In the Studio
Year of Kings. Day 250. Standing outside the Citizen Vinyl studios on Saturday morning before we start recording. How is the recording? Me, Kyrie, Craig, Colleen stand around a 4-part partition with glass windows so we can look at each other but have separation for the sound. Merlin and Bayla - playing through amps - are off to one side. I have a 1960s vintage mic in front of my face, a mic for my acoustic guitar, my acoustic guitar direct into the system, a double mic hanging over our heads. And then we play our first song “St. Margaret’s Cotillion” - which is our opening song and the song we feel most confident about. We play it and Kevin Moloney asks for us to play it again - and again - and again - and again - and that works because by the time we play it the sixth time I’ve actually forgotten about all the mics and the studio space and I’m thinking: “You want to hear it again? I’m gonna really give it to you this time! Now we’re gonna really rip it up!”
Year of Kings. Day 251. This the mixing/listening room at Citizen Vinyl. We’d play until Kevin Moloney liked a take - and then we’d all listen to the rough mix. Maybe Kevin and Mike (the engineer) would pull together different parts of different takes - like the start of take 5 with the middle of take 6 with the end of take 3 - all rearranged seamlessly in an instant. Then Colleen headed back into the studio and sang the vocal parts again so that they could be layered and her voice sounded wide and fat and rich like a silk river. All so easy - like Colleen had been doing this all her life. Then Kyrie would go back in - the sign of real talent is that Kyrie had free reign - and sometimes her violin would track together and sometimes multiple tracks would harmonize and sometimes the violin tracks would wrap around each other like golden threads. (Yup - that’s Kevin Boggs in the photo - who dropped in to add some keyboard and guitar to the tracks.)
Year of Kings. Day 252. We started at 10 am and recorded through lunch, through the afternoon, into the evening, no breaks. By 7pm we had recorded “St. Margaret’s Cotillion” - “Helicopter” - “Party Clothes” - “Anxiety 7.” Then we paused for pizza. Don’t pause for pizza. We couldn’t get the intensity and energy back. We tried two more songs and neither were working so we called the first day done at 10pm.
Year of Kings. Day 253. On Sunday we got in early. We recorded “Buckminster Fuller” “New Suit” “Love is Punk” - and then Merlin insisted we record “Shaking Us To The Ground” - it was the only song we did in one take. We added vocals, gang vocals, let Kyrie do her magic, and percussion. For me it was a weekend of expansion - like a door opened into another space. The songs were so much better, deeper, richer, fuller than they had ever been imagined - this cast of characters, ship of fools, mutant super hero gang, Kevin Moloney as our wizard, had created something that made me beyond grateful.
Year of Kings. Day 254. What else? Big thanks to Mike for engineering, Kevin B for dropping by and playing with us, David S for filming. Now what? Truth? We hoped to record 3-4 songs for an EP - maybe - and we ended up recording 8 songs. Now? Things are happening - in terms of the recording we’re adding two more songs, going back in to the studio for one more evening, and then mixing and mastering. Because…. we have an album. We went out fishing and we caught a very big fish.
