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
