The City Veins

The mixing is done, and the CD has been dropped of for mastering! I want to give a big thanks to Mike (who doesn’t have a website, but should). I learned a lot mixing this album, and it sounds fantastic. Mike used some fantastic tricks: doubling parts, keying gates to other instruments, adding reverbs and echos, etc. It is spectacular. The playing may be crap, but you are going hear every important detail of that crappy performance. You are going to appreciate how bad we are in unsurpassed detail!

One of the things I realized last night was that I have an Eaglesesque number of guitars on these songs, and I am okay with that.

So after much wrangling, several fistfights, and the almost dissolution of The City Veins, we have a title for our upcoming EP:

“Cracks in the Floor”

There it is people.  If you have thoughts or comments, we welcome them as long as they are of the “Huzzah, boys, I really love it” variety.  If you don’t have anything nice to say about it, please listen to your mother and don’t say anything at all.  Our grip on the peace that this name has brought is tenuous at best, and I fear that re-opening the name debate will only send Charles further down his self-abusive, drunken shame spiral.

( j/k Charles - maybe.)

I don’t really feel like the recording process has started until I undergo a long, 11-12 hour, single recording session that leaves me incapable of forming a coherent thought. I like to think that these sessions are spiritually important and allow me to get to a point where I play only on instinct. Of course that is a big lie, but at least it is a comforting lie.

What really happens is that poor planning always results in having to cram a lot into these long sessions. On Saturday, Aaron and I subjected ourselves to one of these long sessions. I would say that you can tell how mentally taxing these session are based on Aaron’s post, but I have read Aaron’s other posts.

I can say that all of the instruments are recorded now. All we need to do is record the vocals, mix the damn thing, master the damn thing, and get it printed. I have been looking at my schedule and I think the next day that I get to sleep in is April 18th.

Some highlights from Saturday’s session are:

1) The battery died in my wireless mouse. I went to get some new batteries, and found that Aaron had unscrewed and completely taken apart my mouse by the time I got back. Never mind that this is not how you replace the batteries, and that it almost broke my mouse. I was impressed that he was able to unscrew and take apart my mouse so quickly.

2) I got to play the didgeridoo on a song! I don’t know if that song will make the final EP, but I do love playing the didgeridoo.

3) I was working on a guitar solo about 10-11 hours into the session. It was not going well. I was just playing it over and over again, trying different things, and hating everything that I was playing. I would only stop playing to shout obscenities. I think this went on for about 30 minutes. I assume that this was my neighbors’ favorite part of the weekend. I must say that I have pretty great neighbors. Aaron and I have been really loud for about two weeks now and I have had no complaints.

4) My favorite part was recording feedback. I took our hollow body Rickenbacker, laid it across the guitar amp, and tweaked settings and distortions until I got a sound I liked.

Mostly, the session was just very boring. We spent most of the time listening to the songs, and deciding stupid things like, “should we double that guitar?” or “does this need some piano?” and other mundane things like that. Most of the work that Aaron and I did on Saturday will end up mixed so low that it will tough to hear.

I am not there yet, but I am pretty close to hating all of these songs.

It is amazing how quickly things out of hand. When we first planned this whole EP thing, we figured we would record a few songs, mostly in my apartment, get the damn thing printed, and sell it to some people. We figured the whole process would take a few weeks, and we could have a nice album release party in mid-April. It was a lovely dream we had.

Spencer has also done a good job coming up with time-tables and spreadsheets, and it is amazing how long a lot of this stuff takes, and how expensive it gets. Mid-April has turned into June, and Aaron and I are currently fighting about administration stuff. A good time is being had by all. Fortunately for Spencer, a lot of what we are fighting about has to do with our last band, leaving Spencer able to avoid the whole conflict. This argument hasn’t gotten nasty yet, but it is still early. Honestly, I think this argument should be decided by the internet.

In lighter news, the concert on Saturday was a lot of fun. It was nice to play a concert where the bands supported each other, and actually watched each other perform. That doesn’t happen as often as it should. I look forward to playing with The (still websiteless) Surge and The Stalking Horses again soon. It was also nice to just let loose while playing, and not have to worry about a click track.

Robbers on High Street at the Rock and Roll Hotel. Mr. Leafblower was kind enough to ask us to open for them. It should be a lot of fun, and you can even pre-order tickets, which I think is a first for us.

In other exciting news, the EP is slowly coming together. We have one song where Spencer’s drumming on the verse is so nuts/good that I don’t even want to add guitar to that section of the song. As I told Aaron last night, “it is a jam.”

Photo by Flickr user MJLphoto.com.