Galileo

Last week must have been the unofficial start of the 09-10 flu season and it kept me down most of the week. Finally though, on Friday, we were able to resume tracking vox for Town Monster and we managed to get a couple of tracks completed. The guys had most of Sleepers Awake over during the session, along with Jacob from Blastronauts, so with 10 or so of us there, we were able to set up a couple room mic's in the live room and do gang vox on Guantanamo. I love gang vox and was really impressed with the natural verb coming from the live room. On Saturday, I was able to start the premixes and things are really sounding good!

Earlier in the week, The Outer Sounds sessions were featured on the hour long "Local Pop" segement on WCRS. Pat interviewed James and Jacob and they played various cuts from the sessions we've been doing all summer. It looks like it may turn into a regular gig which is really cool. Of course the show ended with a little tune from Truth for Sanity, which was a particular surprise to me and was a much appreciated pick me up during the week of flu.

Finally, Blastronauts played the Independents festival downtown on Saturday, which James helped to organize. I wasn't able to attend personally, but hear it was a smash. Jacob heads back to Boston next week, so we will be working on a couple new Blastronauts tracks early this week before they have their CD Release show on Thursday at Oldfield's on High. (check out the article this week in Columbus Alive)

http://www.columbusalive.com/live/content/features/stories/2009/09/17/ca_m_locals.html?sid=108

They then go off to Athens and Cincy for a couple shows before Jacob heads back. Of course, we'll be continuing to work on Town Monster later in the week and we have a solo artist coming in on Saturday to do a couple of demos. It is going to be a busy week!

Town Monster tracking continues and a special surprise guest appears!

Each night last week was dedicated to recording vox tracks for the new Town Monster record. We also worked a bit on guitar and that experience was really interesting. There are only about 3 or 4 tracks on the album which feature any guitar, but in each of those, the guitar is a critical element of the track. For live use and on the demo, Nate uses some old digitech (i think) "all in one" effects box thingy. When Bill and I first heard the scratch tracks of it at work on the tune "Silkworm", we were pretty impressed with the tone and overall feel of it. We thought we would go for that sound, but only better on the record, so we spent quite a bit of time messing with the Boogie gear we have, various mic'ing techniques, boxes, etc. Suffice it to say that the $50 FX box sounds 1000 times better for that song than anything we could squeek out of the Mesa. $50 FX box versus $3,500 in Amps and $50 FX box wins! No shame in that. I can't wait to hear from the gearslutz who want to inquire on how we got that incredible tone...

On Friday night, we continued working on the vox tracks and burned off some rough stems to evaluate over the weekend. For where we are at this point in the process, I think we are all pretty thrilled with the sound we are getting. Nate's vocals are so dynamic and inspiring. It is going to be alot of fun to mix.

And then, around 9pm..Sidwell showed up with a special guest...Kate from the Two-Bit Terribles!! I could write a book about the TBT's and our time together but will spare everyone that entire story for now. I will say that Kate has been in Morocco for the past two years and was visiting her sister here in town. Unfortunatley, a recent tragedy with the loss of her brother n law was the catalyst in bringing her here but she is doing well and it was great to see her. We spent some time catching up and we watched the TBT documentary that we filmed a few years back. Good times....even with all of the drama. Anyway, Kate let us know that when she returns to the states in November, they are to have an official "Band Meeting", so I guess we'll see what happens with that.

I like big checks...literally.

So a few months ago, we wrote and recorded a jingle for a Titan Insurance contest. Titan is part of Nationwide and Bill's girlfriend works there, so she was eligible to enter. We wrote the song, recorded it, and shot a video all in a weekend and entered. Weeks have gone by with no updates and we sort of forgot about it.

Yesterday, Kathy was called to a "mandatory meeting" where she was announced to be the winner and was awarded this special check. I've always wanted a check like this. Probably a little too obnoxious to hang in the studio, but how cool.

Anyway, I can't get that jingle out of my head now. I hope this isn't what our music career has culminated with...becoming jingle writers. Then again, at $5K a pop, I shouldn't complain.