We got Admiration Day tracked last night. It rocks. We slowed it down a tad from where we were playing it on Sunday and it helped a lot. Dino had to be convinced to accept his drum performance as awesome. I won’t give it away (you’ll have to wait for the album) but there’s this tiny, tiny, tiny little thing that happens in the middle of one of his fills that bothered him. (FYI, that drum fill is not the one we talk about in the video) Everyone else thought it was cool as hell. We listened to it over and over and over and over and over…and over, telling Dino that we liked it. He gave in. Dino is the most perfection driven person I know. For him to accept the little quirkiness of that split second was a huge deal. I on the other hand am happy if I get through the day without crapping my pants. Different strokes…

So here’s some video from the Tuesday before Thanksgiving when we did Waterloo…and some from last night.

Click the picture to download.

7.40 MB

BONUS!!!

While we’ve been recording, my son Riley has been working on recording an album of his own. He’s got this cool little toy that is sort of a mixing/recording console. I caught him doing take after take just like dear old dad. He prefers to record in his underwear just like me. Dig the quick booger picking/eating action. I taught him that too.

Click the picture to download.

4.89 MB

Today we ran into our first hiccup of the recording process. That means we didn’t get shit recorded. The plan for today was to record The Admiration Day Parade. The problem was we had never before played that song as a full band. You can see the problem that would pose. And it did. I will say that we got surprisingly close though. It was just one of them days. By the time we got the song figured out and worked up we were pretty much out of time and energy. We were playing it right but we were also playing it tired. The fact that I was driving in from Atlanta until 2:00AM this morning probably didn’t help.

Here’s some video from today. Click the picture to download.

F-Bomb count = 3

7.28 MB

I’ll be back to blogging on Sunday.

If you need something to be thankful for, be thankful for Dino’s stunning drum performance on Waterloo last night.

Well, tonight is the night I’ve been worrying about for a long, long time. We’re recording Waterloo. I still don’t know how I’m going to play the guitar part. We still don’t know what the tempo should be. We still don’t know what the keyboard part should be. As of last night I think Mike was still working out a bass part. Here’s what we do know: the words and the melody.

So this is where the producer’s job really becomes important. Dino and I have worked on this song for so long that we’ve lost perspective on what sounds good and what doesn’t. Hopefully Hughes, Mike, and Nate can point us in the right direction.

Thanks for all the nice comments about the Koffterweid stuff. That record has been my and Kristopher’s dirty little secret for a long time. I’m glad you’ve given it a new life.

Speaking of dirty little secrets…I found this picture today. This has absolutely nothing to do with anything but I got a kick out of it. This was probably taken in 1996 a few months after Angel and I started dating. God I was hot…nice gams on the broad too.

…from 10:00 to 1:00. Please come won’t you? Direction are here.

You asked for it so here it is, for the first time ever in digital format, Without Benefit of Clergy.

Not so fast there punchy. Here’s a little background before you dive in. Like I said yesterday, Koffterweid was a band I was in from 1995 to 1998 or so. Without benefit of Clergy was our second album. We “released” it in late ‘97 I think. Our drummer found the Lord and quit after our first album so I played drums on this one. This was my first home recording project on a digital 8-track thingy. A big step up from my cassette 4-track thingy. This was before I knew to make the lead vocal really loud…before I knew not to make the bass drum so fucking loud…before I knew how to not distort a pre-amp. You get the idea. So this album has more distorted drums than any Nine Inch Nails album and quiter vocals than any Jimi Hendrix album. All in all the quality is not too bad though. I ripped the mp3s at 160kbps so they should sound pretty good but the file size is a bit big for my taste.

The only copies anyone (besides me) owns (until now) are on cassette. I did the duplication myself. That means I ran the DAT player into my cassette recorder and dubbed each and every one of those bastards in real time. There are probably about 100 copies floating around that I know of.

