couple of takes, the band asked for a click and did four more takes before deciding on one for a master.

I missed Nebula (with Katey’s old friend Rob on drums) at Rubber Gloves.

Day 3, Nov 2: On the drive home, I started fretting more and more about the instability of the RMGI Emtec tape we’re using. Pence told me that on a recent 3 week-long record, he did transfers at the beginning and end of the session, and the recordings definitely deteriorated by the end. This blows so much, I started writing haiku:

This tape sheds like dogs!
Will recordings still exist
when winter has come?

Like sinner in church
I am now grasping for the
GP9 of past

The next morning I decided to abandon ship on the RMGI stock and pulled every spare reel of Quantegy GP9 out of the closet. (Most of these were rental reels, used once or twice by bands who can’t/won’t purchase 2″ tape for their sessions.) I dumped the master of “The Snow Leopard” from the RMGI stock into Cubase at 24 bits, 96 kHz, then copied it back to the 1st reel of GP9. Then I sent a worried, stern email to my tape vendor.

Finally we were rolling again by 3:30 or so. The band got comfortable and started working on the second song, working title of “Alemeyhu”. It’s based on a song by Ethiopian singer Alemeyhu Eshete, a personal favorite of mine. I highly recommend his (and all other) compilations in the Ethiopiques series.

The band ran through maybe 6 takes in total, trying a variety of different feels and accents, before finally settling on the intro, first verse, and chorus from take 5 and the rest of the song from take 4, requiring a tape edit on the 2″ master. Before doing the edit on the multitrack, I tested it by rough mixing the song to our 1/2″ stereo machine and performing the edit there. It sounded good, so I spliced the two sections together on the 2″ and we were off again.

“On The Death Of The Waters” was next, and we tracked guitar (in the room with the drums and piano) and vocals live with the band. Howard’s guitar (Harmony Rocket through a Princeton) was miced with a Sony C48p. Jonathan’s vocal was a Soundelux ELA M251, which sounded beautiful. 6 takes later, we decided to call it a night. I gave Jonathan a CD of rough mixes of the two “contender” takes, and will decide on those today.

All in all, despite the hassles of setup and bad tape, things have been going very well. Everyone is in good spirits and we’re on schedule. I hope to get a little ahead today by knocking out masters for two or three songs, but I won’t fret if that doesn’t happen. We have plenty of time to do things right and not rush. The result, I hope, will be a stellar album.

I missed Jay Reatard at Rubber Gloves.

The band arrived on Sunday night and spent Monday and Tuesday practicing. The weekend before, JC, Howrad, and I cleaned up the band apartment and cleaned out the playing rooms, tweaking the acoustics a bit. On Tuesday, I sat with the band as they played through their songs, making notes on instrumentation and potential arrangement and overdub ideas. We made logical groups of songs based on instrumentation so that we would spend less time setting up and be more efficient while tracking.

I’m engineering the record and the band is producing, which means my focus is on the technical side: making sure levels are right, things sound good, etc. The band has made enough records to not need a producer — any advice/input I have is to help them facilitate their “vision”. (That made me throw up in my mouth a little.) Maybe half of the album has never really been played as a band — as the record goes on, some of these less-developed songs will get a lot of experimentation and overdubs. For now, though, I’m focusing on good rhythm section performances and sounds.

Little technical things:

• A lot of time was spent finding a balance between a good piano sound and reducing the bleed of the drums into the piano. I had hoped the Crown GLM200 mics I bought would help, but there was too much bleed and they didn’t sound all that great. We’ve settled on spaced Neumann KM84’s over the hammers and will just overdub anything that’s disastrous-sounding
• For the acoustic bass, I’m using two mics: a Soundelux U195s near the bridge, and an AT Pro37r on the neck. This seems to provide a nice balance of body and articulation.
• Thor was using a goatskin head on his floor tom, but it finally busted after 4 takes of the first song, “The Snow Leopard”. He went to a Fiberskin after that, which he’s using on his kick and rack tom. Sounds great either way.
• I had hoped to be using the new ATR Master Tape for this session, but they’re still not shipping 2″. (I did buy a case of 1/2″.) The RMGI Emtec 900 I’m using instead sounds good, but it leaves a frightening amount of residue on the heads. This makes me furrow my brow!

