keep it movin', to the k.i.m.

coffee.

new recipe: bread, cheese, veggie chicken patty, garden vegetable cream cheese spread. combine. nuke. yum.

we're in the trenches. i have a separate workstation in the back of the studio to do prep work. nick is gone. chad is owning it. lots of effed up sounds blasting through his new genelecs. very exciting.

more coffeeeee.

"you got me trippin', stumblin'..."

d.c. is icky today. wet and dark. insert comment.

some songs basically done. some yet to be tackled. time, what?

things are looking up for "If I'm The First To Go," "Call It Casual," "Good Behavior," and "ABCDEFGraveyard." praise chad clark.

bounce to the beat now.
-ee

Progress, FINALLY! - Eric Checks In...

just wrapped up day 2 of pre-mixing at silver sonya. i've been working with nick anderson, who was assistant engineer to devin ocampo during the tracking phase and has been assisting chad clark with mixing as well. let me say that nick has been a huge asset to the project and his hard work and attention to detail has not gone unnoticed. we've been holed up in silver sonya's new space (a great loft in d.c. with natural light, tons of instruments and a shower!) for the last couple days and have had a fantastic time hanging out and working together. i think i just had a moment with him and he's not even around right now. gooey.

last night we knocked off early because nick had to work at the galaxy hut, a great small bar in clarendon, va. i closed the place down with him, and met his friend jay, who is a recording engineer originally from st. louis. the best bar conversation i've had in years. normally i shy away from that type of thing because bar conversations tend to veer towards football and office jobs, two things that share an unappealing ickyness and hit the red on my personal yawn-o-meter. but talking about q-tip and how guitars ruin songs made me very happy to be spending the night out and about. nick's generous bartending certainly helped as well. (i should note that a few solo rounds of pool at another nearby establishment earlier in the evening got things started off on the good foot).

tomorrow nick and i will finish prepping the last few songs for the first day of real mixing, which will begin on tuesday with chad.

i am sleepytime station. pop bottles. chat soon.

currently listening to: beck - the information
currently reading: the tender bar by j.r. moehringer
currently eating: veggie chili cheese fries from ben's, a chili joint that blasts goooood r 'n' b
currently remembering that i'm grossed out by: "what-i-did-today" blogs and people who write them

-ee

Gettin' Robbed Ain't Cool...

in recent years there has been an epidemic of bands getting their trailers and vans broken into while they are on tour and we definitely spent our first night in the condo nervously trying to sleep while our equipment truck sat outside on the street

little did we know that just over a week later, as we pulled up to the very same condo at approx. 1:30am, three dudes wearing hoodies and ski-masks would rush the van holding guns, demanding our money

in a matter of moments they got away with Mike and Eric E's wallets, all four of our cell phones, our GPS unit, 2 iPods, Eric H.'s bag of books/etc., Stephen's two very nice cameras, and the $1.38 in change from Mike's pocket

Steve was smart enough to empty his pockets onto his front seat while they rushed the van, although as he tossed his wallet it went through the van and fell out the other side - due to the nervousness of the KIDS who were robbing us, none of them seemed to notice this and we were lucky to be able to keep the wallet in the end

talked about f-ed up

we hurriedly went into the house and fumbled with the Vonage phone to get a hold of the cops

as an aside: as the hoodlums ran down the street, a cop car drove past on the cross street which we later found out was actually driving around looking for these same three guys who had robbed somebody else a few blocks over

within 10 minutes of the incident 3 cop cars, a detective in an unmarked car and the crime scene investigator were on the scene

while the CSI dude took pictures of the remnants of Stephen's camera bag which they had discarded along the sidewalk, all four cops decided to take our information down individually and redundantly, all the while firing off questions like; "why couldn't you just record in St. Louis?" and "what kind of music do you play?"

we definitely were reaping the benefits of the graveyard shift

a very sleepless night later, we have decided to abandon the condo, in which we stuck out like a sore thumb anyway being the big group of kids with the Mom Van who kept really weird hours, and are currently at the studio trying to keep on keepin on and work out where we are going to stay while we get things finished

Steve was able to get a new phone this morning, although it did take us three T-Mobile locations in order to find one that would honor his contractual discount, which was an incredibly trying experience without our trusted Tom Tom GPS - he is also now the designated Sugar Daddy for the rest of the trip since Eric and Mike had to cancel almost 10 cards between them and he is the only one who's wallet survived the robbery

too bad we didn't spray paint "GAH" over all of our shit, then it'd be easier to spot it on Craigslist

crap!

