Twenty-Eleven is Under Way

Another rather enjoyable show at PK's this past Friday night. If you missed it, definitely a sore loss. Owls and Crows opened up the evening with a great set of heavy trance riffs from drums, bass, and two guitars, supported with keys. Cool male/fem vocals melted over it all, and believe me, these peeps were LOUD. I would suggest you catch them soon as I'm sure they're going to be playing all over the place in the near future.

As for our set, we're all in agreement that it was one of our best. I can't explain it --it just...happened. The set was a rearrangement of a previous set with the only cover being "Under Pressure." We didn't cut any songs, as we usually end up doing, and played for a comfortable hour and a half. The transitions between songs seemed so meaningful, even standing out and holding their own against the songs themselves. When that happens, you just feel "on." It's a weird thing that's hard to describe. I also noticed the guys changing up their usual parts, so I kept getting excited hearing those slight twists in the arrangements. That prompted me to stray from some of my typical melodies and phrasings. In other words, impromptu experimentation = fun. Also, I'd like to extend special thanks to Antonio Salazar for driving five hours to make the show. Definitely a surprise! Much love to our other friends who made it out on a such a cold evening. You didn't have to come out, but you did, and we want you to know that you're the best!

The work on the album is drawing to a close. I estimate it will take another 40 hrs to complete it. If all goes well the project will be wrapped up by the end of March, which will mark a year since we started it. We're all excited, as none of us have really heard any completed mix of any of the songs yet. In fact, Joe commented the other day that he hasn't heard any of the tracking yet outside of his own drum parts and whatever he witnessed while working behind the deck during some of my recording sessions.

We may be playing a show with Ravenhill in February at a youth event in West Frankfort, IL. This will be all ages, so if the 21+ thing has thwarted your attempts to see us in the past several years, keep an eye out for additional info on this show. We'll be back at PK's in Carbondale on Friday, March 18th, and then again at the end of April, which may be a CD release party. Trying to get a show at Hangar 9 as well. Let them know that you want to see us play there.

Do you have a Heavy Wishing t-shirt? Well, what are you waiting for? Contact Joe and he'll get ya set up. We'll throw in some stickers with every order, because you need some of those too. Oh, while you're at it, post your favorite HW vid from YouTube on your fb page. There are a ton of them, old and new. Let's get this thing going viral! AND don't forget to "like" us on our facebook page!

Laters,
DGC

Update?

There's not much to post in the way of a studio update, but I'll write something, since a good many of you have asked. To my knowledge, Oliver has been the only one tracking as of late. I've received messages on several occasions from Scott saying that he had recorded more guitar tracks, so that much is encouraging! I personally have been so busy for the past month, I have not been able to get in and do any recording. Now that things are somewhat slowing down for me school-wise, I'll be able to get back to work on the album. Believe me, we don't have much more tracking to do before we start mixing. It's true, we have yet to track "Evenstar" and "Restore", but it will happen. Also, we don't have any shows on the books as of right now, but that will change as well. Don't forget that the single mix of "Tremble Bare" is up on the MySpace page so check that out if you haven't done so already. Just hang in there, enjoy the summer, and the album will be complete before you know it! Hugs, DGC

Mixing "Tremble Bare" tonight

We're going to mix "Tremble Bare" tonight to give away as a single at our show on Friday. I'm going to lay down a couple of backing vocal tracks, and Joe wants to add a bit of percussion, and then we'll mix and master.  The song will have to be remixed for the album, as Oliver said that he has more ideas for guitar, and additional guest vocals have yet to be recorded.  It's still going to be fun to do this tonight, and I have high expectations for how the song is going to turn out.

What town are we in?

I have so much going on right now that I have trouble recalling just exactly where we're at in the recording process. I had a friend ask me at school just the other day, and I don't think I gave a really good answer, because it's becoming a blur just like everything else. So here's a short list of what we have to accomplish before we can begin mixing:

• Brasserie
• additional inst.
• backing vox?
• Luster
• S final bass
• backing vox?
• Tremble Bare
• J add perc.
• D backing vox
• S.S. vox
• Last Screams
• O guitars
• S final bass & bass melody end-chorus
• D add gtr
• add inst on break
• Joe add perc.
• D backing vox
• S.S. vox
• Evenstar
• D gtrs/piano
• O gtrs
• S bass
• D backing vox
• D.L. vox
• Ardor
• O guitar
• S bass
• J drums/perc (replace drum loop?)
• Years
• O gtrs
• D final vox
• D add gtr
• S final bass
• Restore
• Nothing is tracked yet
• Other Door
• S bass
• O gtrs
• Beg the Past
• New intro
• O gtrs
• D replace gtr on choruses
• backing vox?
• S bass
• feedback overdubs

In case you missed it, this past Wednesday night I rerecorded most of my lead vocal tracks while we streamed the session live. We'll make an announcement when we'll be recording again. Also, had a great brainstorming session with the incredible Darrell Mankin about thematic ideas for the album images. We plan on getting back in touch with each other in several weeks, to let the ideas simmer for a while. And don't forget our show coming up in Marion, Il in two weeks at John Brown's on the Square! Check our previous posts for more info!

