Rolling! (Patreon)

Thank you all for the kind birthday wishes! I had lovely day lazing around and devouring this: 

My lord, what a great read so far. It's a deep dive into the recording of his first 4 solo records, including all the drama surrounding the Beatles divorce as well as a peek into his home life, creative process and general history of the time. It's exceptionally well written and researched and I can't put it down. 

Had dinner with some close friends at a place ironically (or coincidentally) right next to the big Scientology Center here in LA!!  A place called Saffy's - VERY good North African food... a delightful meal but - here comes old man Heidecker - way too loud! The acoustics of the packed restaurant, combined with a cranked up selection of The Strokes and other mid 2000s rock made it hard for our party of ten to talk to anyone that wasn't sitting right next to you! My throat's sore this morning from trying!  This seems to be a problem with many trendy hot spots, no? Don't people want to eat AND talk without shouting? 

My poor wife had to rise at 4am this morning to catch an early flight to the East Coast to visit a friend - leaving me with my mom and the kids. 

Thank goodness my mom's here, though to help - as my mind's already dead set on recording next week - We start on Tuesday and will go for a week, getting as much down as we can. I've got the songs, and a pretty good idea of how they should sound - but i'm really excited to hear how the VGB approaches them.  My general plan is pretty straightforward and maybe obvious to many of you but maybe not!  We'll take a song, of which the band has already heard the demo and hopefully have a good enough understanding of the chords and changes, play it through a few times, decide on a few things and then try and get a take with the focus on getting a good, solid recording of the drums, bass, guitars and keyboards... i'll sing along as a guide but try and keep the vocals out of anyone's microphones so I can sing a proper vocal later. We'll try and do three  or four songs a day like this.   

Then we'll go back and listen to the takes we like and decide on a few overdubs - maybe some percussion, an additional guitar or keyboard part - it's a fun part of the process to gather again to overdub and have everyone doing something to fill up more tracks.  If there's time, i'll try and get a lead vocal down - But I know I can always do that later in my garage and can dial it in at my own pace.  My hope for the record is that it has a "band playing together in the room" feeling - not a ton of production bells and whistles... But i'm never against playing with it later and adding stuff to make it sound as good as possible. 

I don't exactly know the theme of the record yet and sometimes that reveals itself later with the sequencing, titling, artwork etc... but more than a few of the songs deal with personal (not really autobiographical) stories of people living in some sort of vague post apocalyptic times. There's some sweet, folky diddies, some rockers, some funnier ones - a mixed bag! I'm hoping the variety of styles and themes are glued together by the continuity of the band playing together. 

Any Qs about this process, i'd be happy to try and answer this weekend when I have some time. 

One more music NOTE! We're putting out a live album! This is a full version of the EP we put out a few months ago - a nearly full set from our show in Boulder - why Boulder? well, it was a particularly well recorded show and it was towards the end of our run so the band was humming and it works as a listen because it all feels tied together nicely. Publicly announcing this soon, so... shhhhh. 

Look how beautiful this cover is! 

OK! Have a good weekend! Stay warm East Coast! 

P&L, T