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Gettin' Robbed Secret Tip! #1

if you EVER get your phone stolen, call the phone company up and FIRST ask to purchase the $6 insurance

one you have done this, then call back and report your phone stolen - you will then get a phone for free

if you DON'T, the person on the other end of the line will tell you how you now have to purchase a replacement at LIST price - not FREE or even at the DISCOUNTED rate that you pay when you sign a new contract

Mike is learning this one the very hard way!...

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Gettin' Robbed Secret Tip! #2

it might be a good idea to spread your credit cards out amongst your luggage when traveling - getting stuck without an ID or any form of currency, plastic or otherwise, really blows

---

all of this being said - we are extremely lucky to have made it through this alive, unhurt, and with only a minor amount of things taken from us - it really puts things into perspective as far as the importance of material possessions goes and we are glad that at least it was only the four of us who had to go through this and not the whole band

we will DEFINITELY be keeping this blog up, although you will not being seeing anymore of the fancy pictures that we have had so much fun taking/posting, so please keep tuning in for more updates

now let's get on with making a record...

Here in the District...

Greetings to you and yours and from us and ours.

Here we are in our nation's capitol, ankles-deep into tracking our new full-length at Silver Sonya Studios, in Arlington, VA. Drums are in the bag on 5+ songs (Call It Casual, You and Me, Madly..., 24th, In A Bed of Scissor Arms, New Moon, A Good Son), and we're a couple hours away from wrapping up our first night of tracking. But not everything has gone so smoothly...

(dramatic pause)

Friday night we stopped off at Earlham College in Richmond, IN, to play a house party with a couple local bands - both of whom ripped through energetic sets and had us totally psyched to keep up the night's momentum. We opened with "I Used To Dream About Bridges", which had the packed room bouncing around and heating things up, setting up "Call It Casual", which banged up until the second verse, when we were rudely interrupted by the arrival of the po-lice. The minors split out the back door, and everyone else fought for their right to party while the officers wandered around carding kids and explaining why people can't be on the front porch drinking because that's public intoxication. Disagreements abound and three arrests later, the house show - and party - is officially over.

Saturday brought a different kind of show entirely, opening up a show at a D.C. dive bar for a friend-of-a-friend and a couple local bands. The crowd (who mostly showed up after we finished) was a bunch of young(ish) professionals out to get loose and socialize (or maybe "socially network"?), who probably wouldn't have paid much attention to our set anyway, seeing as they didn't seem to care a whole lot about the acts they (presumably) came to see. All that aside, we got to play for Devin, one of the engineers at Silver Sonya, who enjoyed our set and got to formulate some recording ideas for the week to come.

Our drive to the condo we rented was a little (well, no, very) intimidating, as we basically rolled straight through the ghetto at 1 a.m., ending up on a small inner city dead end, at the end of which sat our condo. Not really having any bearings as to where we were, and fearing that our surroundings might be the high-crime-rate type, it was night spent worrying about our gear in the truck.

The next day brought relief (our gear was fine), and a trip through some really cool restored neighborhoods near downtown D.C. (and actually really close to our condo) and on down to the Eastern Market to rummage through a bunch of cool vendor tents. Later that day, we finally got to set foot in the studio - loading all our gear in and getting the room arranged and mics placed.

Which brings us to today, the first day of tracking, which has gone tremendously well and is about to draw to a close. We're loving the way everything is sounding, we're loving the guys here (Devin, Nick, TJ and Chad are greater than great), and we're so psyched about the rest of the week. It looks like this record is going to be something we can be really proud of, and hopefully something all of you really want to listen to. Over and over again. Forever.

Cheers,
GAH