Kicking off April

Let's get quickly up to speed. Last week Oliver tracked "Tremble Bare" and I recorded "Ardor". I'm still not sure how that song will come out in the end. Scott came up with a drum sample that we looped for a reference beat for me to play along with on acoustic guitar. Then I just sang over the whole track. We'll probably pull the drums out of the mix, and Joe will either record lives drums over it, or just pieces of percussion. I don't think I'm going to redo the vocals, even though there are a couple of small areas that bother me. I just think that I want the song to stay as simple as possible. It may rest in the middle of the album, and it would be a nice change-up.

Last night Oliver tracked "Luster". As usual for the live guitars, Oliver had his rig in the bathroom while playing in the control room. The walls are paper thin, but it allows for a decent playback mix from the monitors and that loud live feel. Also, he's right there to communicate with Joe for punch-ins and such. It makes for a much faster process, since it might take an hour and a half to track a song anyway. He also tracked a lead on the loud ending of "Brasserie" which just blew me away. He was like,"Yeah, I've had this running through my head at work. I've never had the chance to try and play it, but let's see if it works." Just wait --it's incredible.

After Oliver left, I was going to track scratch piano on "Evenstar", because that song is just sitting going nowhere, and I need to have a rough mix to get to our vocalist who will duet with me on it. However, we started tracking piano on "Brasserie", which alerted us to the fact that the rhythm guitar scratch track had disappeared. So, to accommodate for that, I wanted to record my vocal part for reference. Then I decided that I was in good enough voice (I had tracked vox for "Other Door" before Oliver had arrived, which involved some harsh yelling so...) to attempt recording what I wanted to be final vox. Anywho, we never got to "Evenstar", although for the first leg of "Brasserie" we did record piano, two ambient acoustic guitar rhythm tracks, and my final vocal track. I'm still toying around with the idea of starting that song of with a mixed ensemble of vocalists that will carry the chord changes of the song over the rhythm guitars. On the other end of the spectrum, I have a trumpet player and sax player that are ready to try their hand at it. I don't want to rule any thing out. It'll all come down to the mix-down session, really.

I don't know how much tracking we'll do this week. We're all pretty busy with other things. Joe took the Akai home to go through the tracks that we have thus far and map out the songs and their virtual tracks. Even just losing some of the scratch tracks made this a very prudent idea. He's also going to make some rough mixes and piece together some of the unpaired files for reference. We need to start rehearsing for our show at the end of the month. Two or three will do, but with our tight schedules, that will effectively eliminate a lot of studio time this month. For this reason, I went ahead and pushed back the release date until early to mid June. If we get it done before that, then we'll be thrilled, but there's no use in rushing things. Oh, and btw the show that I'm talking about is Friday, April 30th at our fav place to play, John Brown's on the Square, in Marion, IL. Show starts at 8:30 with opener John Kline. I'll be posting that info to the various social networks soon.

One last note, I don't think I've posted a track list yet, or maybe I have, but I couldn't locate one after a quick search. So, here's the list so far, and the order is not set in stone.

1. Brasserie
2. Luster
3. Tremble Bare
4. Last Screams
5. Evenstar
6. Ardor
7. Years
8. Restore
9. Other Door
10. Beg the Past

More to come

I'm sitting in my car outside of Scott's place tapping into his network, waiting for Joe to arrive with a key. We're going to track more guitar today and hopefully get to some other overdubs. I'd like to work a bit on "Brasserie". Joe has a vintage air organ that I can't wait to try out just for that song. I don't think I'm up for doing any vocals today, unless they're background. My voice is lacking any edge this morning, so we'll probably do some more this coming week.

We got a lot of cool sounding stuff tracked last night though. My principle guitar is now finished on "Luster", "Other Door", "Years", "Beg the Past", "Last Screams", and "Tremble Bare". That leaves tracking the end of "Brasserie", as I want to do some other stuff on the beginning, as I said before. I still have to track "Restore", but that might be on acoustic.

Well, Joe just got here, so I'm off.

Plans within Plans

I wish I could take the time to regurgitate all that Joe and I discussed about the album on my drive home from school today. I love building the production framework that goes into recording an album. I'm also happy to be working with Joe in a greater capacity this time around, because he has many studio experiences under his own belt as both a drummer and a songwriter. Then of course working with Scott for the last 18 years, well, that's kind of priceless. I can give him a look, he raises an eyebrow, I nod, and a thousand unspoken words have passed between us.

