Studio Day 29

Mr. Knowitall drums are complete. I went in on a Sunday and cut the tracks without the band. Being bummed about last Thursday I decided I could go in and finish up the track. It only took about two hours. I had Terry, my brother in law who was in town for the Steve Vai concert, man the protools system. He handled starting and stopping of the recording.

Studio Day 28

Mr. Knowitall

Started working on drums around 8:20 or so. Got some good drum sounds and spent about 45 minutes working with Mike V on composing the perfect part. So far so good.

Time to cut the track. 2 hours later still didn't have a track I was completely satisfied with. I'll try to cut the track again next time.

Not a great night.

Studio Day 27

I made it back to the studio last night. We moved recording to Wednesday this week instead of Tuesday because Mike and Katie had a songwriting class.

I had a long conference call with the SK team last night so we got started just a little before 9pm. Ran through what they had recorded over the last two weeks and some great sounding acoustic parts as well as some cool bass lines on Lonely One. I could tell Mike G probably spent a good bit of time coming up with that new part.

Since my travel schedule doesn't appear to be letting up anytime soon they wanted to get me on drums to finish my last two tracks. Considering it had been nearly 4 weeks since I picked up sticks I knew there wasn't much hope for cutting a track. We started on Mr. Knowitall and realized the scratch guitar track didn't have the arrangement we wanted so first thing was to recut the scratch. Next, our time was spent on getting the mics set back on the drums and letting me run through a few takes. Tonight I hope to cut the track.

Goals tonight, spend about an hour working on sounds, and then spend 2 hours working on recording. Mike V had some good ideas on how to make the drum part both more tasteful and more interesting so that will probably take some time to work through. Fortunately this is one of the easiest tracks for me to play to so I'm hopeful we can get a keeper tonight.

Studio Day 25/26

Last week Katie sent a couple of more very quick updates.

So bass is done on Lonely and All About You and acoustic is done on Lonely One. It took us a couple days to get an acoustic sound. All About You won't take long to get the Acoustic done....so Tuesday should be a productive night assuming you can be here....if you won't to take a break from your travels we can start Wednesday.

And we even had an exchange about Mike G missing me :-)

Katie > Mike G said you sux!!!
Me > what is that about? Mike G sux!
Katie > I guess that is his way of saying he misses you!!!! Hahahahahahahahahaha

Studio Day 25/26

Last week Katie sent a couple of more very quick updates.

So bass is done on Lonely and All About You and acoustic is done on Lonely One. It took us a couple days to get an acoustic sound. All About You won't take long to get the Acoustic done....so Tuesday should be a productive night assuming you can be here....if you won't to take a break from your travels we can start Wednesday.

And we even had an exchange about Mike G missing me :-)

Katie > Mike G said you sux!!!
Me > what is that about? Mike G sux!
Katie > I guess that is his way of saying he misses you!!!! Hahahahahahahahahaha

I'm back

I got back in the States last night. It's good to be back. Sleeping has always been a problem when I return to the US although last night I slept until about 6am. Realizing I normally wake up at 8:30am or so this wasn't too bad. However I took a 3 hour nap today which I'm sure will screw things up.

This next weekend Terry and Buffy are coming into town and Terry and I will be heading to the Steve Vai show with the EVO experience and meet and greet. I was planning to see Kings Of Leon Friday night but it looks like they've already sold out. I'll have to watch for tickets to open up or maybe catch them on their next tour.

Speaking of meet and greets and platinum experiences, when I was in Korea I ordered a couple of tickets to the Motley Crue show in Atlanta. I ordered the platinum tickets through their fan club and are guaranteed seats in the first two rows with a photo and meet and greet after the show. Just like the KISS ticket I had back in 2003. The funny thing is the price for 2 tickets with all original members to the Crue is less than 1 ticket to KISS with 2 original members. I guess Paul and Gene can still demand more than the Crue.

