Archive Sunday #3 (Patreon)

AK: Into the studio we go to record the #1 hit album, Teens of Denial! This was recorded in a couple studios but we started at Soundhouse in Seattle over in the Ballard neighborhood. It’s a small but cozy studio.

The first few pics are of a show we had at Chop Suey (I guess around this time?) with Naked Giants opening. Foreshadowing? Then there’s a picture of my friend Sidney painting the iconic TF logo onto my kit.

But I digress. Soundhouse was an interesting spot. It was super tiny so we had to do funny things like put the bass cab by the toilet for sound separation. Sounds shitty, but it worked out.

We worked with Steve Fisk, a local producer that was involved with some heavy hitters back in the 90s grunge era. You can see him in some of these pictures. Fun factoid, Steve Fisk is the kid pictured on the back of the album!

Not much to say about this except we did full-band recording for all the tracks. As in, we didn’t play to a metronome and do one instrument at a time. We did it live, baby! It made recording a little more stressful since we had to really nail our parts and make sure we didn’t drag or speed up tempo too much, but I think it really added to the feel of the album in the end.

Oh, they also had Burnout for the Xbox in the little break room.

Continuing on... We are skipping a little bit ahead in time to keep this post about studio time for ToD. But in reality we took a little break between the two studios we worked at to film the music video for Something Soon. But we will get to that in a later post.

So after shooting the music video for Something Soon the boys head back to Seattle and into Avast recording studios to finish off recording Teens of Denial.

Avast is a cool studio that we’ve spent a lot of time in. It’s a relaxing place with a nice common area to take a break and eat or drink tea/coffee. All of the people that work there are super nice.

They’re also pretty big stoners which cracks me up. Every once in a while you’d smell some weed and hear some of the guys in one of the back rooms chatting it up. You can see where I found their bong while I was looking at gear. I always thought that was such a hilarious place to keep a bong; by the drum hardware.

Avast also has a basketball hoop in the back where we would take breaks sometimes and shoot hoops. I think this is where Will got the line in Ballad about leaving his backpack on the basketball court or whatever it was. I’m pretty sure that actually happened there. It was fun to watch him get lines for that track from some of our experiences in the studio.

WT: Number one on whose chart? Steve was the perfect guy to ease us into the studio. Up to that point, I'd never worked in a studio, except in the one attached to the college radio station at William & Mary, for a couple one-off recordings that never came out to my liking. I was intimidated by the idea of creating a whole album in that environment. But Steve had an easy demeanor and many years of experience in the Seattle scene. It helped us feel welcomed, which is essential to feel while working in a studio. It's easy to feel lonely, bleak, cooped-up in those soundproofed rooms. Working with Steve gave me my favorite studio experiences to date.