New Album Title Track Released!

Hi all, 

Today we release the official name of our upcoming record as well as a teaser track that bears the same name. New Interface (A design with friends for the future) will be the title of The Wandas' new record. 



As we interact with our constant, ever present, changing environment we will always need a 'New Interface' to aid in our development. This is true in everything from new technology to people working in accord towards a better future for us all. The idea was inspired by the futurist Jacque Fresco and his book 'The best that money can't buy: Beyond politics, poverty, & war' 

Enjoy and please share. 

https://soundcloud.com/thewandas/01-new-interface

First track off new LP Released

Hi All,

This is the first song we're releasing off the new album. It also happens to be the first Wandas' song with no lyrics. It's called Hood River Blues

 

The backstory: We played a fantastic show in Seattle and had the next two days off; well deserved after our 14 shows in 14 days trek cross country! Our friends from Audiosocket recommended we take the scenic route and park at a campground site on Hood River, which borders Washington state and Oregon. After crossing an extremely narrow bridge, we pulled into the campsite for the night. The scenery was breathtaking. Within minutes of parking, I (Keith) grabbed my guitar and notebook, and headed towards the river. Below is a photo taken by Marc Lovely through a log, as I'm writing this song. The song is appropriately called "Hood River Blues." Hope you enjoy. Please share this link with your friends, download and enjoy! 

 



We will be releasing more songs off the new album every Wednesday until its release. 

https://soundcloud.com/thewandas/09-hood-river-blues

Our Album is Tracked!

When we left Boston to head to Montreal we didn't have much on our mind other than to finish our album in the window we had the studio rented. There are so many unknowns when it comes to making an album that it can become very daunting if you start thinking about everything that could go wrong. You're always better off focusing on the music and knocking things off the list to do in a methodical fashion. Just keep moving and don't look back; and hopefully when you've got to the end of list you've completed everything to your satisfaction and with enough time to spare. Now that we're done, I can say without a doubt that we've hit both of those benchmarks. The whole process exceeded our expectations. 

Knocking things off the list - Producer Patrick Krief, Mix Art Studios Montreal, Quebec

The six months+ of preproduction with 40 hours a week spent in our practice space definitely paid off. This is the first recording process I've ever been apart of that has run ahead of schedule. Because we were tracking the drums, guitar, bass and vocals live, we had the potential to cruise through the recording session. We also had the potential to have a disastrous time. If something isn't feeling right with one of the parts, the whole band has to wait and before you know it you've gone days without anything to show for it. Luckily our experience was the former and we tore through the songs. From the first time we hit the record button, our entire album (11 songs) was tracked in 6 days.

The ending couldn't have gone any better. After we had completed everything, Chris from Stars and Liam from The Stills were nice enough to come by and play some horns on a couple of the songs. Liam played a killer Wurlitzer solo on one of the tracks too.

So here we are now. Six months of work sitting on hard drive the size of a pack of guitar stings (backed-up of course). The next step is the mixing and mastering process. More to come on that!

Cheers,

Ross

Working Hard in Montreal - A video tour of Mix Art Studios

Hello WANDA-NATION,

Things are going great up here in Montreal. We're ahead of schedule in the recording process and are absolutely thrilled with how everything is sounding.

We're also pleased that our double fake out of mother nature couldn't have went any better. While we headed north to Montreal, (the only place colder than Boston in the winter) Boston was getting slammed with a Blizzard. I guarantee you if we recorded in Miami, they would have had snow on Christmas.

Here is a little video tour of Mix Art Studios, where we are tracking the album. My apologies if some of the video is a little dark and hard to see. The studio has a lighting vibe designed to inspire sweet sweet music; not necessarily great for filming. However, you should be able to get the gist.

Can't wait to share the music with everyone!

Cheers,
Ross


Happy Christmas From Montreal

Hello All,

What a great Christmas morning. We all awoke to find all the musical gear we ever wanted. Brent had wall of amps ranging from Vox to Orange. I had the best Ampeg setup in the world. Will had more snare drums then he knew what to do with them and Keith had one microphone alone worth twice as much as his car. This year theWANDAS are celebrating Christmas at Mix Art studios in Montreal, Quebec. 

It's a bit different that our traditional Christmas festivities but it is still festive nonetheless. One of the neighbors to the studio brought us over some home made wine and one of Patrick's friends hand delivered some egg nog for a Christmas Toast.

(L-R) Recording Engineer Joe Saliba, theWANDAS, Producer Patrick Krief. Christmas 2010 Egg Nog Toast. Mix Art Studios. Montreal Quebec.The recording process is going very well. I must say the months

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Off to the races. Let the recording begin!

A lot of people say that growing as band is a marathon not a sprint. I prefer to think of it like a series of impromptu sprints with no defined beginning or end. Sometimes you just have to run like crazy and hope that your body doesn't give out before the race ends. We're at one of those sprints right now.

