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

Tracking Day Seven... and Then There Were Four

day seven started off with a cacophonous jolt! - Stephen laid down the last of his percussion tracks (stand-mounted baking sheet, shakers, 7-tambourine solo, etc.) - the videos of him performing these tracks are seriously some of the highlights for the last week - gonna have to YouTube this stuff when we get home

after that we got started on lead vocals, which really meant that the rest of us slept, watched movies and did crossword puzzles in the lounge while Eric E. jumped in the booth

vocals, vocals, vocals, vocals, vocals, vocals...





vocals day 1: 4 songs down
*this is a huge accomplishment - the 4 songs with vocals all of a sudden have a new life, which is a great reward after 7 straight days of constructing these song shells bit by bit

after we wrapped the session for the day, we finally got to go to Galaxy Hut, which is a bar down the street [sic], where Nick, the 2nd Engineer from our tracking sessions at Inner Ear, also works

- (everyone here says that things are "right down the street", which is strange because you have to take the 395 to get to everywhere that we have gone and it seems like getting on the highway should negate the phrase "right down the street", oh well)

Nick's band is called The Hailing and they are super awesome, we discovered them today on Myspace and now cannot figure out why Nick downplays his band so much - definitely go check them out

a couple pitchers of Stella Artois proved to be a good finish to another long day of tracking - we will never learn though, our first night to knock off early and we go out to the bars

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Ryan and Stephen left to return to St. Louis this morning (Monday) and it was sad to see them go - Mike, Steve and the Erics are now the lone 4 and somehow the condo is still a mess

left to track is Eric E's vocals on 8 songs, Steve's keyboards, vocals and trumpet, and Mike's percussion before we start mixing, which looks to be on Wednesday at our current pace

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Sparkling "Mike" has a better falsetto than Steve