Photo By Lori Brooks
Up again, a little later today. Bryan asked us the night before to be in the studio at 9AM, but this morning he calls my cell and asks for another hour. Awesome, this gives us some extra time. After breakfast we hit the pavement.
We hit the studio at about 10AM and I attempt my first real studio track laying. I bust out Lori’s acoustic guitar (not the greatest guitar, but I’ve grown to like it). Of course this wasn’t ideal and after trying to mic it up through both a vintage amp and a direct mic pairing, Jon gets the signal to run to Bryan’s house to grab his Fernandes acoustic-electric. Bryan runs it direct to the vintage amp and direct to the board to give it some color, he tweaks the gains a bit and we’re off. This guitar felt much easier to play than Lori’s Regent; however I had already been playing the song for about twenty-five minutes on the Regent so my rusty fingers began to sting a bit. I guess this is "rock ‘n’ roll". After cringing through about five takes the acoustic track was done.
Photo By Lori Brooks
Photo By Lori Brooks
Lori and I wandered outside during the break and a big old rusty pickup with a topper and South Dakota plates rumbled into the studio parking lot. Out hopped a tall lanky bearded man in jeans and a t-shirt, he tromped over to us and leaned up against the wall, his knee bent and protruding with his heel flat to the brick. This was James Minchin III. He was very polite, smiling, and happy. He had apparently been snooping around on the web checking us out because he had already heard our song. We didn’t have a clue who he was at the time, just that he was the photographer that Rolling Stone sent. He didn’t have a camera, but he didn’t seem too worried about it. We made our way inside, our eyes having to adjust between the searing, bright California sun outside and the dark ambient lighting inside.
Photo By Lori Brooks
James surveyed the studio a bit and I hopped on Facebook. That’s when the people started pouring in. A couple Rolling Stone people including Kimbra, a few people from Konami including Ryan, Amy the hair and makeup girl, James’ gear and grip crew, and craft services. At this point Dave Jerden was there, and I think his agent even showed up. The studio was bustling and busy, it was a weird feeling knowing that we were the center of the project. James’ crew started moving equipment around, bringing in lights, moving couches, pulling art off the wall. They were going to do two different kinds of shots, one with Lori and me pretending to record, and the other, Lori and me pretending to play Konami’s Rock Revolution. Amy set up shop in Annette’s office, Kimbra had free Rolling Stones and some stuff from Lucky brand clothing for the shoot. The small dining area was full of people tapping away on their laptops.
Amy kidnapped Lori and made her up quite well, I wandered around, just trying to stay out of people’s way. I eventually found my way back to Lori’s laptop and hit up Facebook again. Once the set and lights were up James started taking Polaroid tests with his crew as stand-ins. This was only one of many cameras at his disposal, as far as we could tell he used film, digital, and Polaroid and took hundreds of pictures that day. Finally it was my turn for hair and makeup.
We took position in the mock up vocal booth James and his crew had made. With all the hustle and bustle it was getting warm in the studio, and obviously I began to pour sweat. I’m sure whatever makeup I had on was gone within minutes because of the sweat, let alone Amy having to dab my forehead with a paper towel every three to four minutes. The first twenty minutes was awkward, Lori and I standing under lights, pretending to play, several people standing behind James, watching, waiting to fix something if anything happened. Eventually James directed us to discuss and interact instead of fake play music. We had nothing to talk about, so we fake talked, (saying rutabaga, rutabaga) apparently this gives the appearance that you’re saying something, but not really saying anything at all (I’ve also heard watermelon can be used). James went through dozens of rolls, and then would hit the digital for a bit. He would snap Polaroids occasionally and hand crop them by folding up the edges, showing us the result. After a couple hundred shots he’d run off to Konami and get their input. This went on for what felt like an hour, snap, snap, last roll, snap, snap, digital, more rolls would come, snap, snap, last roll, snap, snap, digital high rate shutter snaps, almost done, snap, snap, rutabaga, rutabaga, snap, laugh, move the guitar neck out and back, snap, snap, use your hands more, snap, rutabaga, rutabaga, eventually I think we were a little delirious and started talking about nothing in particular, just common phrases used everyday, back and forth. Either way, we thought James was a genius by this time since Lori had talked with him quite a bit, and even did some web searches of him, seeing his past work, taking beautiful pictures of pop and rock icons. We would do whatever he wanted us to do. Done! Break!
