Holt arrived first to record on three tunes before road-tripping to Austin for a gig with Salim. Extremely efficient session. More lead and backing vocals. Eric layed down more lead parts in the evening. He’s such a perfectionist, which I admire, refusing to allow even a single blemish to get through to the final take.

After a satisfying session we went to the Flying Saucer to check out Nick Ramirez’s band. Nick also plays in Olospo with Chris. They did a phenomenal cover of Men at Work’s ‘Overkill’. I need to re-buy those first two albums and examine them with adult ears. Oh, and bring back bad memories of complete awkwardness in junior high.

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

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