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

Update!!!!!!!

as Chad and Devin are holed up in the new Silver Sonya location, surely tearing out their hair [sic] at the seemingly endless number of layers and tracks, the mixes are coming together and a light is beginning to show at the end of the tunnel

we were finally able to snatch a listen to "Angry Town" yesterday and it is so exciting to hear the record begin to finally take shape - we are SOOOOO close, you can almost taste it

----

since returning DC, we have been fortunate enough to share time and the stage with some great old friends, as well as some very awesome new ones - here's a little recap...

*November 7th @ The Bluebird (St. Louis, MO): we played with one of our most favorite St. Louis bands, Say Panther, and one of our most favorite Champaign bands, Headlights, who are now playing out as a quintet with Kenny and Nick of Decibully joining the ranks on guitar and bass/accordion respectively - simply awesome!!!

-as an aside, both Say Panther and Headlights have new records in the works, please save your lunch money, take your piggy bank up to Coinstar, snatch some bills from your momma's purse, or whatever you have to do to make sure that you own these records the day that they come out!

*November 16th @ Cowboy Monkey (Champaign, IL): the Cowboy Monkey is absolutely one of our favorite places to play in the country, hands down, and this looks to have been the last time we will ever get to play there - they are rumored to be changing things around and tearing out the stage come New Year's - we did get to play with some great new friends though, Des Moines', Jacob Tyler Wolfgang, Chicago's, Rachel Ries [amazing!] and Champaign favorites, Casados

after the show, Tristan took us back to Headlights' chalet, which is nestled in between two corn fields in the northern part of Champaign-Urbana, where Erin, Brett and him live and record - this was our first time staying with Headlights and we all were up uber-late drinking PBR, eating Pokey-Sticks and smoking our corn-cob pipes

good times had by all

*November 17th @ The Bluebird (St. Louis, MO): it is a rare treat to play in STL and get to share the stage with not just 1, but 2 bands that we have never played with before. this was just such an occasion! we had such a blast with St. Louis', Bo & The Locomotive, and Michigan stalwarts, Saturday Looks Good To Me

there were so many things working for us on this night, playing with SLGTM: 1) it was a Saturday, 2) it was their first time playing in St. Louis, and 3) Ryan Howard, of our other favorite MI band, Canada, plays drums!!!

----

it is nice to be home to not only get a chance to relearn the songs after we dissected the crap out of them in the studio, but to also spend time with family and friends and just chill out a little

there is so much on the horizon:

*two cool shows left this year
December 8th
@ The Mad Art Gallery for the 4th installment of The Rock n Roll Craft Show
December 22nd
@ Off Broadway for A Very Merry Christmas Spectacular w/ So Many Dynamos, Light Pollution and Laite

*new record/tour this Spring

*Kiley and Steve's wedding next August!

*Stephen and former Team Up!!! counterpart Mario Martinez have been playing together again - they're performing tomorrow, Nov. 25th, as Thankful Tree @ The Lemp Arts Neighborhood Arts Center

*Ryan is gearing up for a Dock Ellis Band tour this January

*Eric H. is finishing a full-length Slow Parade album as we speak

*Mike is recording albums for both Geoff Koch and The Makeshift Gentlemen this winter

*Eric E. has most likely written about 30 new songs since we have been home and being that the Christmas season is his most prolific time of the year, expect many more songs to be in the works

etc. etc. etc.

stay tuned for more updates as the mixes begin to pour in - there is talk of us possibly getting to hear 3 more tomorrow!!!!!!!

As mixing begins, let's take a look back...

So it seems like half the world has been some kind of sick in the last few weeks - from the "superbug" staph infections in Virginia a month ago to the mutated cold-virus variant that's made headlines recently. So it would only make sense that as Steve and Kiley's tummies recover from food poisoning (or a 24-hour flu, but it's unlikely) last Thursday, Chad Clark shakes off his own mega-flu bug to begin mixing our record at Silver Sonya's new studio location (that's right, no longer within Inner Ear! Maybe it's the "outer ear" location?).

While we wait patiently to hear the first batch of rough mixes, and John Vogl toils away on the album artwork, we might as well take a look back. Here's some photos from the last few days (taken on Steve's 35mm, since Stephen's digital camera got yoinked in the robbery):

Here's a look at the (old) Silver Sonya control room, with Señor Devin Ocampo at the helm.


Oh, Digital Performer...


The door to the room...


View from the vocal booth...


The drive back was quite a picturesque trip through the Appalachian foothills, with West Virginia being a particular highlight.


