Category : Recording

It is beautiful. It is raining. Rain is what it does here, and I’m fine with it.

 

Other than a brief drive up to Pemberton on Friday night (to play the surprisingly receptive Pemberton Hotel), the band has been parked in Vancouver for the last 5 days. It really is quite the shock dropping out of the elevation of the Coquihalla highway into the unfair-to-the-rest-of-the-country humidity of the Fraser Valley. Suddenly Jacquie is complaining about how her hair won’t stay curled, Blackie is sleeping less, and my feet are sweating at an extraordinary rate.

 

When the planning for this tour first started there were some serious concerns about what kind of weather might be encountered. I mean, who likes driving through the mountains in the winter anyway? You spend most of your time looking at the sky to see what the next few kilometers will bring and that luxury ends when you run out of precious February sunlight. But this year has been the weirdest winter I’ve ever experienced. The only rough piece of road was the tail end of the Coquihalla, and usually one expects to run into something up there. I guess we’ve been lucky, and we’d better keep out fingers crossed because it is only the beginning.

 

But seriously? Vancouver you have it so easy. I don’t even have a jacket that is adequately light enough to endure the mildness! Ha ha. Who am I kidding? I frickin’ love it. It’s a good thing we have some time to hang out here too. As you may or may not know, our new album is being mixed and we just found out we need to re-track a vocal. No big deal. Tomorrow we’ll be going over to Red Light Sound studios to fix it up. Good thing we are here. I imagine it be would rather difficult to find a studio in other parts of this province.

 

My favorite thing about being in Vancouver isn’t the weather though. It’s the friends. After the show last Thursday at The Railway Club we actually had the time to head over to the Libra Room on Commercial Drive and check out my favorite Vancouver band The Broken Mirrors (formerly Queso Blanco) Noah Walker, Michael Simpsonelli, Tom Heuckendorff, and Michael Rush. These guys are totally awesome. Great songs, great players, and super original. We don’t often have the opportunity to listen to live music while on the road and it was a real treat!

 

While I’m talking about music, our good friends Miss Quincy & The Showdown are about to release their brand new record ‘Like The Devil Does’. Some good old dirty blues from 3 wicked woman who happen to be hanging out in VanCity right now too! Thank god for Waffle Sundays!

 

We are here until Wednesday when we leave the springtime for cooler pastures in Penticton. So if anybody has some great shows coming up or recommendations for hangouts, music, or really anything, drop us a line. You can comment right here on this post and we’d love to hear from you.

 

Keep warm

Jesse

Another update from the studio.

 

Today the band completed the first phase in recording the new record. Our sessions at Sound Extractor have been a real treat. We did 5 short days and laid the bed tracks for 10 new songs – Sick with you, I’ll be a mountain, Wake me up, The Storm, Erehwon, Russia?, Scars, Everything is erased, Being me, and Everybody knew. The experience was so awesome. Never before have we been so prepared, and the result was practically effortless. I guess all that time on the road is paying off.

 

We’ll be taking the weekend off and moving into the next phase on Monday when we head over to Big Dreamer Sound to record vocals with Harry Gregg. Since Harry’s house has been like a second home to all of us over the last few years, so we will be right at home.

 

It sure has been a different experience this time around. Compared to the making of Our Ghosts Will Fill These Walls – a record that took 13 months in total – the making of this new album will hopefully be finished and available by early summer! And…. UNDER A SECRET NEW NAME!

 

Stay tuned…