“Today was a good day”

So today started off great. The Phillies swept the fucking Mets! Four games at home and we took’em all. I was at the first game on Monday and had the pleasure of seeing a nice blow out. With NY being only an hour or so drive from Philly every time we have the Mets at home the place is over run with douche Mets fans. It’s always a pleasure to attend a win in that situation, but four in a row is pretty damn sweet. It was a day game today that I watched from home and it caused me to get no work done. Probably one of the best baseball games I’ve watched in years.

With the positive vibes flowing, I got a call from Dave G. that the second studio computer (the one that will end up in my small home studio to do all the programming and keyboard stuff for the album) is up and running and we can throw it in the studio and keep working until the main computer is back on it’s feet (should be done is a few days). Awesome! He got the fucker working and transferred the original drum tracks on to the new computer and we were back in business.

I met up with Pete around 8 o’clock and we got back to tracking some gtr’s. We’re not “officially” working on album tracks yet. Just some old tunes to work out the kinks of the new studio, but we did get rhythm gtr’s and lead gtr’s down for two tracks. The first song is a rock-n-roll deal called “So Easy” and the second is a Neil Young-ish deal called “Leave A Wake”. For the latter we stuffed Pete’s bass drum with blankets and draped his snare drum with a towel to get that old school “puffy” drum sound. It worked out very well even though it doesn’t sound anything like what I want the actual album to sound like. If anything, it will be an awesome b-side. The Dylan basement tapes meet the future (well, maybe not even close to that awesome, but we’re trying).

The bottom line is that we are back at it and I had a fucking blast playing some gtr’s and getting loose tonight.

-j

“Internal time clock?!? I don’t even know what that is man……”

As Pete stated below we’ve hit a slight bump in the road of recording. I’ll explain….


So the first two days in the studio were great. Got three drums tracks done and started on some guitars. The shit was going so good we killed a 30 pack of the “champagne of beers” between three of us (Ok, Jeff had two or three too) in a 9 hour session on the second day. But as fast as the sweet buzz of cheap beer set in so did the evil head of “you just built a new studio and this shit isn't going to be so easy” tapped us on the shoulder and slapped us in the face. Damn that shit hurts. It was all-good until we started tracking electric guitars. Drums? Sounded great. Guitars? Not so much. Every time we hit record on a guitar track we’d get a nasty crackle out of the studio monitors. A fucking bad chord right? Nope. The amp? Nope. A pre-amp? Nope. The flux-capacitor? Nope. Tried everything…..every cable….every everything. Turns out it’s the fucking internal time clock in the sound card of our brand new studio computer. Whatever the fuck that is I don’t know (Dave figured that shit out), but it should be fixed in the next few days and we can get back to work. I'll keep you posted.



-j

nothings ever easy.

some minor set backs have slowed us down for a day or so but nothing to be worried about. we've got some new pictures and videos of us actually recording something. the one video is from jeffs phone so it is what it is. the other you'll just have to watch. we've got the video camera there we just haven't set it up yet or we still need tapes or the battery's dead. its something like that...

here's the video 1...
and video 2...


thats brians amp...


thats blurry jay doing a solo...


jay again...


more jay...


thats my broken drum head...


and jay again...

Time to shut up and put up

So tonight was the first official night of recording! We didn’t really get much done as far as “starting the album”, but we did track the drums for the first b-side tune. I must say it felt like x-mas morning to me. Just to see all the gear fired up and working was awesome.

This is how the recording process is going to go now that we’ve broken the cherry and know that everything is in working order:

Step one: Spend the first two weeks recording some old tunes I wrote a while ago. Tunes that will not be on the new album (unless we strike gold). This will just be an exercise of the recording process, working out the kinks of the new studio and feeling out the new space. I don’t want to jump right into the “good stuff” in the first weeks of recording because I know the shit will start to gel after a few sessions and I don’t want to waste time re-recording the tunes that will end up on the new album.

Step two: Record the fucking album. It’s that easy man. The Ol’two step.

As to what you can expect from this blog from here on out? Shit, tons of amazingly boring talk about what we did or didn’t accomplish every night, pictures of guitars, pedals, drums, us drinking booze, mics and various other recording gear. We will also be stepping up with some videos of the recording process. Snippets of all kinds of good and bad takes, sour notes and funny drunken moments. We’ll save most of good stuff for the final album.

Now a quick note to anybody that has read this far: Thank you! Check back often….if you’ve made it this far, you’ll be back (I hope). At the worst this blog will kill a few minutes of your boring ass day job. Work is for jerks my friends.

-j

"It's Offical!"

well we’re really done. we moved about 90% of the gear in and are on our way to start recording soon. no i'm not kidding. we got together on wednesday and moved the gear in and brian had his camera and took some pictures. i promise the next post is going to have someone with head phones on recording something or a video of somebody recording.

till then, DO WORK SON!

pg.





this is from behind my drums.


this is a good picture of the live room.


here is the rack. its missing 1 or 2 things.


daves ghost and mic cables.


thats me trying to make it louder.


here's our sweet mic.


and thats jay playing the drums.

