The road trip

This is a little late but the mini-tour was a blast.  We went to Atlanta, Charleston and Greenville.  I think we accomplished what we wanted to accomplish which was:

Determine that the band is not composed of assholes

We spent a lot of time on the road and I was with at least someone from the band every minute for 60 hours and while I realize the above sentence is definitely relative, the lesson learned is that I personally do not think the band is composed of assholes. 

Here's some other things I learned:

1) Atlanta is huge.  I couldn't believe how big it is.  I naively thought that cities that big only existed up north.  What a fool.  Atlanta also has the Claremont Hotel.  I was told that The Claremont Hotel has rooms available "by the hour".  So if you're very tired in Atlanta and need to take a quick nap, there ya go. 

In the basement of the luxurious Claremont Hotel is a bar that has a slogan "Alive since 65".  The slogan should be "Alive at 65".  Stop in and you'll see what I mean.  Don't mind the small cover, the look of horror on your friend's face will be well worth it.

2) Charleston is historic and metropolitan at the same time.  And I mean historic like Gettysburg and metropolitan like London.  It's a beautiful city with a wonderful downtown.  Apparently it has the same problem that Durham does though: there's a university but they don't come out to shows (and no, smart ass, I'm not using our shows as a gauge; it's what I heard from a coupla different folk).  They have a Chaz-ish store down there, 52.5 Records, that does in-house shows/has a wonderful staff/provides free coffee.

Wait a sec, Chaz doesn't provide free coffee...

3) Greenville totally kicks ass.  We played a house party because the art gallery that used to have shows can't have shows anymore due to fire code violations or something. When we first got to Greenville, Mike knocked on the door of the house we were playing at and some kid answers saying, "Who knocks on MY door?  WHO KNOCKS ON MY DOOR?  Dude, DON'T knock on my door!  That means I got to get up to answer it.  Just come in."    Another quote I thought was funny is this guy with cut off gloves shows up with a case of Miller and the other guy says, "Man, I remember when Stokey's put that for $9 bucks a case.  And that's all a remember.  They put it on sale and the whole rest of the week was gone."

The show was a blast.  I wanted to stick around and see We Are The Music Makers and Apis Bull but we were sick as dogs probably due to us violating this...

4) On a tour, if at all possible, don't schedule shows more than 3 hours apart.  Our shows were five hours apart which meant getting up and on the road at least two hours sooner than we should have.

5) Have the chicken soup.  I'm a real mild vegetarian and I use that term when I apply it to myself real loosely.  I still eat eggs.  I still eat fish and if I'm at a party and I realize that the quiche rolls aren't as vegetarian as I thought, I still eat them thinking well at least the little fucker didn't die for nothing.  And this is completeky awful of me but I make exception to eating chicken soup when I'm sick.  That being said: in Greenville, the chicken soup at the Katie's EuroPub (I think that's what it is called) is unbelievable.

6) Bagged Pickles.  Who thought this was a good idea?

Next time, more rest, more vitamins, more fruits, more veggies and more dollar bills for Paul to give Porche. 

 Thanks Jeff, Mat, Ashley, Ryan and the Lowercase Thieves, Clay and 52.5 Records, Justin, ISP and Elevado...and of course Josh!

 

The new songs, the new EP

So we're going to be putting out an EP in the next month or so.  The songs are done, we're just doing the artwork now.  We didn't want to just do jewel cases or anything, we wanted something a little different...some pizzazz.  Something with Jazzercise!   It's just taken awhile to find what we want to do. Part of the problem is that it's an EP so we can't spend a ton of cash on the packaging.

In the past, we've kind of nickeled and dimed it when we went to record and gotten some decent results.  Yet with the EP, we really wanted to take our time with it and so we decided that instead of nickel and diming it, we'd quarter and half-dollar it and spend a couple more bucks to do it.  Maybe go out of town or something.

However, in order to save ourselves a lot of quarters and half-dollars, Paul suggested we should just try recording ourselves. 

In our basement. 

With some mikes that he has.

And we should mix it ourselves.

Yeah. 

Sure.

I was initially skeptical of the whole process when Paul suggested it because I've done this whole home recording stuff before to seriously mixed results.  Most of the time I worked very hard for something to sound mediocre.  And it was just me, mind you.  Me and a drum machine and a whole lot of time.  It wasn't a whole band and all these seperate drums and cymbols and amps that have to be recorded.  I wasn't looking forward to it.

But in retrospect, it's an obvious choice.  Bands should always always always record themselves at least a couple times to get used to the process so when they do go into some fancy schmancy studio, they at least kind of know what they're going for.  Regardless of the outcome, always record yourself first.  Then graduate to the $20/hour studio and THEN go to the $40/hour studio.  I think we had recorded ourselves only once before.  The previously posted version of 'Witching Hour' was a result of that session.  I think we posted it as 'Witching Hour-Remix' or some such thing. 

There's a couple of things that helped to assuage my fears along the way:

1) Paul really does know what he's talking about

2) Paul really does have good equipment

3) UNC has a media lab with good monitors and Logic

4) To the surprise of no one, Andrew has 'connections'

The result is what is now posted on our myspace.  Some people have claimed that if you listen to it at ReverbNation, it sounds a lot better but I don't know.  I don't have computer speakers and for the past few months I've been listening to it uncompressed through some pretty decent headphones so relative to how I've been listening to it, like all myspaced songs by all the myspace artists, no matter if it's recorded it in a basement or in a $10,000/day studio, it all sounds just okay.  I'm not trying to goad anyone into buying the EP to HEAR THE AMAZING DIFFERENCE THROUGH SPECTRALSONIC SOUND or anything like that.  It's just that we've worked hard on it and I'd hate for the gavel to come down on my band or band for that matter solely based on what you hear on myspace. 

And the whole "we're waiting on the art work" does sound kind of Spinal Tap-ish but we've looked at what other bands have done and we've looked into the Digi-Pak thing and it's all taken time. We didn't persue looking into the art while we were working on it because I don't think anyone was sure these home recordings were going to work out until maybe a month or so ago. I think we've settled on something and I think it will look different and unique and snazzy.

We'll have a party in the next few months to celebrate and I'll be sure to let everyone know..