In an effort to beef up the new album (and have some fun), I decided to dust off my old Marshall JCM 900 half-stack and rip out some guitar licks for the new album. Here are my initial results:
“Run. Run! Run!!! RUN!!! RUNNNN!!!!” – Scratch Mix April 8, 2009
“Let’s Get Funky!” – Scratch Mix April 8, 2009
“Duluth” – Scratch Mix April 8, 2009
Oh! And if you listened, you noticed I went off the handle on the vocal parts to “Let’s Get Funky!”
Yesterday Noah called to tell me that he thinks the album needs something extra to fill it out. I agree. It is currently lacking that “something” that makes an album sound great. We talked it over and decided that more guitars might be just what the album needs to give it a kick in the ass. So, yesterday and today I recorded a whole shitload of electric guitars for Duluth and Run. Run! Run!! RUN!!! RUNNNN!!!
Duluth has been a particularly troublesome song in that it is one of my favorites, but it isn’t totally written yet. We have been reworking the breakdown towards the end quite a bit recently. Well, I am happy to say that these electric guitars might have put us over the top. I played a shredding solo over the end, coming out of the breakdown, and it is sounding pretty rad! As soon as I nail the final solo, I will post a rough mp3.
Noah recorded some stuff on “Run…” yesterday as well, but I haven’t heard that yet. I’ll share more as I have it!
Here’s a video journal from the trip home:
Yesterday afternoon, I made the 3-hour journey to Duluth to play a 3-hour set at Fitger’s, a local bar/restaurant with immense popularity up there. It was an interesting show for me and reminded me more of my days playing Thursday night shows at Sportsman’s Pub than of my band’s more recent sets at the 331 Club and Dinkytowner. I met a few awesome people, and there were sporadic bouts of crowd engagement, but for the most part, it was me on stage, dusting off old classics and new material alike and mixing in a few standards here and there. By evenings’ end, I played roughly 40 songs! I even played The Meat Puppets’ Plateau when my new friend, Taylor Baggott, requested “a cover”. Haha! Anyone who has ever seen me play knows that I only play obscure cover songs – the type that nobody wants to hear. 