Lying

Why do we tell our children not to lie, and also tell them that there is a tooth fairy, Easter bunny and Santa Clause? We can sugar coat it and dismiss these as a fun, innocent fairy tales, or tradition, or whatever. It boils down to the simple fact that we are lying to our kids. What is the worse of the two evils, depriving our children of these myths, or teaching them that it is ok to lie under certain circumstances?

Mackenzie has a few loose teeth. Kate and I will be creative, and we will not lie.

Happy Vernal Equinox

Spring is coming. That is a good thing.

New blog overdue, Ryan Meyers fiasco, & more!

I've been beyond ridiculous about keeping the blog updated. Yes, I've been busy, but it is no excuse. So my promise to you, the reader, is that I will provide interesting nuggets of information for you to ingest on a fairly regular basis. By fairly regular, I mean once a week. There is so much to say and it has been so long that its hard to know where to start.
First of all, obviously the blog has migrated over to this new site. The whopping 2 postings below were copied from the Live Journal blog that I started back in friggin October (now its March). I think blogger.com has a much better setup.
The last time I posted, I was beaming about how awesome the tune Quiet Cities sounded on the Ryan Meyers project. Funny story. . .after that post, I proceeded to clean off my recording hard drive without having the song properly backed up! Yes, we had to retrack the entire tune from scratch. Ryan was a great sport, although when I told him about it I could tell he wanted to reach his hand through the phone and smack me. So, after re-hiring Joe and Dan to come back, we actually ended up with a tighter track. Then it was time to pack some gear in the Mini and start the 15 hour trek to Mississippi (Ryan's work schedule wouldn't allow for him to return to the studio, plus it was my mistake so I took the burden of inconvenience).


All the stuff waiting to get packed in the car.


The remote studio


Ryan Meyers

Kate and I arrived in Hattiesburg and set up shop in a Hampton Inn. Ryan came over and banged out his parts in record time. It took him about two hours to do what took two days back in Steubenville. He was probably more comfortable, and the weather was definitely better. When it was all said and done, we ended up with a better track than the one we lost, so it was all good.
So, the ride back to Ohio brought Kate and I from the Gulf coast all the way to Lake Erie to pick up Mackenzie, and then back down to Steubenville. 20 hours straight in a car, another record. She is an angel for many reasons, and going on that trip with me certainly added to the list. The most insane part of the trip was that I was pulled over 19 hours and 50 minutes into the trip, and only three miles from home! I pleaded with the officer for mercy after the insanity of the previous three days. He was cool and let me go.
We received the final master of Ryan's project in the mail last week, and it is a very nice album, certainly one of our best.
The last few months have seen a lot of cool happenings. We recorded a few projects with my good friend Steve Soboslai from the band Punchline taking the role of Producer, and we actually make a great team. The two bands that Steve brought in are The Drama Summer from Toledo, OH (myspace.com/thedramasummer) and Fiction City from Toronto, Canada(myspace.com/fictioncity). Both bands recorded just a few songs each. From what I understand, The Drama Summer are now signing with an indie label and will be back to record a full length. Great for them and us! Fiction City have been getting rave reviews from their fans about their new music, and are planning a return to the studio for a full length as well. They made two separate trips to the studio so far, all the way from Canada (about 9 hours one way), at a great expense and inconvenience. For them to be willing to do that is very flattering and it tells me that we must be doing something right!
Other projects currently in the works: Peacefield (myspace.com/peacefield). Jeff Glatz came all the way from Texas to record a few new songs for a Peacefield EP. These songs are almost completed and sound amazing.
Righteous B is almost finished mixing his new album.
Bob Rice is continuing work on his Bluegrass album.
Joia Farmer is slated to begin her album in late April.
Finding Windemere (myspace.com/findingwindemere) are coming to track vocals with Steve Soboslai producing.
Eric Himan (www.erichiman.com) will be starting his new album in May
Chris Padgett's new album should be finished within the next month.

I love music.