Norah Jones in Seoul

After working a few days in Seoul I glanced onto Pollstar's Site to see if there was any interesting shows in Seoul while I'm here. Norah Jones was listed so after spending one night trying to read Korean web sites, and then working two days with the concierge I finally managed to get tickets.

Turns out they don't seem to have a 24 hour ticketmaster type site so the first night I went to the hotel concierge they just stated that the box office was closed and to try again the next day. I came back a couple of nights later and finally got the concierge to get some information. Once again the box office was closed but the concierge managed to call the production company and reserved two tickets under my name.

Picking up will call tickets always makes me nervous, much less doing this in a foreign country but we had no problems getting them. Since we had VIP seats we were able to go to a pre party and post party event for free drinks. Nothing too exciting, and it turned out Chivas was the only thing served but at least it was free. We get inside the venue and it turns out we have 2nd row center tickets and no one ended up sitting on the front row so we had a great view the entire night.

Concert was great, the band was great and the the show was well mixed. The hall had quite a bit of echo which lent itself well for some of the tunes. Toward the end of the show Norah played Creepin' In a song that she did a duet with Dolly Parton on her cd. The crowd had been extremely calm, no talking, clapping immediately after a song then absolute silence. When she was introducing the song she mentioned that with the large space in front of the stage between the front row that people could use the space to dance. And then things got out of control. You had probably a hundred people on both sides of the venue crowd up on the edge of the front row trying to dance. It was an extremely bizarre sight, and Seoul security seemed in over their head.

The show lasted about two hours and covered many of my favorites including Nightingale.

Studio Day 23/24 update from Katie

And progress in the studio continues...

Here is an update from Katie on the studio activities this week.

Hey David,
If you wanted to keep your blog going for the studio days here is an
update.
Tuesday March 1st we worked on Bass for Lonely One. Mike G got his amp
fixed so he played through his amp for a couple run throughs, but listening
back to the bass through the Peavy sounded so much better. So, the Mike's
set up the bass in the hall with the Peavy and got a good sound. Mike G
played bass all night....I fell asleep and woke up at 10:30 finding that
the bass part had been changed and it sounded really cool. I left about
10:30 and the Mike's stayed punching in parts and had a late night....think
they ended up heading out abut midnight with a bass part that they were
happy with.

Tonight March 3rd will be the guitars!!!!!
I will be playing my acoustic on both Lonely One and All About You, guess
we will pick one and see how long it takes!!!! Then I have my rhythm
electric and Mike V has his lead parts.....hopefully we will be done with
all the guitars for both by the time you get back!!!!!!

If we finish before you get back I told Mike V that I am interested in
putting a very simple all acoustic song on the CD...it shouldn't take
long....but I thought it would show a little diversity and it's a song that
I personally really like and would like to hear it recorded. Just me
singing and my acoustic guitar.....we can toy with other instrument
ideas...but i don't want an electric sound....maybe a snare, shakers,
etc.....this will be a good test too for if we ever wanted to play acoustic
live.....The song is called "I didn't come here for this". I think we ran
through it one time in rehearsal, but that was it.......
Talk to ya later!

Back in Korea

I've made my third trip to Korea in 4 months. The trip over was an eventful and we got into the hotel around 7pm last night. A quick dinner at O'Kim's our favorite Irish Korean pub and back to the room.

Before I left Jacki and I made a run to Tower and I made one of my largest single purchases in some time. I also picked up a couple of out of print discs from the used bin. The Four Horsemen - Nobody Said It Was Easy, which Amazon had starting used at $30 and new for $95, and The Wildhearts - Earth vs. The Wildhearts - which used through Amazon started at $20. The remarkable thing is I paid less than $12 for the two of them together.

