In an unmarked building in the heart of Eagle Rock lies the Hobby Shop, a recording studio owned and operated by Scott Gilman. It’s probably our favorite spot on the planet, and about a month ago we were fortunate enough to return to this magical place where we made our first EP a year prior, tackling four new songs that we honed while on tour. The process of recording is one of the most fun, challenging, and rewarding aspects of being in a band, and it was amazing to see how a song can take on a life of its own once you put it to tape (well, digital anyway).
First up was the foot-stomper “Gasoline.” We strapped on our game faces, grabbed our electric guitars, tuned up, and then stood around for half an hour while Bryan sifted through a box of tambourines looking for the one that was outgoing, kind, down to earth, faithful and would sing only for him. We still have no idea what that meant but he knew it when he heard it.
Second we tackled the country-tinged “Twin Jet Engines,” which turned out to be the much loved but greatly misunderstood problem child of the sessions. We laid it down as we had been playing it on tour then sat with Scott and gave it a listen, only to discover something was missing - there was no blood going to it, no emotion, no moment that made the hairs on your arm stand on end. This was a problem. We huddled up in emergency-meeting-mode, and after much discussion about subtext settled on 3 watch words to keep in mind while playing. Then it was once more into the breach, each of us armed with our Twin Jet Engines Mantra: “Pain. Loss. Regret.” We thought we had it nailed, but discovered later that night that the vocals still weren’t sitting quite right. After 10 hours in the studio, right when the day was supposed to be coming to a close, Scott encouraged us to do just one more vocal take. The sun had set hours ago and we were pretty ragged from the day, but you don’t say no to Scott (seriously, the dude’s an Oakland Raiders fan, you just don’t want to mess around with that), and that’s the take we ended up putting on the record.
The next day we were supposed to have a friend coming in to lay down cello over the bridge, but due to forces outside of her control, she wasn’t able to make it. When we huddled up again to take on this new challenge, Bryan pointed out that he had just purchased a euphonium the week before. He had played this dwarfed tuba of an instrument all throughout high school and was eager to see if it could possibly stand in for the cello. We humored him and were stunned to hear that it brought the song a whole different feel. Then it was frantic phone calls trying to track down someone who could come in 16 hours later and lay in trumpet to round out a horn line. At the risk of sounding (even more?) pretentious, this was the song that pushed back, but we’re really glad it did.
All these songs had their little idiosyncrasies and debates. Just how goofy do hand claps sound over an organ? Should a song really make you laugh? Why are gang vocals so difficult to nail? Fender or Gibson? Marshall or VOX? Shaker or maraca? Given time in the studio you can’t help but feel like Charlie given free reign over your own personal chocolate factory. Scott puts everything you could want right at your fingertips, and then encourages you to take your best shot and see what works - so expect to hear some things from the new songs we’ve never used before. We were also lucky enough to be joined by a couple of special guests who lent us their musical chops - including Johanna Unger on vocal harmonies and David Thurlow on trumpet - and we’re all extremely grateful for their contributions. The record was mixed by Scott Gilman, who somehow managed to get this done despite our constant desire to distract him from his work with question after question, most of which consisted of “Hey Scott, what does this piece of futuristic-looking technology do?” and “Do you ever use this rack of compressors to play spaceship?” Scott quite simply is the man, and we can’t wait to come back to his enchanted little corner of our fair city and take on bigger beasts.
Full length anyone??
-Warren
