Focus/In Focus: Goodbye 2011

I've been mixing. And mixing. So much mixing.  I've found the best way to do it is to step away regularly.  So in some of the downtime I've been working on some covers.

This one is a Hop Along song. I've been a fan for a while and somehow managed to sad bastardize a perfectly good light hearted song. Go figure. They're working on a new album which I'm most certainly looking forward to with the new year.

Bruno is Orange (Hop Along Cover)

Also, in light of the new year we've switched up the blog design which now includes a picture of good ol' grey Buffalo.  It's only a matter of time before the winter sets in.

Grab your shovels and welcome 2012!

-Mark

Like Rising Bread

I woke up the other day expecting to mix some songs. Long story short, it turned into me trying to learn someone else's song and then suddenly changing gears to record a Brandon Schmitt song.  I've been trying to record a version of "Lightning Song" pretty much since Schmitty gave me a (bootleg?) copy of his I Was Blind ep, promising he'd get me an actual copy complete with the painfully tasteful artwork "someday" (of which almost 3 years later, I still don't have).

I'm sure there are no fewer than three protools sessions labeled "lightningsong" somewhere on my computer with different versions and variations of this song- none ever seeing any daylight.  I've never been real happy with how any of them have turned out and it got to the point where it seemed like the harder I tried, the further I got from capturing the elements that I loved most about the song.

So I canned it. I haven't tried to play, let alone record that song in at least a year. I just kind of chalked it up to Schmitt being a sonofabitch.

But then, while trying to work through another song (which hopefully may someday also be posted here) I just started noodling around and eventually settled into the finger pattern I'd always played "Lightning Song" with. It felt pretty good. So in classic Schmitt fashion I decided to randomly place the capo somewhere on the neck and just play the song.  It felt even better, so I grabbed a mic, set it up and in about 30 or so minutes, was done. And it was better than all the other versions I'd ever worked on.

So here it is, a lesson in making bread, sometimes you gotta just wait till it rises on it's own.
Lightning Song (Brandon Schmitt cover)

-Mark

p.s. That other sonofabitch Ben Trickey just put out a new seven inch.  It'll take you longer to order it than it will to listen to it but you'll be glad you did both in the end.

photographic evidence

hey- it's 'not mark' here updating with some photo-graphs.

check 'em-

Why is Mark so tall?

Seriously, he's like 6'14and1/2"

The pale green light still has some shine...

Shure KSM 141.  Very nice on the acoustic guitar.

Beyer M500 ribbon mic very nice for Jake's ambient guitar magic

He's a little shorter now, must be close to time to rock...

Damn, now he's really short.  My rock just shrunk him...

Mirror mirror on the wall...

Neumann TLM 103 as heard on vocals and glockenspiel

 and a bass player

The Fleetwood Mac drum sound, waiting to happen.

He's a sneaky sunuvabitch...

He's a drunk sunuvabitch...

He's a ruthless documentarian of embarrassing moments...

He's almost tired of this now...

Istanbul was Constantinople now it's Istanbul not Constantinople...

After Midnight reunion rehearsal...

Airman Rodriguez...

Delmont brought rock!

Brought to you by the letter 'K'

And the fine folks at Rolling Rock...

'A Relative Term is a straight up bitch, fuck me doggie samm!'

Mr. Russell Crouse wearing the shirt of a real band!

It's so hard to dance with your brass

It's true. When was the last time you saw someone dancing with a sax, a trumpet, or a trombone that actually looked cool. It's damn near impossible.

Exhibit A:



Exhibit B:



And last but certainly not least, exhibit C:



In fact the only credible instance of someone dancing with a brass instrument I can think of was by neither a musician nor a dancer. And really it's probably only cool because it exemplifies the goofiness of the 80s.





The moral of this story?


Never play cards with a guy who's got the same first name as a city.


-Mark

Meet Jake Bernhardt

That's right.

I've been watching the Baltimore Ravens the past three or four weeks and, in not all that much time, I began to notice something. Ray Lewis gets more face time on tv than pretty much any player/coach/ref/ball-boy I've seen. It's kind of amazing. This past weekend, in a game against the Bengals, there was a camera on Ray Lewis' face 6 times in the last two minutes of the game alone (seven if you want to count the slow motion instant replay of RL's reaction to a play on the field). And he was injured. Not even in the GAME!
Like I said, kind of amazing. He'll get more face time during one game than some players will get in their entire career.

Which brings me to Jake- the face time man of A Relative Term. As it happens Jake typically gets a lot of play in these videos, and this next one is no exception.

"A Blazing Fire" was our last song to record all the basic tracks- it's official, there are 15 songs that are moving on to the next stage of adding drums/flutes/record-scratches/flugelhorn section(s).


Rock and roll


-Mark

Frailty and Finality

Even at our best we are nothing more than frail animals endlessly spinning on a floating chunk of rock.






Raise your glass to all small things cherished.
-Mark

we also got donkey shows, Mötley Crüe, and cake

As we've been moving along, recording the basic tracks of each song and moving to the next, the weight of work that still needs to be done seems to be piling up in an almost snowball-esq fashion. One of our main obstacles, which we've known about for some time, is to figure out how to get drums on some of these songs. My recording gear allows only 2 inputs and Peter's rig is tied to his apartment, which is connected to his many neighbors who I'm sure already hate us for layering droning bass and guitar all over their Sunday afternoons/evenings. Then there's that other tiny obstacle of actually finding a talented drummer.

Enter Brandon Delmont, drummer of Sun Of The Sun and all around stellar dude.

The rest is history/present/workinprogress

-Mark