Tuesday, January 18, 2011

The Demos

Saturday afternoon, while I was out at a function for work, I received an email from Brandon that contained rough recordings of a rehearsal he conducted in NYC with Mike, our guitarist, and Terry, our backing vocalist. I quickly went to go find cell service (which sucks in the bowels of SUNY Potsdam's school of music) and download the tracks so I could listen to them.

I was very pleased to hear some good ideas being tossed around, and that the other musicians seemed to be enjoying themselves and trying out some different ideas that I would have thought of. I enjoy that kind of collaboration. It makes us all feel like a band, rather than just the two main guys and some session musicians.

I hope that in the week leading up to our studio time, we can all get together in Brooklyn and have a full-on full-band rehearsal. Needless to say, I am getting very excited.

For those wondering, and I may have said this before, but I'm too lazy to check, the EP will have 5 songs written by Brandon or co-written by the two of us. A small start, but something solid people will be able to take home with them after shows.

Wednesday, January 05, 2011

Making The Band

While things have been generally slow going regarding the album making process (being that all the songs are already written and we don't hit the studio until February) we have made progress in the area of preproduction.

Brandon and I have been sporadically discussing the arrangements of songs, and as it turns out, we will be overhauling a few of the tunes so that they sound a bit different than people might be used to hearing them live. I don't want to spoil too much for those who are familiar with our tunes (which is very few people) so I won't get into detail about which songs or what parts will be undergoing changes.

The other very significant step forward we've made has been to hire our studio band. Our whole idea for this record is to make something that we can easily duplicate on stage with a 4-piece band. We want to keep it simple and straightforward, and raw to a degree. Thus, our line-up is as follows:

Mike Bell will be playing lead guitar for us. We met Mike through our buddy John Schmitt, whom he played with in the Brooklyn group "The Bay Ridge All-Stars". Mike is a phenomenal guitarist, very technically sound, and very well prepared and professional.

Our bassist is a guy by the name of Will Prepestas. Will went to college with us out in Fredonia, and actually filled in for us on occasion in our old band. He's an accomplished musician, majoring in saxophone and vocal performance at school, and being one of the most melodious bass players I've had the pleasure of playing with.

We're also adding an additional vocalist to the mix to help fill out some of the harmonies. Terry Brennan also plays with John in the "All-Stars", as well as his own NYC-based band "Belt". The first time I met Terry, he was hosting a performance series from Tainted Blue studios in Manhattan that Brandon was performing solo at. All around good dude, great singer, and music aficionado, he also oddly is currently dating someone I went to high school with in Central New York. Small world eh?

Brandon will obviously be handling rhythm guitar and lead vocaling duties as well as any incidental instrumentation (harmonica, mandolin, etc) that we may requite, while I will be hitting the drums, singing back-up, and maybe noodling on a few guitar licks here and there.

Within the next couple of weeks, we'll be sending off rough demos to the guys in the band, and having them basically come up with their own parts in an effort to infuse these tunes we've lived with for so long with some fresh ideas that maybe we wouldn't have thought of.

Till next time...