We especially enjoyed passing through Wheeling, WV, and agreed that it looked like a very cool town. Maybe next time we'll stop and have a look around.


There's lots more news about the new record that we'll be able to report soon, and maybe we can even get some video from the recording up here, too, so stay tuned.

Cheers,
GAH

Tracking Days Five & Six...

in the short time since our last post, Devin has been replaced by Sparkling "Mike", a tin wind-key robot with real! sparking action, we needed someone who could get the job done for us and "Mike" stepped up to the plate...


---


flute, done!


xylophone, done!




guitars, done!

in all seriousness though, Devin is really rocking this shit
since we moved from Inner Ear to Silver Sonya, we have been double-timing these overdubs and it finally feels like it is all coming together
songs are beginning to sound whole and we are growing more and more excited to finish this record

quick re-cap...
Friday: Kiley knocked all of her tracks out like a champ - keys, flute, vocals... + we did group vocals/stomps/claps for three songs
Saturday: Eric E., Mike and Steve's guitars were finished as well as Mike's xylophone parts

here is what is left on our list, we are so close, but there is still a tremendous amount of stuff to do...
Stephen and Mike's last few percussion overdubs
Steve's trumpet and keys
Eric E. and Steve's vocals

week #2 is going to be great - tracking will be finished and mixing will begin

back at the condo we have all started watching Entourage Season 1 - Jeremy Piven is so awesome
we have also taken to listening to the new Radiohead album independently, as opposed to all together in the van on the way to and from the studio - this methodology should make it very interesting on the long drive home when all of our opinions coalesce at once

hopefully we will have some photos of the sites next week when Chad kicks us out of the studio to start mixing - we are all very excited to see the Smithsonian

Ryan and Stephen leave tomorrow to head back to St. Louis, leaving Eric E., Steve, Mike and Eric H. here for the remainder of the week - let's wish them a safe journey home

---

we found this place to have some really cool crossword puzzles...
www.bestcrosswords.com

TEAMWORK

As Kiley sits at the airport waiting for her flight, which has been delayed almost 5 hours at this point, and Stephen and Ryan plan their Monday morning departure, it becomes apparent that our first week here is slowly drawing to a close. The tracks sound great, but we still have a lot to do. Mike is currently banging out the remainder of his guitar parts, while vocal tracking still looms large, and Steve has yet to track anything. Luckily, the guys here are total champs and are dedicated to doing this record right and not sacrificing quality for time, so we've adjusted our timeframe to comfortably accomodate the rest of the recording process - making sure we're not rushing things and regretting mediocre takes.

Looking back to Sunday, when we first loaded our gear in and got acquainted with the studio space, it doesn't seem like we could have even anticipated things going as well as they have. Yes, we've been running behind, but anyone with a halfway healthy sense of reality had to have expected that to happen - the most important thing is that everything is sounding great. Really great. Almost TOO gr-- naw, never mind.

Anywho, here's our "Go Team!" moment from Sunday night:

Tracking Day Three...

day three...


bass = done!


guitar = almost done (eric's that is)

it has been an incredibly long week thus far - 12 to 14 hour days worth of GAH played repeatedly over the speakers

that being said, everything is sounding incredible
Devin has proposed some minor changes here and there with the rhythm section and it has paid off tremendously - sections of songs that we have grown accustomed to have now found a new life

today's schedule is a daunting one...

a) the remainder of Eric E's guitar
b) the remainder of Stephen's drums
c) some piano
d) stomps and claps
e) and if we have time... Steve and Mike's guitars, trumpet, etc.

today also is the last day that we are tracking on the Inner Ear side of the studio, as we move back into Silver Sonya tomorrow to finish up the tracking and to start mixing on Monday

---

it has been weird to hear a familiar sound coming through the walls as we sit in the lounge

TJ Lipple, from Aloha, has just started mastering the forthcoming Headlights LP and it sounds amazing - these guys are such good friends of ours and it is just another point on a long list of fateful happenings with regards to making this record

So Many Dynamos are in town tonight - hopefully we can figure out a way to make it over to catch their set

---

Watching:
eachother sleep

Listening:
Headlights "TBA"
Hawksley Workman "For Him and The Girls"

Photo Update 2 - Silver Sonya/Inner Ear Day 1 - 10/7

our new home!


2" of gah


production meeting with devin and nick


eric h. playing Joe Lally's [of Fugazi] first bass


as we end most days... catching everyone up on season 3 of The Office

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