Recording report: 1/28/09

It was guitar night at yesterday’s session of The Aviation Blondes Winter Recording Blitz and our featured bandmate was guitarist extraordinaire Daryl Cross. He and I recorded guitars for three songs: “Pretend,” “Catch and Release” and “Edge of Forever.” We fell just short of our goal because we ran out of time before we could get to “Don’t Look Down,” but that will be easy to make up at a later date…not a very guitary song anyway.

Daryl didn’t bring his Mesa Boogie so he played his Telecaster through Joe’s amp. We had an early scare that Daryl’s pedal board wasn’t working – it’s crucial to his sound – but he got it working and all was well.

I was reunited with my old Marshall head and cabinet after two years – Jason was kind enough to load them into his car and bring them with him. Naturally the pots were dirty, i.e. dust in the knobs, but it still works. Probably needs some tube work after all this time but it sounded surprisingly good. I decided not to use the Les Paul. It’s a mess and needs work…intonation problems, fret problems, and the side of the neck has little chunks missing around the frets, which causes the high E string to slip over the side as you play…bad scene. One of these days I’ll get the cash together to get it worked on. For now I decided to use Rod’s Telecaster instead. Which turned out to be an excellent decision. First of all, it’s not just any old Telly – it’s a gorgeous, black American Standard that plays like a dream, never goes out of tune, and is just an amazingly solid, kick-ass guitar. The combination of that Telly through the cranked-up JCM900 4x12 half-stack with lots of gain + preamp resulted in a sound very much like Joe Strummer’s guitar on the first Clash album. Nice big, aggressive tone with just enough distortion but good clarity too. So there was no need for pedals. I’ve decided I hate my distortion pedal. When we play live I use a Boss DS-1 but I think I’m done with it. It generates a harsh, overly bright buzz of shapeless noise that makes your guitar sound like bad 80s hair metal no matter what you do. It’s always better to just use the right guitar into the right amp with nothing in between.

Since we had enough mics and headphones, we decided to try recording both guitars simultaneously, figuring we might get more of a live Aviation Blondes sound that way and save time as well. I wasn’t sure how well that would work, but it turned out to be a good idea. Daryl and I played off each other and interacted musically more than we would have otherwise, I think. Joe’s rehearsal/recording studio is a big room, so the amps were separated by a good distance and with the SM57s there was minimal bleed.

First up was “Catch and Release.” We did a couple passes and laid down the rhythm parts. Then Daryl overdubbed a new descending line he came up with for the chorus that works well, and I added a cleaner, chorused guitar on the prechorus. Finally, we added Daryl’s solo and did a few takes of that. I liked most of the takes (except for one that wandered off hilariously into some kind of bizarre modal thing at the end), but then Daryl brought his “A” game and fired off an awesome Joe Perry-like solo on the 3^rd or 4^th take that we all knew immediately was the one. Jason – who is normally very low-key – stood up grinning, spun around in a circle and did an odd little dance, exclaiming, “Yes! Yes! That’s the one! That’s the keeper! Oh yeah! Ohhhh yeah baby!! Wheee!!” followed by unintelligible gurgling sounds. I figured that such a spontaneous display of excitement from our producer was a good sign.

From there we worked on “Pretend” and got both parts in a couple takes. Daryl’s part on the coda sounded slightly out of tune so we had him go back and redo just that part. This song has a nice, raw, live sound that I think will be a good addition to the CD. Dave and Rod sound especially good on it, very live and rocking. We just have to do the girls’ vocals and we’re done.

“Edge of Forever” was trickier and we had to listen to it a few times and play through it before we were ready to record. This song has changed a lot from the original demo – including a new key and a complete revamp of the structure. Because we raised the key from A to B since we recorded the basic tracks, and the bass hasn’t been re-recorded yet, we had to play along with only the drums and Lexi’s scratch vocal (in the original key) to guide us. Fortunately Dave’s drums are rock-steady and the quiet parts have a rhythmic vocal, so we were able to get it done. Still plenty of production left to do on this song: bass guitar, keyboards, Daryl’s solos, some acoustic guitar I think, maybe some extra percussion, and lots of vocal overdubs with all of us in the band plus some special guest singers. This song is going to be one of the bigger production numbers on the CD and I think it’s going to sound great when it’s finished. Even with just the drums and rhythm guitars, it has a good groove already.

Finally, an ANNOUNCEMENT! We are playing our first show of 2009 on Saturday, March 14 at Club Café opening up for our buds Seven Color Sky, who are celebrating the release of their new CD. It’s an early 7:00 PM show and we will probably go on right at 7:00 on the nose, so start making plans now, call the sitter, cancel the trip to Cancun with your mistress, whatever you have to do. Watch this space for further details.