Recording Engineer Joe Saliba setting up Will's Drums at Mixart Studios. Montreal Quebec

We departed early tuesday morning to the only place colder than Boston, MA right now; Montreal Canada. our target departure time was 8am. We hit the road by 11am; not bad for musicians. This was actually pretty good considering Will was stuck in traffic for an extra hour and a half and Joe (our engineer we brought with us to Canada) was passed out asleep in a sound proof room at another studio he works at in Boston with no cell phone on him. After banging on the locked door for about an hour trying different knocking techniques, we

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Kickstarter Campaign Complete, nearly $12,000 raised towards new album!

For those of you following our kickstarter fundraiser; we started about 2 months back on a journey to fund our new album by going directly to our fans. Since we're an independent band we have full control over the direction of our band. Which means we're able to set the price of our music and make it available directly to you in whatever format we want.

Since many of you were already planning on purchasing our album when it came out, it just made sense to allow you to pre-order it with a bunch of other cool merchandise. By pre-ordering the album we were able to fund the recording process.

The campaign was a complete success thanks to your loyalty and support. Now it's time for us record this thing! We're heading to Montreal in a few weeks to start the process. We'll be posting updates on here for you to follow along at home.

Thanks a million!

Ross, Keith, Brent & Will - theWANDAS

theWANDAS Live Recording at Ralph's - Huge Success!

We want to thank everyone who made last Saturday's live video & audio recording at Ralph's in Worcester, MA such a giant success. The venue was sold out and by far the most packed I've ever seen the place. It was great seeing so many enthusiastic fans in one place.

 

theWANDAS live recording at Ralph's, Worcester MA. Photo Credit: Jim Kusz

From what I've briefly seen, the video looks great. The film crew did a bang up job. We can't wait to share the end product with you. It's going to a take a bit to sort through and edit down so bear with us; hopefully it will be worth the wait.

Thanks again for Ralph's and their great staff for letting us have our run of the place for the night; we couldn't have done it without their help. Thanks to Hard No. 9 and Matt Benoit for sharing the night with us and putting on great performances.

Here's an article in the Worcester Magazine that ran, leading up to the event.

Cheers,

Ross

An Amazing 3 months for theWANDAS

Last July/August we settled down into Paper Cup studios with producer Patrick Krief and hammered out a full length album complete with our best work to date. The album is being mixed as we speak and will be mastered in early November. The album will first be available at our CD Release shows in Worcester MA, USA and Boston MA, USA in late November early December 2008.

We were anticipating a slow September and October in preparation for the album release. Well we were cetainly wrong. Fresh out of the studio session we took First Place out of 600 bands in our genre on the ourstage.com August 2008 song competition. Right after the competition we were chosen as the WBOS Radio 92.9 Best of Boston pick in September 2008. Coupled with a sold out show at Tommy Doyle's, September was a great month.

Just when we thought things couldn't get any better, we got an email from Natalia Yanchak of The Dears asking if we would open for them at their upcoming Boston show on October 21st, 2008. Obviously we said yes right away. Anyone who has followed us  knows how much we love and admire The Dears. This is absolutely a dream come true for us.

The Dears are touring in support of their new album Missiles. They are doing a range of intimate venues around the world, which makes it extra special. The show will be at Great Scott and will undoubtedly be packed. We are so excited to be a part of this.

Please check out the tour section on the web site to see all the shows we have coming up. We have some great ones which include a Nov 4th show in Boston with our producer's band, Black Diamond Bay. These guys are on tour from Montreal, CA and are absolutely phenomenal.

Thank you to all of our great fans who have been spreading WANDA mania around the world.

-theWANDAS

Studio - Day 12 - That's a Wrap

Well, that's it. We've finished tracking everything. It was a lot of late late nights, but when it was all said and done we finsihed tracking everything that we wanted in plenty of time.

Now onto the next step of mixing. We have a people in mind to mix the album. So we're going to start by getting some sample mixes and go from there.

Brent and I are traveling to Montreal tomorrow to to bring Patrick back and spend the night. I'll keep you posted with the progress of the album.

On a side note, the video for "Thank You Note" has been 99% done for a while. However, we haven't been able to sign off on the finishing touches, just because we've been wroking on the album for the last month,

Cheers,

Ross

Studio - Day 11

Things are coming to an end as far as studio time goes. We had three guest players today record strings on three of the songs. The songs feature violin, viola, and cello. It sounds great. It's funny how after hearing samples for so long you forget that real strings have  such a nice warmth to them.

We recorded some gang vocal tracks which add a nice flare to a couple of the songs. And of course, what session would be complete without some hand claps.

Tomorrow will the last day in the studio. We'll be tracking one more of Keith's vocal parts. Other than that the day will  be used to tie up any loose ends.

Cheers,

Ross

Studio - Day 10

Things are definitely coming to a close. We've got two more days left in the studio and then we're done. Today we tracked some horn parts. We had two guest musicians come in today and play on three of the songs. They did a great job, and their parts definitely add a lot to the songs.

Last night we tried to have an early night but after we left the studio we had some friends over to our place and ending up staying up just as late as the other nights. I've seen the sun rise 10 days in a row now, which has to be a personal record for me.