We went outside to cool off while James took some more Polaroids of his crew in the next set. The set was a TV, a couch, a table, some other riff raff, the game and the Konami drum set that you can buy with the game. My favorite part of the set was the paper plate with cheese and crackers on a pillow in the middle of the room. Apparently this wasn’t a prop, it was for the crew, but it remained in the photos anyway. Actually most of the refreshments you’ll see in the final picture are actually what the crew was eating and drinking while doing the stand-ins. There’s also poster art on the back wall from the local LA artist Euthanasia. After a few touch ups by Amy, we were called back in to do the next round. Lori on the couch watching the TV, and me playing the video game drums. This time instead of playing “The Bridge Is Out” over and over again James busted out his iPod and asked what we wanted to listen to. We picked Wilco, and he had every album (Wilco rocks). So we put on “Monday” from Being There and started the shoot. Lori directed by James, and me just playing the drums and looking like I’m having a good time. This went on for another hour or so it felt. Lori was either pointing and laughing at me, looking really excited about what was on the TV, or just generally smiling and rooting me on. This was tougher than the other shot; we had to really fake it now. The game wasn’t actually on the TV; in fact the only thing we had was the drum set and the game sleeve. No Xbox, so no TV. In fact the TV actually only had white poster board taped across it, with a bunch of different colored transparencies taped haphazardly across it and a flash can pointed up at it so it would reflect the colors back on to Lori’s face. By the end I was pouring sweat fake banging the fake drums, but both of our smiles were sincere, we were laughing, making fun of each other, James was laughing and making fun of the situation. It was an utter pleasure to work with James, he made us feel at ease, and that we could laugh at what was happening, in fact, he wanted us to. Turns out the shot they used is actually of us laughing and being stupid, instead of us really trying to look like we were playing the game. The muscles on the back of my head hurt from smiling for so long. The shoot was done.
Right after the shoot, I laid down a few takes of the bass track. It was after lunch, I hadn’t eaten, but I was wired and excited, so I put in the work. Tracking the bass was a little different from tracking the acoustic because you didn’t need to sit in the booth, you just tracked right there at the board. I didn’t see whether or not the bass was straight in or ran to an amp somewhere in the studio. Bryan tweaked the EQ and gain, even tweaked the knobs on the bass itself as I played. I think the sound tweaking took longer than actually laying the tracks down. I thought I’d be nervous having to play bass right in front of Bryan and Dave (Dave, Remain In Light man, Remain In Light), but I pulled it off like a robot. Turns out I may have been a little too precise and robotic on the acoustic and bass, because Bryan mentioned he wanted to loosen the track up a bit (more on this later). We were released for dinner.
We headed to downtown Burbank again and ate out on the patio of one of the local diners. I had a couple Newcastle’s and a Cobb salad of some sort.
It was after 8 or 9 when we got back to the studio. Everyone was sitting out under the gazebo having a smoke and chatting it up, we sat down and heard more war stories from the industry. We talked about overweight felines and something or other. The work wasn’t over, but I was still wired and ready to play.
Photo By Lori Brooks
Bring out the Memory Man w/Hazarai. It took me a few minutes to find the settings I used on the original tracks I recorded at home, not quite exact, but close enough. This would be my Stratocaster's first appearance. This time Bryan actually ran the Memory Man in stereo through two vintage Fender tube amps about 35 feet away from each other. They were loud, very loud after a quiet evening dinner. I felt old thinking it was so loud, also I felt like we needed to turn them down as if the neighbors would complain (Loudness often equals guilt when you come from a town like Peoria.) This passed eventually and we set up everything in the control room to record my lead guitar parts. After about 5 or 6 takes Bryan felt he had enough to work with. The long day was over, and we headed back to the hotel at about 11:30PM. Wired most of the day, once we hit the hotel room all of the adrenaline wore off and we crashed hard once again.
