7/3/04
Sooner than expected, we wrapped up doing bass on all the songs and now we will endure a slight break to figure our next move. Drums? More guitars? Keyboards? Vocals? On the new demo front, we've done 5 total with another 5 on the way sometime in the near future. We'll come back soon with more updates...
6/27/04
Work is progressing very swiftly on some all new demos right here at Wildflower Studios. We've done 4 songs with more on the way soon. The 4 songs we have laid down so far are "Nation of Idiots," "Make Believe," "Sometime Sunshine," and "You Sure Know How to Hurt a Guy's Feelings," which features the back-up vocal stylings of my lovely wife, Stephanie. Mp3's are possibly forthcoming. Who knows.
6/24/04
The bulk of guitar work is now done. We will now have about a month break as our schedules take us in different directions. When we reconvene we shall do bass, keyboard and other guitar work. Lots of rock and roll in these songs. It does feel fairly poppy. That's not a bad thing though. The guitar sound itself is fairly chunky yet rockin'...sounds good in other words. The next 3 or 4 weeks will bring review of our work up to now and find us demoing even more material! We've written some new songs that are fairly raw. Maybe we can let you hear them when they are complete.
6/20/04
So...we're making progress on the songs. We found our guitar sound and now, with luck, can rock the songs at maximum volume. Things are sounding kinda poppy right now with several razor-like distorted noise blast interludes. I have no idea when we will finish this thing but it's looking like it could be a while. Totally all worth it though...the Compound has yet to produce an inferior record. Well, that's the story of the full-length, the EP has a life all it's own.
6/14/04
Expect a rock attack of the highest level in your hands soon...
12/17/03
This little baby is ready to be born! And it will be next Tuesday, December 23! So happy holidays and all that! Merry Christmas! Look for a couple of mp3's from the EP soon and very soon.
11/14/03
Drums are done on all songs now and we are progressing with keyboards, horns and other various noises. After that, we'll lay down some vocals and get this thing out to the masses!!
11/3/03
Drums were completed today for "This little life of mine," "Jesus is the reason for the season" and "All alone on Christmas Eve." They sound loud and reverby. Cool stuff. It's all starting to pull together. After the drums...it's horn time baby!
11/2/03
Today was a mucho productive. I got the last 3 "skeletons" done (for the songs "Get to your house," "This little life of mine" and "Jesus is the reason for the season") as well as doing the bass for all 6 songs! Things are really zipping along but we still have a long way to go. I can't really pick out a favorite right now but I will say that the one I'm most pleased with as of now is "Get to your house." It's hard to explain why but I guess it has something to do with how when I first recorded it I thought it was a dud. And now that it's further along it's starting to develop really nicely. And when it gets out to the public it will be a masterpiece!! As far as what the 3 songs I did today sound like...the aforementioned "Get to your house" is the hardest one to classify. I kinda want to classify it as Soul/R&B but I really don't know about that. It kinda has an indie rock breakdown so I can't really pin a genre on it. "This little life of mine" is pure rock/power-pop. No other term for it. And "Jesus is the reason for the season" is a quieter almost folk song with a very loud intermission. It reminds me of a song by an old band called Mortal who I had very little interest in. But I can still remember that one song. That's weird, man.
11/1/03
Well, between late last night and this morning, I've recorded 3 "skeletons" (as I call them) for the Christmas EP. What this basically involves is playing along with a drum machine to get the tempo and length of the song down. I was able to do the guitars for "All alone on Christmas Eve," "Repeat the sounding joy," and "There's all the people." I'm really excited about them all. "All alone..." has a country feel to it, but not the modern country/pop crap on the country radio stations. "Repeat..." sounds like some kinda laid back lounge sort of stuff and "There's all the people" is the closest thing to a "rock" song right now even though it's not. I want to say it sounds like R.E.M. but I know it doesn't. But maybe if I want to say that, it really does. Freaky, huh?
10/25/03
Get yourself in the mood for some Christmas cheer! Because we got some coming soon...
10/25/03 - *Part 2*
yo duders. Did a little bit of recording today. However, it was not for the Christmas EP. It was another demo of a song called "Cut the crane in half" that I just had to get down before I forgot it forever. Later gators.
5/20/03
This is my first entry into the Recording/Studio Diary of Welcome to Brookhollow as we prepare to go into The Brookhollow Compound to record our new album. Getting to this point has taken a lot of time and preparation and has been a bit frustrating at points. In March of 2002, we tried making this record. After 3 weeks of recording and reviewing the songs, we decided that we weren't happy with what was going on. The songs were, well, wrong and the sound was too clean and poppy. We got back to basics and started building this record from the ground up. The initial thought was to make a poppy record. That fizzled and in the crazy cause/effect nature of our universe, writing all those pop songs pushed us to write some harder/heavier songs and at some point it all made sense. Combine the heaviness and the poppiness and throw in a little weirdness and you have it, our new record. We'll see how it really all turns out in the end, of course as it could take on a completely different life once in the studio. That's part of what makes recording fun. Hell, that's why being in a band is fun. To hear a song go from your acoustic guitar late one night to a full onslaught of overdriven guitars, blaring bass, manic drumbeats and keyboard madness. I don't know if there's one word to characterize the songs for this record...they are all things at once...heavy...poppy...weird...emotional...distant...stupid...clever...
The list of songs we have to work with looks a bit like this...(songs with a * next to them have been demoed at one point or another)
*Orange is the new Black
*Upside-down/Inside-out
*Caught on Tape!
*It got weird
*Everybody wants to get high (*note*- now titled "Trampoline")
*Hot Tub
Classical Conditioning
Turned into a bottle
The Ballad of Alexander Petrimetre
My Guitar
Saddest Songs
*My Baboon Heart
Someone had to say it
*Grease Monkey
*Nobody likes Mike Brantley
*Ill Fx
*Mexican Wine
*Dance Party
*Left-Handed Guitar Player
*Sink and drown
*Accident
*Handsome Cuss
Science is wrong
*You'll come down
*Local Ones
*I'd let you do it
Think About You
*Sweet Christine (*note*- now simply titled "Sweet")
*(Everybody Wants) The New Sound
*None of your beeswax
*In Jail
*Driving under the influence of a diamond ring
*How to ruin everything in under one hour
So we have a bit of work cut out for us to pare these down to a workable number but I feel we are equal to the task and I already am getting a feel about what songs will most likely make the cut...
So, until next time...recording starts June 6...