So, the plan as it stands now is for Joe and I to track day and night on Friday and Saturday. We'll see what we can get accomplished, and head cold withstanding, I'm going to try and record all of my vocals and principle guitar parts. Later, when Scott and Oliver have tracked, and the songs are beginning to mature, we'll be able to hear what other parts might need to be added to the arrangements. They might be in the form of other guitars, piano, percussion, vocals, etc. Joe and I discussed other instrumentalists as well. For instance, he knows a very seasoned cellist that we might want to use. I'm also in conversation with two female vocalists that I hope to be working with on a couple of the songs. Nothing definite yet, but at least I know that I have other voices to work with if the song calls for it. So, things are starting to take shape in our minds, and this will all need to fall into place quite efficiently for this album to be tracked, mixed, and mastered in the next several weeks. Nothing like a little pressure ;)

Recording vox postponed

I was going to record vocals tomorrow and Tuesday night. However, I have a cold coming on. My throat began to constrict earlier this evening, and now my head is stopped up. I blame Scott :) Hopefully I will beat it this week and shoot for recording this coming weekend. Until then I would assume that Scott will go ahead and record his bass lines. I'll keep you all posted. Oh, and if you haven't seen posted elsewhere, I uploaded a live version of "Evenstar" from '03 to our MySpace page. We were quite a different band then, and it probably goes without saying that the '10 version of "Evenstar" will sound much different. Have a great Monday.

Some photos and video from last night.

I've uploaded two vids on YouTube from last night. They were from the webcam from my laptop. This one is when we tracked "Other Door" and in this one you can hear Joe recording cymbal rolls that I'd like to use at the end of "Beg the Past." Scott took quite a bit of video as well on Joe's camera. I think Joe is going to piece together all of the footage after we finish the album. Also, you can check out all of my phone pics at the HW fb page.

I'm still impressed by Joe tracking "Evenstar" on his own from memory. Even a year ago he was lobbying to do the song again. We haven't played it since Ryan left the band. At the time I just felt that it wasn't representative of the direction in which I felt the band was going. However, Joe has altered the original beat somewhat, and I really think it may fit this album. I'm still undecided though whether or not I'm going to put piano on it or go strictly guitar. If I go the piano route, it'll mostly likely be the only piano track on the whole album.

I hope to begin recording vocals before the weekend is up, but at the latest it'll be around the first of the week. I know Scott will be tracking bass soon as well, if he hasn't started already. Guitars and additional overdubs will then be next.

Last Screams is down.

Joe loves it when I throw him a curve ball. I totally made him create a new beat for a new part on Last Screams. He's used to me doing that to him by now. We rehearsed it for about 15 min while Scott was gone. Then we did a take that was killer, but Joe ended the song only half-way through the final chorus. We tried to punch in, but a kick note was clipped, and I decided that we had another good take in us. Joe was all for doing the song straight from the top, and we killed it. It sounds great. Now only Years and Beg the Past are left.

4 songs down...3 to go.

We're listening to playback on Brasserie and Luster, but I don't foresee any problems with them. We didn't intend for Joe to play all throughout Brasserie, but he played a beat just as a glorified metronome. I still don't know what type of arrangement I want to do on the first part of Brasserie. Hmmm...there is a slight flub on the heavy final chorus of Brasserie. We'll probably punch-in and out of that. We still have to do Years, Last Screams, and Beg the Past. We're laughing, because at some point I messed up and my body language almost signaled to Joe to quit playing, but fortunately his better sense told him to push forward and ignore me! We're still listening to playback on Luster --end of second verse. It's funny me playing Scott's bass-line on guitar just so we can keep track of where we are, since guitars are basically non-existent on most of the verses. I'm starting to get a headache...blah. And poor dearest Elena is asleep. Tracey and Kelly are...well, they're back! They've been in the gym. I'm hungry...that's what it is...the headache, I mean. Oh well...playback is still going. Last chorus, and then out.

Punch In

Ha! We've already had to punch in! We're still on Tremble Bare aaaaand YES! It sounded like a clean punch in after the bridge!!! Woot! If only Joe hadn't flubbed near the ending, and we're doing a fade out even!!!

Setting Up

Joe and Scott are setting up. My babe Elena is with me, and Scott's girls Kelly & Tracey are along for the loooooong ride as well.

Here We Go

Joe is going to track drums this coming week of spring break. As of right now, this may take place in a gymnasium, so it's going to be either really cool, or really problematic. The solid songs that we're shooting for are Luster, Other Door, Years, Beg the Past, Last Screams, Brasserie, and Tremble Bare. There are about eight or nine others that we are trying to cultivate and get worked out, but it's doubtful that they'll get any attention during the first session. We hope to have a final song count on the album of around ten solid songs. Ideas keep pouring in from all members, but the fat will have to be trimmed and set aside for subsequent projects.