Posts about the making of ‘Sweet Simulacra’

Wednesday and Thursday Notes

/in , /by

Ok, I’ll admit it, I’m writing this about 5 days after the fact. I’ve returned each night completely drained and haven’t felt like doing anyting, much less typing. This album has a lot of extremely difficult material. The songs sound deceptively simple, but are a real bitch to play or play correctly. Who wrote this crap? What was he thinking? Is he insane??**

** actual comments from me, chris, eric, joe and trey at various times.

Paul is pushing the recording equipment to the limit – about 4 mics on each guitar amp = 4 tracks per guitar. 2 in front, one in back, one ambient. The sounds are thick and syrupy. Ran thru all of my parts. I doubled many of them through a, dare i say it, marshall speaker with an ancient 50’s PA head that I’m ttold was the impetus for the marshall head. A very innocent looking metal box with 4 tubes – one per input with their own gains. I think Jeff Beck pioneered the use of it to get the wild distortion everyone now takes for granted. I tried to reduce the strums for a few tunes. I need to remove more of them from future songs. Its been a fall-back of mine for too many years.

Joe completed all bass duties with only a punch here and there. He’s a lot like me in that he gets angry when flubbing one note out of a thousand. Ok not like me as I flub a much higher percentage. Joe’s work at the end of the song ‘So Green/Human Reel’ is gonna wow you. I remember begging Joe to play bass for us way back when. He’s a monster guitar player in real life and I know its not as fun to play ‘that other instrument’. I thank God he agreed to play – he’s nailed every part with conviction and agility.

Oh – I don’t think I’ve given you the setlist for the cd (in no particular order yet)

Oldies –

  • Ego
  • First Five
  • You’ll Come Around
  • Mariner’s Dilemma

Newbies –

  • Be Cool
  • Sweet Simulacra
  • So Green
  • The World’s Ventriloquist
  • Little Doll
  • Hollywooden Dreams
  • Anymore

1st day of recording

/in , /by

WOW! Whirlwind was an understatement – more like Tornado. I arrived at Artisan around 1pm yesterday and Paul and Trey were already set up and getting drum sounds when I arrived. Paul is a master at getting the most out of a kit. We used Artisan Owner Tye Robison’s kit for the session btw. Paul set up several ambient mics around the room to fill out. I’m convinced he could have used 2 booms for the whole kit and it still would have sounded incredible.

Have I mentioned before how much I love my friend Trey? Aside from being a kind and giving human being, the guy is a monster drummer and tore thru 10 of the 11 songs in an 8 hour period. That’s right, we’re almost done with drums. He’s probably spent the most time rehearsing the new material (including myself) so he was more than prepared. I’d say only 2 or 3 takes per song were all that he needed to get the job done. Joe and I played some scratch guitar/vocal/bass along with him to ensure the structures were correct, but I doubt he needed us. I’m sure he got a kick out of me singing guitar and keyboard leads in sotto voce.

Tye hooked us up with Kirk Powers – a really nice guy who provided us with some fabulous basses to rent for the session. Since I forced Joe to be in the band and play bass at gunpoint – we really haven’t invested that much in good gear – so this really helped out.

I’d post all of the tech-specs on what mics and amps we are using, but I honestly don’t care about that. You can contact Paul if you are interested.

Today we’re gonna record some horrible guitarist named Jeff Jones and then let Joe knock out some bass parts this evening. Eric’s coming in on Friday to do lead guitar parts and I, er I mean that freak Jeff will start on vocals Saturday. Holt will add his parts on Sunday and we should have a few days after that to add extra junk and experiment a bit.

So far, I haven’t had time to take advantage of the amenities Artisan offers – we are literally moving at the speed of sound to get this cd done. When yer the one paying for it, it kinda forces you to sink or swim – and things are going swimmingly. Hopefully Paul won’t be ready to kill me after his fingers fall off from so many punch-ins.

More tomorrow!

Let the studio madness begin!

/in , /by

Howdy Folks! Long rant for a change.

The Jones Thing is finally going into the studio on Tuesday the 25th, for a whirlwind recording session at Artisan. Paul Williams will engineer and co-produce again! We’re doing 11 songs, or really 10.5, since one of them will consist of snippets and loops set against Trey’s wonderful drumming. About 1/3 of the material is old and previously unrecorded, so that should go fairly quickly. The other stuff is brand new and has been fun to learn with the band. I’m looking forward to hearing the tunes outside of the demo versions I did myself at home.

I spent a lot longer on the demos this time, though I can’t say my performances or shoddy recording techniques were any better than before. I really do enjoy being in that moment of creative bliss – embedded within a line or hook, adding to it, massaging it. I spent a lot of time inside my head with these songs too, determining the best way to arrange phrases, melodies, etc. Now we just need to get those ideas expressed on the demos and in my head out there.

Again, to demean my own technical abilities, I sometimes lament that I am unable to properly ‘do’ the final versions of the songs by myself, but I really value the input and abilities of the rest of the band to make the tunes better and more ‘bandy-sounding’. Hence the need for The Jones Thing, an all-star band, if I may brag. The guys have done wondrous things with the parts and made many great suggestions and improvements to them. I’ll admit it has been hard to get everyone in a room more than once or twice a month – but there really is a magic that emerges after a few minutes of warm-up. During last night’s practice there were several great moments of clarity I think we all felt – knowing looks like “this is going to absolutely kill ’em”. ’em being you, the listener.

The new songs are gonna be quite um… different. Different in a good way I hope. I’m taking a lot of risks with the lyrics and arrangements. Nothing like Jandek mind you. Just a wide variety of quirky styles and genres. I’ve never tried to overtly edit my creativity into one pre-defined and accepted format. But don’t get too worried, this is after all, just pop rock music. Melodies will be everywhere and each song will have plenty of energy and interesting stuff going on.

Whether it be a good or bad omen, my hardcopy of ‘The Daily Adventures of Mixerman’ arrived this morning! Fascinating, hilarious read. Buy it!

I’ll try and post more during the session and let ya’ll know how everything is going. We’re going to mix the stuff in December and try and have a cd released in January or February, unless some label or distribution deal is struck – hehe. I’ll also work on a new version of this li’l site.

Take care,
Jeff