PIMP MY STUDIO
I am totally fucking BEAT. I can only imagine how the good men of Pilot to Gunner must feel. They made the trek down from Brooklyn on Friday night, and over the weekend we all began turning the old 1137 Recording building on its ear, beginning its transformation into a (mostly) new studio. The coolest part of which was the installation of a brand new red oak floor into the formerly super-dead live room. This room used to be carpeted with black acoustic foam all over all the walls ... the kind of space that's so dead, it feels a little creepy to even talk in it because your words just fall to the floor. I guess it was born from a very Steely Dan aesthetic. I wish I had taken some "before" pictures but of course it slipped my mind. Anyway this room is live now and with a little treatment it's going to be a killer drum room. I have to give it up for Kurt Herrmann, who was the brains behind the operation, but also for Scott and Pat for working their asses off, and to Janet for bringing some amazing colors into a formerly grey space ... my friends, this was one of the best weekends of my life and thanks to you, I think we're putting together a pretty great little studio here.
Darren even came up from DC on Sunday with the redoubtable Mr. Dan Wilson, who contributed his carpentry expertise.
Hats off also to Nikhil Ranade who has been wiring up patchbays and generally aiding in the design and ergonomics department and is pretty much the signal flow guru, and to Tony Eichler for his vast knowledge of the MCI 416 console, this place and its idiosyncracies. The next step will be modifications and hot-rodding to the MCI - I'm probably sending the power supplies out to Bob Alach this week to be rebuilt and then the whole thing is getting re-capped and re-chipped.
Last week I brought my ProTools system into the control room and mixed a few of the Oranges songs - really fun, bodes well for the control room. Super-easy to work in there. The Oranges have done some gret work since I last saw them and their record is going to be a peach.
Tomorrow preproduction begins with Clutch at their practice space out in Frederick ... so stoked for this record not only because I think they're about to outdo themselves but because I will get to work with John Agnello again when we track the drums, and we're doing that part ... at Bearsville. Don't know if the new place will be ready in time to do any work with Clutch there after we track drums ... but I hope it will be, because if things continue to go how they seem to be going, I don't imagine wanting to work anywhere else.
The lovely things:
1. the obvious
2. Zach Barocas is playing the drums again
3. Channels practiced for the first time in a couple of months and wrote a new song right away
4. Mary Timony & Devin Ocampo's new record
5. Against Me!
6. the Bomb
7. the Joy Circuit
8. the Life and Times
9. Edie Sedgwick
10. every block in Baltimore has some kind of church on it - not necessarily lovely, just wild to think about
11. The Day Today DVD