Tomorrow will most likely be the last day of tracking. We're having 3 more guest players come in and lay down violin, viola, and cello parts. If it goes anything like the horn section, we'll have some great sounding strings.

Cheers,

Ross

Studio - Day 9

Last night was a fun time. Brent cranked through his harmonies. We were joking about how over time Keith and Brent's voices have grown into the perfect compliment for each other.

Getting the bulk of the work behind us, we started trying some extra guitar and vocal parts. Things are definitely moving along nicely. During some downtime Brent and Patrick compared notes on the martial arts.

(Patrick & Brent exchange martial arts moves)

Today, we had a guest female vocalist perform a part on one of the songs. She did a great job and it fills out the song very well.

Patrick spent a bunch of time today writing string and horn arrangements for when we have the guest musicians record next week. We have a vocal track left for one song. After that, we'll be layering all of the extras tomorrow and next week.

 

(Keith tunes up while Joe (lead engineer) admires.)

Until Tomorrow,

Ross

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. I beat Mike Tyson's Punch Out!


Studio - Day 8

Today we got into the studio around 3:30pm. This was partly our fault for getting a late start, and partly the fault of the East Boston, Papa Gino's staff. We had been making food on our own from the grocery store, to save money during the whole studio session. However, today since we were running late we thought we'd grab something at Papa Gino's on the way up to the studio.

It took 40 minutes for them to "make" food for myself, Patrick, and Keith. Patrick ordered a turkey wrap, and they litterally give him two pieces of turkey on bread. Nothing else. That was certainly worth the wait.

O.K. back to recording. I finished 99% of my bass tracks last night. Today, Keith finished his vocals for all but 1 final track which still needs to be worked out lyrically. We also tracked a glockenspiel for one of the songs. Brent is cranking out his harmonies right now.

Everything is coming together quite nicely.

Cheers,

Ross

Studio - Day 7

We're definitely on a roll now. Keith banged out vocal tracks for three more songs, as well as acoustic guitar parts for two other songs today.

Brent wrapped up his solo work for a couple songs last night, and is back on for 2 more songs today. After Brent is done, I'll be going back to bass tracks.

We're keeping track of everything on a high tech board, which allows you to keep track of what has been recorded and what still needs to be recorded. I've posted a picture of it below. After the band tracks everything, we are going to include some live string players; violin, viola, and cello. We'll also be tracking some live horns; trumpet, trombone, and french horn.

(The Master Plan)

Everything is coming together nicely. I can't wait to share it with everyone.

Cheers,

Ross

Studio - Day 6

Today has been a real productive day. Everyone was finished by 3:45am yesterday (which was early for us), so we were able to get a bit of an earlier start today.  We finished up a lot of guitar tracks yesterday, so it was onto bass this afternoon. I finished the bass tracks for 3 songs today.

Keith started vocals as well today. He finished vocals for "Bending Over Backwards" and "Please Come Home". They both sound awesome. "Bending Over Backwards" has a bit of an 80's new wave feel, and "Please Come Home" is a slower ballad in 3/4 time with almost a slight country feel. I guess after all these years we're still all over the place. Actually, I think all of these songs are the most cohesive set of songs we've ever assembled. So I guess it just has that WANDAS touch.

Brent will be doing some more solo work late tonight, and then probably back to bass and vocals tomorrow.

Oh yeah, and for anyone who cares, I was recording for the most of the day, so I just resumed "Mike Tyson's Punch Out" and I'm at Super Macho Man.

Cheers,

Ross


Studio - Day 5

I ended up getting a good night sleep last night because I wasn't tracking any bass after midnight. Keith, Patrick and Joe (the lead engineer) had a late night (6:00am) tracking a ton of guitars. Keith and Brent got a bunch of stuff done for about 3-4 of the tracks

Today we're doing a bit more of the same. Keith an brent are plowing through guitar takes. Everything is sounding "amazing" as Patrick would say. This album is considerably more mellow, however the songs have great feel and soul. "Lose You" is shaping up to be an epic song. Patrick put together an unbelievable guitar tone for Brent, and Brent definitely delivered the goods on the performance

We've got a lot done, but there is a lot more to do. I'm definitely looking forward to turning the corner, when you can see all of the songs coming into their own.

In other news, I've gotten completely sidetracked with "Mike Tyson's Punch Out". It's really amazing to me that even after not playing this game for about 20 years, all of the players and idiosyncrasies come right back to me; like riding a bike. This game without a doubt brings back more childhood memories, than any other game.

Until Tomorrow


Ross

Studio - Day 4

We had originally planned to end "earlier" yesterday, but it seems like once you get into that cycle it's hard to break it. We ended up finishing at around 6am for the session. Pete laid down the drum tracks for three of the songs. One on the songs, "lose you" is a real slow laid back tune, with a bit of a swing. Pete's groove, feels great.

Today Pete is finishing the drum tracks for the rest of the album. After that, Brent and Pete will be doing guitar parts for about 2 or 3 of the songs tonight. They'll be a lot of bass to track for me tomorrow.

No monopoly yet today; but we've been preoccupied with "Excite Bike".

Until Tomorrow,

Ross