Steve has been adding bass lines and other musical bits to the songs we recorded at Avast this summer. I'm about 3 days away (hopefully) from realizing my lifelong dream of having a small, but functional recording studio in my basement. Thanks, computers. If all goes well I'll be overdubbing guitars this weekend. Not to bore you to tears, but here's my slideshow describing the quest I've been on for about 3 months ... wish me luck!

 

This weekend we recorded 11 songs at Avast II with Stuart. It took about 4 hours to set drums up on Saturday and get things mic'd up. We recorded for about 10 hours total over Saturday and Sunday. Davis played his drums like a rabid squirrel. We ate gyros and barbeque. We drank Pabst.

Steve records his bass parts in the coming weeks and we'll do guitar overdubs together. Did I mention this is all instrumental music? It is. One song is called Grizzly Attack! with the exclamation mark.

I'm headed to AK this weekend (Halibut Cove, Homer, Kenai River & Girdwood). Laters.

Well, I've got some good news to spread: Steve Fisk has joined the ranks of The Alaskans. He'll be filling the role of bassist, producer, collaborator and general sound confabulator. Steve mentioned to me that he, like Davis, has never been to Alaska. Great. Now I've got two people to drag up North.

The bird represents any unforeseen variable. With any luck we'll record in early June and I'll let you know what ends up being the bird.

your pal,
Daniel

Davis and I have turned our attention to recording 11 or so songs (we've basement recorded over 30 songs in Garageband). We want to capture the sounds of the guitars and drums all mashed together and the spacial feedback and nastiness that the original recordings convey. And we're thinking that instrumental may be the way to go with these tunes. Okay, we don't have a singer so that may be a "duh!" statement but I also think everything is sounding great on it's own.

Next up we've got to dream up a recording strategy. And we're definitley going to add bass -- perhaps me or a friend playing the bass.  Oh, and I've got a great title for the the album. It's somewhere between rad and bad.

In other news I'm heading to Alaska next weekend to visit my family and go skiing at Alyeska with my brother Conrad. That should be a blast -- I understand it's dumped snow recently (4ft. in Whittier in one weekend!) and I'm hoping to take pictures for album art. Anybody know any tricks for shooting pics in intense snow light?

I received an interesting email yesterday. Thanks for writing, Guy!

Michael Cozzi has pretty much convinced me to record the album in the basement where we rehearse. Possible if I'm able to borrow the gear for 10 days while we track bass, drums and guitar in one room live. Everything will be separately mic'd and pre-amped, but the goal would be to do all the takes together at once and not do any editing. Just get it right the first time and capture all the raw data in one sweep. This will be a blast if we're able to pull it off.

At this point we've got enough tunes to go with. The latest concept is for The Alaskans to record an album of material then pull in a vocalist to invent over the top of the existing tunes. No room for rewriting or restructuring. The constraints sound good, but we'll see how it goes bringing in an outside vocalist to add their part.

A couple new tunes from last Friday: Song 30 and Song 31.

Friday was crazy: I worked, my brother's family stayed with me upstairs (always fun), Reggie was in town and staying downstairs, a 4pm Alaskans rehearsal followed by a 7pm memorial service for Dibb S.J., then finally a gig at Nectar with SynthClub and Thaddeus, Davis, Reggie, Sean, Steve, Carlos. The gig was awesome.

The best part of the day, though, was showing a chord progression to Davis & Jaime and 45 minutes later ending up with Song 29.

Davis walked in last Tuesday with a new drum set. Huge souding drums. Song 28 happened as a result.

Looking back to start of this project it's been longer than I thought. But I'm happy it's slow going -- it's seems more intentional and we're writing some really great shit that has taken a year to come out of me as I transition to guitar from keys. It's the most fun I've had in a while so I already feel like the band is a complete success. I could stop now and be happy with it all.

Davis, Jaime and I began talking singers -- which should pull everything together when we come across the right person. Davis is particulalry motivated to chase down RW and see if he'd be down. No matter what happens I've had 2 great rehearsals and I'm totally in love with Song 24. We posted Song 25 after rehearsal this past Tuesday. We're getting together at 4pm today to play some more before I head to Boston for the weekend.

An exhilirating few rehearsals with Davis and now Jaime on bass. These two played together in Daylight Basement so they already have the rhythm section chemistry locked. Last night we worked on a progression I wrote after playing with them twice -- I was inspired to write something a bit more washy (a word?) which suits their style as I see it now. We were all damn excited by the time we recorded the final version of our new Song 24.

A fellow ruralite from South Dakota, Jaime's bass work has totally filled out The Alaskans sound. Next up, singer ... or we'll be forced to go instrumental on your ass.