Practice

We get by with a little help from our friends (Kellen on bass & Stephen on keys...)


Big show on Feb. 1st at the Middle East Upstairs. We're taking the noise to Cambridge with our good friends in KidNapKin.

Round Five

Vocals and guitars. All over the place. We finished the basic vox for "The Octopus", getting a great tone by running through the tape machine pres and Aaron's Blackfinger pedal. Real saturated and noisy. Feeling so productive, we decided to to take a shot at vox for "First News From the Zephyr" which also went surprisingly well. Lead and group vox are done and we'll take on the harmonies later this week.

Above: Pair o' mikes. Below: One Mike, one Aaron

Above: Aaron recordin' & drinkin'. Below: Tyler drinkin' & singin'...

Below: "I found some faith in the faithless tonight.." Group vocals for the end of "Zephyr."

Round Four

Keyboard madness! We spent several hours adding strange sounds to "And There Were Sparrows" and "Weak End With No End." The latter received the most in terms of crazy additions: warbling weirdness on the bridge, spaced out synth sounds on the outro...it's gonna be a hell of a tune.

Above and below: tools of the trade

Above and below: Tyler faking his way through the parts, Aaron running the show

Round Three

Tuesday night listening party. "The Octopus" is edited & comped and just needs some vocals to finish things off. Aaron needs to add his guitar tracks to "Goodnight, Danny-Boy" and edit our previous guitar work on "First News From the Zephyr." "Weak End With No End" is more or less done and the addition of Mike's live drums have added a whole new jittery dimension to the song. We took a preliminary listen to "Many Days, Many Answers" and once again were blown away by Matt's piano work.

Above: listening to Aaron's two days of work.

Above: Aaron works on the acoustic song, Penn Lane lounges

With the overall form of the untitled acoustic song in place, we embark on an adventure in lo-fi recording. Using my old Fostex and an array of cables & converters, we set up and track several takes. At just over 2 mins, this will no doubt be the shortest and acoustic-ist of all the songs on the new album. Track name and lyrics are in the works.

Above: an ancient Mayan analog 4-track.

Above: Aaron and Penny Lane

Above: Mike wearing the official engineer's glasses

Above: recording

Round Two

Above: Thick As Thieves' control center (in Aaron's apt.)

A surprisingly warm Monday and I'm stuck at home with a serious stomach bug of some kind. What a drag. But across the Charles in a spacious third floor loft, Aaron is hard at work editing and comping "The Octopus" and working on preliminary tracking for a yet-untitled acoustic song. We also have decided to include an 8th song on the CD called "And There Were Sparrows." It's a quieter atmospheric song reminiscent in some regards to "...Or Other Testimony of Summer Nights" from our first CD. I think we're more conscious of what kind of track-listing we're going to end up with this time around. There' s a nice variety of songs to choose from but we don't to front-load the CD with louder songs or have it drag at the end. It's a bit of an experimentation process but ultimately makes a big difference in how people hear your music. Once the ol' stomach calms down, we'll start tracking vocals.

Above: Assorted tools of the trade.
Below: William "Billy" Shears, studio cat and executive producer

Round One

Down a ways on Boylston Street is our secret lair, a den of thieves. Actually, it's just a practice space next to a liquor store. If we drank, we'd consider this arrangement of the utmost convenience. Too bad we're all Neo-Prohibitionists. Regardless, this is where we're continuing the recording process we started last year at such diverse locales at Mad Oak in Allston and Emerson College in Boston. With most of the drum and bass tracking done, we decided to move our sonic operations to the subterranean home that has served us so well over the past few years. It ain't much but it's cozy.

Aaron is a recording wiz. He knows what mics are best for drums or guitars and what wires should connect to what inputs. Unlike Mike, he's never plugged a SM57 into a toaster. He produced and mixed our first album, the rather pretentiously titled "We Planted Driftwood And Nothing Changed" and did a damn fine job of it. He's at the helm again for our second album and has promised to do as good if not better than last time and he seemed pretty serious about it. Well done, sir.


To the left: Aaron hanging up some sort of microphone as I look on in admiration and awe. Above: Aaron & some gear.


We're currently working on 7-8 songs. Most of these tunes were written in the past year or so with our former bassist Matt Harmon (who has since moved to NJ to work on his highly anticipated folk album). There are some louder numbers ("The Octopus", "Mars Vigila", and "First News From The Zephyr") and some quieter ones ("Many Days, Many Answers" and an untitled acoustic song). There is even some electronic experimentation going on ("Weak End With No End"). All in all, it's kind of a strange mix right now but it all seems to be part of our natural progression as a band.

Right: Aaron's pedal board. Apparently each one of those things makes a different kind of sound or noise. One even tells you if you're in tune or not (??!)

Above: Mike, Tyler (me), and Aaron

This blog (short for "web log") is an attempt to document in words and pictures the recording process. It's been almost two years since we released our debut album and a lot of things have changed for us as a band. Giving birth to this second CD seems to be both easier (we're much more comfortable writing/recording together) and harder (we're trying to avoid repeating ourselves and trying to "push things forward" as Mike Skinner suggested).

Above: recording guitar and tambourine for "The Octopus". Left: dangling microphone in hopes of catching that elusive "room sound"...

We spent a lot of time over the past few days working on "The Octopus", a faster rock song that we started playing last year. This might my current favorite song of ours on account of the level of craziness it elicits when we play live. Matt recorded an over-the-top Hammond/Leslie part before he left and with Mike's drum part and Aaron's bass part in place, all we had left to do was a few guitar tracks and some extra percussion. The basic tracking is done now and once Aaron cleans & comps this mess, we'll move on to vocals.

People often ask us what inspires us. The answer, in short, is our cow-flavored ottoman. We wrangled Bessie last year and she has been a welcome fixture in our practice space ever since. Some rumors have surfaced that she is in fact responsible for all of our lyrics. These rumors are completely true. All three of us are illiterate and can barely spell our own names. This blog is a miracle of random key strokes even though it still suffers from noodles random word inclusions Soviet horse balloon.




"Weak End With No End" started as Berklee project that I collaborated on with our friend Nate Bierdemann. We've decided to resurrect it and add some live drums (see right: Mike recording live drums) and some more blips and glitches. It's perhaps the song least like our previous material and for that reason I'm most interested in how it turns out. I think we're all pretty keen on the idea of incorporating electronic elements into our work and this song is a step in that direction. Eventually we'll all be replaced with super-efficient musical robots.




Yesterday I bought an electric twelve-string. It's a beaut. It'll be prominently featured on "Goodnight, Danny-Boy" which you can see us recording to the left. Aaron looks nervous. Who knows where else this guitar will show up. "GDB" is kind of mid-tempo rock song that we've been playing for more than a year now. It started as a poem and then was paired with a hypnotic jam session to create a whole new beast. It's just one of many songs waiting to be finished.