I also got to try out my new headphones the Shure E3c. These are sound isolation headphones that do not use active cancelling, but act more or less like an ear plug with a speaker in it. My only complaint is that it sometimes takes some work to get a good fit with a good clean signal, but when they are in they work great. Several times the flight attendant had to tap me because I was either looking out the window or had my eyes shut and had no idea she was there. The other nice thing about the headphones is that since so much outside noise is blocked out you don't have to run the volume nearly as loud as you would otherwise.

I'm off to work in Korea.

Studio Day 22

Mike G finished up his part on All About You Wednesday night. We had a workable part after about an hour and half into it. I had to do some minor editing on the verse and Mike ended up punching in two parts. Remarkably all of the complicated licks he played he nailed, the trobule spots were around the verse and the groove.

Usually ends up being the opposite problem for me.

I'm off to Korea for two weeks so the band will be on their own. Mike V has been learning how to use the ProTools rig so I'm hopeful guitars and bass will be wrapped up for Lonely One and All About You when I get back.

Studio Day 21

Mike G continued working on his bass part last night for All About You. We aren't there quite yet but he is close. We should wrap up All About You tonight. The guy worked his ass off last night, and by far we have created the most complicated bass part for a Superlatives song to date.

I'm expecting he'll nail it within the first hour tonight and then we can work on Lonely One.

Some Kind Of Monster

Last weekend I was listening to Eddie Trunk's show on the Boneyard on XM Radio. Last weekend they had Bruce Sinofsky one of the directors on the show. Turns out that Bruce brought along a few copies to give away and I actually won one of them autographed by Bruce on the show. I got it in the mail today and watched about an hour and half.

I know I won't have anything interesting to say that hasn't been said by the press or in other reviews but Metallica was on their last legs. I hate to say it but it almost becomes comical considering they are the biggest metal band in the world and will probably have that title for many more years to come. If you haven't seen the movie check it out, the scenes with Metallica in group therapy are some of the best behind the music type stuff you will ever see.

And I must say thanks to Bruce Sinofsky, Eddie Trunk, XM Radio and Paramount Home Video for a copy of the DVD.

Studio Day 20

Tonight we spent working on Mike G's bass part to All About You. It was a pretty full night. We experimented with micing up both of his cabinets one with the bass drum mic and one with the floor tom mic. It was interesting to hear how the sounds differed. By itself the bass drum mic had very little definition, but the floor tom mic wasn't nearly as full sounding. Together it had clarity and punchness. I through a little compression onto the floor tom mic and we ended up with a good bass tone.

We ran Mike through the ringer tonight. Deconstructed his part entirely and built it back up. By the end of the night he had some pretty cool ideas and a good outline of a part for recording. Then all of a sudden we lost bass sound. He blew his amp. The first casualty of the recording sessions. At this point we went direct and Mike was able to lay down a rough outline of a final part.

We burned a cd with a rough mix for Mike to practice with and will continue again next Tuesday.

Darian joined us at the studio tonight and I took some pretty funny video of her dancing to and singing All About You on my Treo 650. I'll try to upload the video here so you can take a look. Pretty funny stuff!

Studio Day 19

Two hours and one drum track later All About You drums are complete. Drum sounds cooperated and I was able to get a good take the third or fourth time through the song.

We wrapped about an hour earlier than normal.

Bass tracks are next for Thursday.

Studio Day 18

Just the Mike(s) and I in the studio this past Thursday. Spent about 2 hours cleaning up the drum sounds. We had the ring problem on the second tom. When the bass drum is kicking a way the second tom just resonates. Nice sound, but not what you want for recording.

Once we got that under control I did a take and perhaps a first we kept the first take. The very intro of the song wasn't locked in so I lifted a part from the middle of the song that has the same part and then we had a finished drum part. The quickest recording ever.

I ended up spending about an hour listening to the take over and over to make sure there wasn't anything we needed to fix or improve. But no changes were necessary.

Lonely One drum part is recorded... All About You will be next.

