After our hefty 2 hours of sleep we set out to go to Clement's home/studio to finishing mixing our songs. Clement lives about 45 minutes outside of Montreal. His place is completely in the boonies which makes it a very peaceful place to visit. The scenery on the way there was pretty impressive.
Just to give you some background on Clement. We were introduced to him through Patrick. He works with practically everyone in Montreal. He's also an accomplished vocalist and his been playing in bands, touring, recording, etc for over 20 years. He's been mixing our album with collaboration from us via phone and email. However, we haven't actually met him in person until today.
We pull up to his house and he meets us outside. "The Wandas are in the building he yells in a welcoming tone". He brings us inside, shows us his home, his studio, offers his home to us as if it was ours. A very nice guy.
He can tell we're pretty beat from last night as Brent says "yeah, we're a little hung over; we didn't sleep much". "No problem my friends, I have just the remedy for you" says Clement. He brings us into his kitchen pulls out 4 shot glasses and a bottle of 10 year old malt scotch whiskey. "You may not like the remedy at first, but I gurantee it will make you feel better". I can see Keith almost gagging from the sight and smell of the shots being poured. "Cheers!" we throw back the shots.
Keith braces himself over the sink for support from feeling woozy and just in case the scotch didn't settle so well. I look at Brent and he has a giant smile on his face with tears coming out of his eys "I feel much better" he says. He puts is index finger pressed against his lips as if he was 'shushing' someone. His cheeks blow up like Dizzy Gillespie and he casually walks to the trash, opens the lid and pukes directly into it. Clement pulls out some gum and puts his arm around Brent and says "what a great first impression, I love this guy!"
I must say I actually felt fine for the rest of the day. After that, we fired up "Thank You Note" (one of our new songs) and proceeded to work out some kinks in the mix. We really plowed through everything at a good clip. Some of Clement's friends came by chatted with us for a bit, listened to some of the mixes and just hung out. Clement has a great house for relaxing and working on music. They've recorded a bunch of albums in his house because it has great acoustics.
There is a real sense of local music and strong support that follows it. Over the course of the day, about half a dozen friends came by to say hello, talk about new projects they're working on and just hang out. Martin (Bassist of The Dears) was among the people who popped in, as he's good friends with Clement. He's also been recording a side project at Clement's house too. We're hoping to play a couple shows with them in Boston and Montreal.
We're real happy with how everything came out. Clement did a great job and he even offered to mix one more song for us that we recorded after the initial 3 songs. Once we wrapped things up we headed back to the hotel for one more night on the town. All in all this has been a great trip. Lots of fun and lots of progress for the band.
Cheers,
Ross