The Final Nail

So I got the call from Pete (LAF drummer and master of all things electrical, wood working and studio constructing….a one man machine) that the studio is FINISHED! Fuck Yeah! He spent the last two nights breaking ass with all the finishing details and man does the place look sweet. I was there helping him just two days ago and it was looking pretty good then, but he stepped up and rocked it out and when I arrived tonight I was pretty blown away. Even better than that was the fact that tonight was the first time we actually started loading in some of the recording gear. Yep, this whole process is actually becoming real now. I’ve been a spectator through this whole process so far, I did do some cleaning up, cheerleading and basic labor-type work witch might just pay off because if we can’t make this record sound good enough to do some touring and maybe make enough money to pay some rent for a little bit I’ll at least have some experience at the only job any self respecting musician can do besides play music……a laborer on a construction site, but to be honest I’ll probably end up being the old guy lugging beer up from the basement of a local bar. Hopefully I won’t have to write about that experience for a few years. Fingers crossed.


So there are a few reasons that the “excitement factor” for this recording is a bit higher than a lot of the past records I’ve recorded. First off, all of my previous recordings have been homemade, super small budget affairs. No complaints and this is kinda the same deal, but totally different. Let me explain. As with the first LAF album and all the Lenola albums, we recorded them in a very DIY fashion. The spare bedroom was the “control room”; the better part of the living room or dank ass basement was the “cutting room”. This experience is gonna be a good bit different as we actually have what resembles a real recording studio and the equipment also is being stepped up into the “real” studio world. The extra bonus is that I’ll still have the luxury of being able to do some of the recording/writing at home. I have a nice little second bedroom/studio space right here in my new place in south Philly that rests only three blocks from our studio. I’m getting a nice new computer that will mirror our studio computer and I’ll be able to bring an external hard drive home with me and work on all the keyboard and programming stuff in the comfort of my own place like the old days. The best of both worlds man. A sweet ass studio for all the “live” recording and a nice little bedroom studio to concentrate on all the little details that I enjoy so much. I’ll have the sweetest studio tan when this recording is over. If all goes as planned I should be fucking transparent when all is said and done.

Good news from the LAF front...

So it’s been a while since I’ve checked in. How have you been? Good? Great! I’ve
been well too. Lot’s of good news to report, but I didn’t want to count any chicks before they hatched. They’ve just barely breached the shell and are still stumbling around like drunks on payday, but the few that have made it out of the shell have good things to report on the Like A Fox front..

Chick number one knows: The “self tiled” Like A Fox album is ready and set to be released by Pronoia Records in the UK. This has been a long process, but after much anticipation and nail biting, it’s all a go! The release date has yet to be set, but the masters have been sent out, the artwork has been sailed across the sea and contracts have been penned. All you blokes on the other side of the pond better buy a few copies of the LP so we can come over and rock and drink our way through your land….the first round is on us!

Chick number two knows: We have signed a sweet deal with Transit Of Venus Records based out of Philadelphia to release the next and soon to be recorded Like A Fox album. The “CEO” of TOV is a great guy that really believes in the “music” and has afforded us the chance to make the record I’ve always known we were capable of and now we’ll actually be able to deliver on. Thanks Jim!


Chick Number Three Knows: We (mainly Pete) have spent the last two months building a studio in our practice space. It’s in the last stages of finally being completed….seems one week turns into to two, two weeks turns into months, but they always say “anything worth doing is worth it’s weight in gold and two in the bush is better than one in your….foot….?!?!” Ummmm….anyway…The studio is set and the gear will be loaded in by the time you read this. I have a bunch of tunes ready to go and cannot wait to get going. If you like good tunes and have a pair of nice headphones and are willing to use them I promise we will not disappoint.

this is it...

so we finally finished construction. we’ve painted, cleaned and started moving gear in last week. now I know it’s been a long time between post but as of right now I’m the only posting and I’ve been super busy with work and other stuff but jay guarantees me that he’s got three long winded entries coming up. things should start to speed up once we start recording. we do have our first video post which is here... and some new pictures. the video is a little dark and short but it's a start.

here's the control room window...

thats me cutting a piece of trim for the door. notice the sweat ring. that sorta explains why i've lost close to 20lbs in the last 6 weeks...

these dudes stopped by to help...

this is the finished wall in the cutting room...

here's another one...

the board...



speakers and the grinch...



so next week we should have all the gear in and on our way to recording. we're going to set up our video camera and have it rolling non stop. so we should have a ton of video footage. plus i'm going to snap some more pic's of the finished room and have them up soon.

i think thats it for now.