Studio Journal: First Night Jitters

7/1/05

Well, quite an eventful first night.

I got to the studio at 7:30pm to meet Mike, Toby, and this guy named John Parker who is going to interview us for this film he is making about the Cincinnati music scene. When he got there, he notified us that he actually wanted to get footage of us playing, so we set up our gear to run through a couple tunes. While setting up my kit, I realized a serious problem -- the spurs for my kick drum were missing. This is a critical part of a 1973 Ludwig super classic drum set, the spurs help keep the kick drum from rolling on it's sides. The Ludwigs of that era were outfitted with telescopic, curved, metal spikes. The flaw in the design is that they retract inside the drum shell...which can pose some problems for packing and/or traveling. So I always would completely remove them, and keep them in my tool box so I don't lose them...or so I thought. Somehow I had in fact lost them, nearly rendering this monster kit useless. Bonehead move #1.

After John filmed us playing, asked us some questions, then split, I spent a frantic hour and a half running back and forth from the studio to my house combing every possession I had to see if I had misplaced the spurs. Sadly, I was unsuccessful. Bonehead move #2.

I should have just cut my losses an hour before and not wasted everyone's time. So, at about 10pm Mike suggested we figure out a way to secure the kick drum to keep it from moving so we could begin tracking. He grabbed some sound reinforcing foam from the storage room, and got some gaff tape, and 5 minutes later, it was all set! I don't know what we'd do without Mike's resourcefulness. He really is much like his hero MacGyver, great at problem solving, especially when you're short on time and the proper supplies. Once again, he's saved my ass. After getting the kick drum secured, we were readu tp roll. Here's the specs of the gear I had at my disposal:

Ludwig Super Classic (1973), Black Oyster Pearl
14" x 26" Bass drum
16" x 16" Floor tom
9" x 13" Rack tom

Snares to choose from:
6.5" x 14" Ludwig Supraphonic (early '70's, green/olive badge)
6.5" x 14" J & J Custom
6.5" x 14" Gretsch (early '80's, stop sign badge)

Cymbals:
22" Zildjian A Ride (VERY old, guessing late '70's, has no markings)
20" Zildjian A Custom Crash
19" Zildjian A Medium Crash
15" Zildjian A New Beat Hi-Hat Top (early '70's model)
15" Zildjian A Mastersound Hi-hat Bottom

The kit sounded great, but the Ludwig Supraphonic snare was giving Mike an annoying buzz. I tried tuning it differently, but it just wasn't cutting it. Mike suggested different heads, but my patience had grown thin with the old girl, so I thought I'd try the J & J Custom snare Jeff Rowekamp had built me about 4 years ago, which I hadn't used in a while. It's a beautiful drum...gorgeous green stain, 10-ply, with 5-ply reinforcement rings. I had it outfitted with an Aquarian "Hi-Energy" batter side head, but that wasn't really doing it for us either. I decided to just take that head off and threw on the old faithful, a Remo coated emperor. With some minor muffling, and some tuning, it sounded pretty good. So we had the kit ready to go.

We started by running through "Ask The Dust" a few times. Some of the takes were ok, but many were mired by some timing miscues, blown fills, and/or broken sticks. I was just thinking too much about what we were playing...the takes just lacked any feel. So, after calming down a bit we got a solid take of the tune. Next I thought we'd give "Crest Nursing" a shot, but those takes really seemed lackluster, and sloppy. After 2-3 stabs at that tune, I suggested we just call it a night since we were all very tired (it was after 1:30am), and I was pretty pissed about losing those bass drum spurs and wasting so much time earlier that night, so I didn't want everyone to feel like banging our heads against the wall.

Home by 2:15am...get some sleep and we'll try it again at 10am Saturday morning.

Everywhere Snakes...

It's been entirely too long since we've had really good, new things to talk about. We're finally going to start tracking the songs that will become our 6th album this Friday night. I'm personally VERY excited. I think we've worked very hard to get these tunes as airtight as possible, so I'm officially antsy about getting to finally lay em down.

Not sure what kind of magic Mike has in mind, but if the last two records we've been working on recently are any indication, it's going to be sick. Each project we've worked on seems to get better, and better. Can't wait.

Now I just have to nail down the right head configuration to put on my new favorite kit, the '73 Ludwig super classic, black oyster pearl finish with the 26" kick drum...

God Damn.