5th November 05, from Live Journal

10:16am: Gigantic-ness
We've been chugging along with the Ryan Meyers project. I'm anticipating project completion to be around Thanksgiving. We should be finished with vocals by the end of next week. We have been alternating recording of vocals and guitars to let Ryan's voice rest between takes.
Yesterday we tracked the electric guitars and bass for the song "Quiet Cities". Man, this tune is sounding huge! The guitars sound akin to the smashing of old rusty 50 gallon drums against telephone pole wires. They're so ugly that they're gorgeous. We achieved this using Bob Rice's Fender Deluxe amp and cranked the clean channel almost all the way after the amp was left on for several hours, so the tubes were nice and hot. The distortion sound is probably a combination of hot tubes and speakers crapping out. (BTW thanks Bob for letting us borrow your amp.) The guitar is tuned to an interesting open tuning which I can't remember the details at the moment, but the low strings are down to a Eb and the pickups switched to the 4th position middle/neck combo. We combined this track with a shimmering clean double track, and then added two tracks of guitar rig (plugin) in the choruses. Dan played the bass line on his p-bass with the signal split between an overdriven sansamp and an Avalon, also tuned down. I'm quite excited about the sound and the vibe of this track.

Actual picture of Dan recording his bassline.

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29th October 2005

10:03pm: NCYC comes to and end
Unexpectedly I ended up at NCYC, and I write this from Atlanta, GA. My friend Gene Monterastelli (of Apex fame)called a few weeks ago and asked if I would play for Joia Farmer (Gene being her executive producer / manager). I instantly agreed, since I am a big fan of Joia's, it was a privledge for me to have the opportunity to play. I also played with Ryan Meyers, Chris Padgett, and half a set with Ben Walther. What a rockin weekend! I met so many cool people and had a lot of fun.


Ben Walther with band, plus John Flynn



Righteous B's merch table

20th October 2005

9:15am: New blog! & Ryan Meyers day 1
Here I am, delving into the world of blogging. I've wanted to start one of these for a while, and thought that the beginning of a big studio project would be a great way to kick it off. So, this is the morning of day 2 of the new Ryan Meyers album production. Disclaimer: My spelling and grammar skills are rusty, so with that I will begin . . .
Ryan arrived at the studio about 11:30 Tuesday night, after driving all the way from St. Louis and as of the time I’m writing this its already been a very eventful session. Upon his arrival we spent some time relaxing, socializing and talking about the album production over a few shots of whiskey. Dan the man was present for the occasion as well. There were some minor concerns from the record company about some of Ryans lyrics, and the lack of blatant "God" reference, and we discussed some options to try to please everyone. After a good night of sleep (thanks in part to Mr. Beam) we awoke to a pleasant phone call from the record company guy that erased all of our concerns. One of the great things about Ryan’s lyrics, especially on this new album, is that he leaves room for interpretation and it gives the listener a more subjective experience. I would have been disappointed to see that compromised. Ultimately it was decided between Ryan and the record company that some descriptive liner notes would suffice. This solution is better than changing his songs, but will still take away from the listener’s experience of the song if he/she chooses to read the notes (in my humble opinion). This has always been a big criticism of mine with most of the Christian music that’s produced these days (especially Catholic). The lyrics are often too literal and repetitive.
Wednesday was spent on click tracks, scratch tracks and arrangements. I am very impressed with this batch of songs. Ryan has grown a lot since his last project with his songwriting abilities and confidence with his vocals. Listening to the scratch tracks made me very inspired, and production ideas are flowing effortlessly.
Through the course of the day, my main studio computer caught some kind of strange virus. Every time I would open an explorer window, the calculator would pop up, and this was the only symptom. Ryan and I spent a few hours at the end of the day trying to track down this problem to no avail. So, the day ended with a little concern about how we would fix the problem. Ryan installed about 51 antivirus and anti-spyware programs on the system, and this morning, the problem was found by one of said programs after it downloaded new definitions. These viruses and spyware are out of control! I can’t believe the amount of crap that’s out there. Having my studio computer connected to the internet is a no-no, but I like to live dangerously. Plus, checking email between takes is convenient.
Other cool things about this morning: My lovely partner in life and in the studio, Kate, surprised me with a package that arrived via UPS red. She knew that I loved the sound of the old Mellotron synths, so she ordered M-Audio’s m-tron soft synth, basically a software emulation of the classic. She rocks! And, I’m very excited to try it on this project.
As I write this journal entry, we (Dan, Ryan and I) are in the car on the way to the airport to pick up Josh the drummer. Lou Contumelio (of Aardvark productions) was kind enough to let us use his Pearl drum kit for the session. On the way back from the airport we will be stopping at Guitar Center to pick up Tascam Gigastudio and a new hard drive. An updated version of Native Instruments Guitar Rig has been ordered and is on its way to the studio.
Today, Josh will be recording for the first time in his life. It will be a great day.
I will do my best to update daily, so stay tuned!



Josh at the airport