New Record! or, On Patience
Welp, we’re making a record. At some point I said I “wasn’t sure we had a record in us” but then realized that’s dumb. Any band has a record in them if they have enough time and songs. And money, oh, money. But let’s ignore that part for now. We hit Mad Oak in Allston with Mike Quinn on March 10 to get drums down on the first batch of what we’re planning to be a ten-plus song full-length.
The biggest difference between this recording and the previous ones will definitely be how much time we put into it. I feel like our previous releases were either too small in scope or too rushed, or both. Whether that was to meet some phantom deadline, or just FOMO because our peers were putting stuff out, it’s something I regret (and take responsibility for, since I tend to steer this part of the ship).
This isn’t, by the way, to impugn anyone who’s worked on our recordings. They’re all insanely talented people and our stuff sounds really good, and I recommend them freely and often (see here, here, here, and here)! But if you’ve ever put out a recording, you know what I’m talking about. Even some of my heroes still talk about their complicated feelings about recordings I or others revere, so as a fellow artist (if I do say so myself), I think this is normal.
Anyway, like any worthwhile experience (which is most experiences), I learned a lot, practically (my ear is much better), about my limits (I’ll leave the drums, especially, up to the pros), and how to better communicate my taste and direction. But mostly, I think—I hope—I've learned some patience. So, that brings us back to time.
For one thing, we have a small time advantage in that a few of the songs we’re recording will be older ones, originally released on the EP we self-recorded (primarily for pandemic reasons) and released in 2021. We’ve been playing those songs for four years now, with Mr. David Deitch having written and recorded the original drum parts. We started playing those songs with Ken once we returned to live performance in 2021, and we’ve chosen to redo three from that EP to capture their evolution over the years. Ken’s been faithful to Deitch’s parts, and we haven’t made any big changes, but every lineup plays the way they play, and unlike the rest of what’s to come, we’ve got a few years’ experience with them.
New songs, though, will make up the majority of the final work. If you’ve seen us live recently, you’ve heard two of them. They’re called “A Crossing” and “My Hair Stood on End.” More on those in subsequent posts.
That’s five songs, and five songs doesn’t comprise an album. In the past, songs have all been 90-100% done by the time we hit the studio. No so in this case. I think that’s a net positive, as patience will be required while we write enough good songs to make up a whole piece (while we four middle-aged guys also navigate our lives). A few are in the works, a few are in demo-by-Dave form, and a few more are merely floating riffs looking for their companions. More on those as they take shape and we get a sense for what this record will become as it evolves from a batch of songs to a cohesive piece of work.
In the next post I’ll tell y’all about the sessions we’ve already done—in the future there will be less to read and more to see and perhaps hear. Till then!
—Dave