I’ll try and make a more thoughtful post this weekend after I’m able to actually sleep in a bit.

• Happy birthday Bean!
• Tre Orsi is playing Austin @ Club Deville next Thurs, 25 Oct.
• Our 26 Oct show @ SHQ is obviously canceled. Tentatively moving to 27 Oct @ Rubber Gloves
• Starting work on the New Year record again today!
• Shearwater record starts in a week and a half. 3 non-stop weeks of Talk Talk-level indulgence. Thanks, Matador!
• Tons of Rock Lottery videos now up at Wolf-Stone’s YouTube page. Relive the good times and total embarassment.
• Record-buying has been a little slow due to self-imposed financial restraints, but I just got copies of The Dead C’s Trapdoor Fucking Exit and Harvey Milk’s Courtesy And Goodwill Toward Men from Aquarius today. Very exciting.
• Crown GLM-200’s arrived yesterday as well. I’m hoping these will make quick work of recording the grand piano & drums in the same room.

Well, ok. Here’s a video of me dancing like a jackass:

Time Management For Anarchists

Turns out we need to replace the evaporator coil in our AC unit. $1500 and some plumbing. Totally sweet, being a homeowner.

We managed to print a mix for another song, “Body And Soul” and had started on “The Idea Of You” before I couldn’t take the aching and the loopiness anymore. It wouldn’t be a Kadane Brothers-related happening if someone didn’t fall violently ill, right?

The doc put me on antibiotics and ordered me to stay home and do jack-all, which I’m pretty good at anyway. Of course, Katey and I had just decided to cancel the cable, so I’ve been reading these things called “books” (The Unfolding of Language right now) and periodicals (my subscription to the Texas Observer just started up, lucky me). Yeah, and watching the bonus features disc of Knocked Up.

I figure while I’m laid up, I also might as well see if Richard Lloyd can teach me how to play guitar right.

Mix reference CDs in use so far: Who’s Next, mainly, with some Complete and Legion of Rock Stars videos for good measure. The former led us in an interesting direction, summing the drum tracks mostly to mono and panning them slightly left. I do miss the enveloping stereo spread of Albini’s drum recordings, but I think the panning lends some charm and gives the bazllion overdubs in the song a little more room to breathe.

We’re doing very little in the way of EQ or compression — a little top-end added to the snare and main piano, some limiting on the piano and bass, and some de-essing on the main vocal. Unlike most mixing projects I get, we’re spending most of the time feeling out balances and panning, not carving up tracks with EQ and compression to make them sit together properly. I’m a very lucky man to get to work on tracks this well-recorded. Makes my job much easier.

Technical geekery: I’m printing mixes to our Studer A80RC 1/2″ 2-track, using RMGI Emtec SM911 tape, 30ips, AES EQ, no nr, 385 nWb/m. A frequency sweep shows a less-than-flat frequency response (-1db @ 100Hz, +1.5db @ 70Hz, flat @ 10k, +0.75db @ 15k!), but the playback sounds wonderful, so to hell with it! I’m also printing a digital copies straight off the 2-mix and the Studer’s repro head for safe-keeping.

Original tracks were recorded by Steve Albini in Electrical Audio’s Studio A. Studer A820MCH 2″ 24-track. Quantegy GP9 tape, 15ips, CCIR EQ, no NR, 500 nWb/m. On the first day, we dumped everything to our Cubase system (Apogee Rosetta 800 converters, Big Ben clock, 24-bit, 44.1KHz sample rate) for safety copies and possible playback for mixing.

Playback for this song was from our Cubase system. We’ll probably do half the songs straight off the 2″, and half from the Cubase system for ease of automation.