Motley Crue in the news

Motley is back in the billboard top 10 with their new greatest hits compilation Red, White and Crue. The came in at number 6 with 90,000 units sold.

http://www.billboard.com/bb/daily/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000796781

And then in not so good Motley news is that Mick Mars is being sued for $10M from an ex.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/Music/02/09/crue.palimony.reut/index.html

Not bad for a week in the Crue.

Studio Day 17

We took last Thursday off from recording and focused on playing and getting familiar with our instruments again. It was a good way to let off a little steam and of course have some fun. Tonight it was back to business.

The attention was all on me tonight. We worked out drums for both Lonely One and All About You. Spent about 2 hours cleaning up Lonely One, worked on tightening up the chorus and cleaning up some of the accents throughout the song. Also since I hadn't practiced playing drums in some time a good portion of the first hour was just working on my timing and syncing up to the click. The two hours paid off and I think we have a much better drum part. The intro and breakdown in the middle are drastically different than what we had done before. We gave it a double time feel and it really seemed to pick the energy of the song up right from the start. A little syncing up the bass drum with the bass guitar during the chorus and now we've got a good performance.

The last hour we spent on All About You. Interestingly we double timed the verse and it gave a great building effect against the guitars. Cleaned up the breakdown section. At one point the breakdown ended up sounding like the drums to We're Not Gonna Take It by Twisted Sister. So clearly had to stop going down that path. A little help from Mike V and a suggestion from Mike G and we've got a breakdown that is on the verge of working. And of course we made room for a huge sloppy Keith Moon drum fill towards the end of the song and it works perfectly.
Thursday we will get some drum sounds and work on recording Lonely One. A tiring night, but one of the more productive ones in some time.

Wes Wehmiller RIP

This past weekend we lost another musician. Wes Wehmiller, most prominently known as the bass player in Duran Duran in the late 90s, and was also involved in the Zappa community of musicians (Mike Keneally, Joe Travers, Warren Cuccurullo). Circumstances behind his death are not known. He was only 33 years old.

Plans were mentioned that he was potenitally going to play bass on a Dweezil Zappa tour later in the year. His last public performance was with Dweezil on Jan 23rd at NAMM.

Our thoughts go out to his friends and family.

Bryan Beller, bassist and Keneally alum, has posted a track on his website of the Bryan Beller Band's only performance, with Wes on bass with Bryan on lead bass. Warren Cuccurullo has also posted some performances with Wes on his site.

From Bryan's site...

In honor of the untimely passing of my dear friend Wes Wehmiller, we've cleared out this space to make room for something special - a tune from the one and only gig the original Bryan Beller Band ever played. It's a cover of John Scofield's "Blackout," on which Wes played bass while I played the lead.

Fittingly, he's the only one on this tune that doesn't solo. But all you have to do is hear this one track to know what an absolute genius he was.

I will miss him so, so, so much.

Click here to listen.

June 24, 2004
The Baked Potato, Hollywood, CA

Rick Musallam - guitar
Wes Wehmiller - bass
Joe Travers - drums
Bryan Beller - lead bass
anonymous audience member - unnecessary cowbell

Studio Day 16

We redid a couple of Mike's leads this past Monday and had Katie finish up her rhythm tracks. As it stands I'm pretty sure basic tracks for Can't Say No and The Weather Song are complete. During the listen back I put together a rough mix of Weather as this was the first time for the band to hear the basic tracks mixed, and I must say I think we are in good shape so far for this cd. Can't Say No sounds amazing and Weather isn't too far behind.

Studio Day 15

We spent about an hour and half in the studio tonight. It was just myself and the Mike's. Mike V finished his lead parts for Can't Say No. Really nice and tasteful playing. Just playing the raw mix the song sounds great and we haven't applied any eq or effects at this point. This is going to be best sounding recording to date.

We may get together to finish rhythm guitars on Saturday and then it will be onto the drums. Depending on how I'm feeling I may try to do a run through and get some scratch drums tracks recorded for Lonely One and All About You. Then we can break the parts down and determine if we want to change any of the parts.