It’s been a while since I’ve made any forward progress on this album. Too bad it’s not able to produce itself. Isn’t it strange to enjoy doing something, but not want to actually do it?
I’ve got four or five songs basically done. Another nine to go. Maybe less if I decide to cut out the filler tracks. I haven’t been able to get anything done for weeks, with cuckoo-pants constantly yelling and banging around.
This part of the process was more fun when I had my studio and people would be hanging around, drinking beer, getting high. I get a lot more done by myself, so there’s that.
I’ve never been happy with any of the records I’ve made, and I’ve always blamed that on my collaborators not knowing what the hell they were doing. Or what they wanted. Which is partially true. They’d insist I’d make a change. Add a part. I knew it was wrong, but I wanted to avoid confrontation. Some songs were so close, too. I’d love to go back and remix a few of those tracks someday. Especially now that I can play most of the instruments myself. No excuses this time.
I always appreciate getting lots of tracks to work with from the guys, but holy shit, editing vocals is tedious! Six vocal tracks times a four-minute song. How many breath noises is that? Cut, fade, cut, cut, fade, tune.
The screen flashes and fills the white lines of the grid with ventricular tachycardia of yellow and red. I drag each squiggle up or down, squeezing and expanding the heartbeat. Aural resuscitation.
I’m old fashioned. I still tune each and every note of a vocal track manually. It’s a delicate fusion of being way too anal about the vocals still sounding natural while getting them as perfectly in tune as possible. Plus, this way, I get to dial in the vibrato to exact pitch. Auto-tune is cool if you’re doing demos. And you’re lazy. And your singer is tone deaf. I would never put that garbage on a final product. I’m not taking advantage of all of the features, I know. Even so, I can’t see how it can get it as tight as my eyes and ears checking every note.
What this song needs are some real horns. The session horn tracks I added sound decent. Technology has come a long way in the last few years. Tremendous improvements since bouncing MIDI through a keyboard, that’s for sure. Still, a real sax or trumpet would add to the authenticity of the whole thing.
I hope Kyle is doing okay. It’s funny how many of us have issues with our minds and bodies, but never talk about it. Funny, but not surprising. That’s probably the reason B and I stayed friends after the last project. I think he’s the only one I ever opened up to about that stuff. Even the guys I played with for years, like Tim and Nate, never heard about the demons and the anxiety. I just drank those troubles away. Seems I only have two mechanisms – drunk or hermit.
It’s been a few years since I actually enjoyed a drink. Sure, I can be polite when someone offers me a beer. I’m trying to remember the last time I really wanted to drink. It had to be back when I lived in the tower. The sickly-sweet flavor of Jager is forever in my mind, but resides in some faded, olfactory sepia tone now. I don’t have anything to drink here, anyway. THC vodka, but I’m not brave enough to tap into that teat. That’s not what it’s for, anyway. Infused alcohol has so many more uses in the kitchen than cannabutter.
People used to come around the studio when I was working. Non-musicians. They probably thought the recording studio was a super-hip place to hang out. I always tried to warn them. They’d show up with a six-pack and walk around the room, marveling at the amplifiers, guitars and synthesizers before finally pulling a chair up next to my console. After spending an hour watching me edit drum tracks or cut the same rhythm guitar parts over-and-over again, they remembered they had to visit their mother or left the stove on. I like doing this kind of stuff. Call me crazy. There’s a Zen element to it. Like most things, doing it right in the beginning makes the end product so much better. And the mixing is just so much more enjoyable when you’re already familiar with each track. Every breath.
‘Crystal Blue Persuasion’ was originally released by Tommy James and the Shondells in 1968. I started my life as a hippie sometime around 1999 and this quickly became one of my personal anthems. Yeah, a nineties-kid hippie. Maybe it was a trend back then or maybe hippie kids always exist. Back then, I still wore baggy Arizona blue jeans with over-sized Beatles t-shirts. Not on purpose. I didn’t know how to dress myself. Obviously, I knew how to get dressed, I just had no style. It wasn’t until about a decade later that I found my love for paisley blouses and bell-bottom pants.
The idea for The Walls Instead came about in about 2008. I’d been playing in Soular Power and The Suppressors around that time and both bands had horn sections. They were a Motown wedding band and traditional ska group, respectively. I figured it would be super-cool to record ska and reggae versions of my favorite songs and put as many of these players on the recordings as possible. An all-star showcase album. The Suppressors went through about sixty band members over the several years I worked with them. At least half of those guys were pretty cool. That’s a lot of cats to bring into the studio.
After cutting some shitty rhythm guitar and vocal tracks to a click, I brought eight drummers in over a couple of weekends and recorded the rhythm section for a dozen songs. One or two songs per drummer.
Getting the horn players in was more of a challenge. As things tend to go for me, I got started on some other projects and The Walls Instead was forgotten about for another decade.
I’ve always loved that name for a band. When I decided to do my ‘solo’ album, I knew the name I’d be releasing it under. That, or Hobo Erotic. When we changed our band name to the name to The Suppressors, Manu said I could have the old name, but I never did anything with it.
The best way to pay homage to the way it all started is to include a couple of songs from the original sessions on this new album. I decided to go with Crystal Blue, Ain’t Over and To Be With You. I wouldn’t put the latter two on my favorite songs list, but the tracks I have for these songs are top-notch. I could recut my guitar and bass parts, but most of them are decent. More than anything, I’m choosing them for the killer drum tracks. As I listen through these old recordings, I remember players I haven’t thought about for years.
All the files for the first two songs from those sessions are lined up and they’re ready to mix. It wasn’t really part of the plan to release any of the cover songs as singles, but I’m letting the album tell me what it wants me to do.
In the meantime, I have to write more horn parts and bury them in the mix. As soon as I get this track out there, we can start working on the music video. Simpler than the last one. It was still a homebrew video, but we did a fair job. Having worked on real video shoots over the years, in front of and behind the camera, helps us make the most out of our modest set of cameras, lights and props.
For this video, I’m thinking we’ll go old-school and have the band mock-playing the song out in a field or somewhere outside. I don’t know why I keep thinking Come On Eileen. I don’t even know what that music video looks like. Something to do with overalls.