• I start mixing a new New Year record tomorrow. As with The End Is Near, they tracked with Steve Albini at Electrical Audio, and we’ll do overdubs and mixing at the Lab.
• Had a couple of tremendous meals, first Saturday night at La Mexicana with the Tre Orsi, MagElecCo, Dave Bazan, and Casiotone crews, then Sunday morning at the Taco Lady with Tre Orsi, Bazan, Casiotone, and Rob G + Melanie. Camaraderie is a beautiful thing.
• I’ve (finally) started working with the Querencia Community Bike Shop
• Over the past few months, I’ve given serious thought to leaving UNT and going back full-time to audio work. If all goes as planned, I should be leaving just in time for the ensuing Shearwater and New Year tours in 2007. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel and I embrace its warm glow.

We’re doing overdubs for new recordings they made in their shed on an old Fostex 1/4″ 8-track (something we did for their song “Summer Ships” on the Zac Crain For Mayor compilation), and in the coming weeks we’ll track more songs from the ground-up.

Most of the recordings were 4 tracks of drums, some bass guitar, and usually a scratch guitar track. One song also had three tracks of Kris Youmans’ cello.

After dumping their 8-track recordings to the Studer, we started in on guitar overdubs. These were pretty straight-forward, except that I found myself using a Shure SM57 for the first time in years. I had put the SM57 up in the room as a talkback mic so I could hear Aaron while he played, but it actually worked quite well as a room mic. Who knew, eh?

For vocals, we mostly used an Electro-voice RE-20 (great midrange detail, low proximity effect) -> Neve 1073 -> a variety of compressors, depending on the song. We also effected the vocals heavily to tape, some songs getting distortion, slapback, or tape echo, all printed to a second track. We used the Soundelux 251 on one song, “Happy Now”, which was slower and croony, an environment the 251 excels in.

Howard came in and added piano, organ, and percussion to a few other tracks. He really brought “Happy Now” to life with an understated piano part accentuated with crazy glissandos, raked directly against the strings on our grand piano.

Our dear friends, The Bottomless Pit have finally released their first album, an 8-song double 12″ 45 rpm + CD. I’m waiting anxiously by my mailbox for its arrival!

The article doesn’t say whether or not he had a helmet on, but if he “was not wearing reflective gear, and his bike lacked a reflector or light visible from the rear” as the police report said, my guess would be no.

If you’re going to ride at night, buy a set of lights for your bike. Reflectors don’t work, but even the cheapest lights will make you a little more noticeable. And, of course, wear a damned helmet.

Any local bike shop will have something like these from Planet Bike and Cateye.

We visited the Sound Garden record store on Sunday — man, I miss record stores (just not enough to start up my own) — and picked up some great things:

• Angels of Light We Are Him CD
• Goodbye, Babylon box set of early 20th-century gospel
  Incredible packaging! A cedar box holding 6 discs, a book, and small balls of cotton.
• Molam: Thai Country Groove From Isan Vol. 2
  Another amazing, essential Sublime Frequencies release. Even better than Vol. 1.
• Fucked Up Year Of The Pig 12″
• The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of comp

More to come…

Any artist who seeks approval and/or validation is onto a loser. Any scheme which encourages this way of thinking is damaging. This is the Oprah Winfrey Effect foisted on a generation of men who, consequently, have no spine. Screw the audience. Ars Longa, audience brevis. If you create a product they want, they buy it. That’s the end of the transaction. It’s not friendship. It’s not family. It’s the marketplace - which is one of the few places left where a man can stand stand free and upright in the light.

and

Making independent music means saying Screw You! to everyone who is NOT in your band. If there had been a REAL punk movement that would have been the enduring message. But the avatar of the punk movement, as you know I’ve said endlessly and fruitlessly, is Oprah Winfrey. Everyone is creative. Everyone has a (valid) opinion. Let’s all be cozy together and respect each other. “I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony…” Blah-blah-blah. Well, harmony makes my flesh crawl.