This album got me the gig with Steve and Dino (The Drew Johnson Band). Kristopher Curtis (the bass player for Koffterweid) was friends with an audio engineer named Adam Long (who went on to record Nelly and the St. Lunatics before anyone knew who they were). He asked Adam if he would do a quick and dirty mastering job on this album he and his buddy Drew had just finished. Adam was in the middle of recording a band called The Imps but he agreed to do the mastering. Adam played some of The Imps’ raw tracks for us and they sounded killer. Through a strange turn of events, Kristopher went on to do some managing/booking for The Imps. Steve and Dino were their rhythm section. To make a long story longer, Kristopher played the Koffterweid album for Steve and asked him if he and Dino would be interested in playing some shows with me to help me get my name out there…Kristopher was too busy to do much playing, if you’re wondering. Steve and Dino agreed. I should say Steve agreed. Dino reluctantly agreed. He didn’t like my voice. He has since come around. Thus the beginning of The Drew Johnson Band which would (years later) become The Formula Kid. (Jesus! What’s with all the parentheses?)

Without further ado…Koffterweid – Without Benefit of Clergy. (I don’t remember the order of the songs…I’m just guessing)

Sunday Face
Six Feet High and Rising
Corkball Games and Old Best Friends
All I’m Living For
Three Brothers
Suture Self
Daily Radar
Gold Mine
Little Women
Virgin the Harlot

If you don’t want to wade through the whole thing, I recommend All I’m Living For, Daily Radar and Six Feet High and Rising.

BONUS!!!

I mentioned a few months back that I had found the original demo for the song Invention of the Wheel. I said I would post it but I never did. So here it is. This demo is just me playing everything and it sounds really bad. The drums are horrible…especially the 311-esque snare…wow…bad.

Invention of the Wheel Demo

I used to be in a band called Koffterweid (don’t ask). One of our albums was called Without Benefit of Clergy. On that album we were a two piece band. It was me on guitar, drums, and vocals, Kristopher Curtis on bass and vocals. When The Drew Johnson Band formed we used to play quite a few songs from that album. In fact, we played the song All I’m Living For all the way into The Formula Kid era…I think. Anyhoo, I got an email today that was so cool.

Here it is:

Drew! I’m sure you won’t remember me, but I met you and Angel back in ‘96 or ‘97 through _ _ _ and _ _ _ . I was married to an obnoxious, overgrown drunken frat boy named _ _ _ if that rings any bells. Anyway, I was recently reunited with my long lost Koffterweid -Without Benefit of Clergy tape. I looked for it everywhere for years and I was so upset when I realized I must have left it at my ex-husband’s house. Anyway, he found it and was kind enough to return it to me last week! Hooray! But, crap! I don’t have a cassette player anymore. So, I went to 4 different stores to find a stereo cassette player and a 1/8″ inline cable and after many hours of trial and error with audio software, it’s now on CD and blasting out of my speakers. _ _ _ told me about your new band and website and I decided to drop you a line. When I left Illinois, you were sans band and solo. I’m very happy to hear you are re-banded, still making music and that I have a place to go to get album updates. You’ve got genuine talent and Formula Kid sounds great! Angel won’t remember me either, but I don’t care! Say hello and give her a hug for me!

That totally made my day. I should put some of those tunes on here for those of you who haven’t heard them. Some of ‘em are actually pretty good.

I ordered a new microphone today. Here’s why.

Earlier in the year when we spent the weekend in Hughes’ studio, I was introduced to a mic that I had been searching for years to find. When it was time to record vocals Hughes put a mic in front of me that I didn’t recognize. I asked “What’s that”? He told me that it was the secret weapon. Not just his secret weapon…THE secret weapon. He did not lie. When I heard the playback of my first vocal take I nearly pooped. I sounded awesome. Now, let me just say that I’m very accustomed to sounding awesome. It’s what I do. But I had never heard my recorded voice sound so great. It’s the vocal sound that I drool over on many of my favorite records. The sound that I’d never been able to even get close to.

It’s about time for us to start tracking vocals again. So about a week ago I asked Hughes about the secret weapon. “You’re planning on using that same mic right”? He said that he’d love to but his secret weapon had shot craps. I shot crap…everywhere. So today I ordered a secret weapon to have as my own. The world is saved.

In an effort to be candid (as I usually am) you can have a look for yourself here. One of the things that is so cool about this mic is that it is so friggin’ cheap…relatively speaking. People spend thousands of dollars on vocal mics every day. Not me. Suckers!

Because of some scheduling conflicts, we won’t be recording at all for the next week. We’ll fire it up again next Tuesday. We’ve sort of saved the hardest (or at least the most involved) songs for last. So that may mean that the momentum is about to head south. Hopefully that’s not the case. The next three songs will be Twenty Miles from Waterloo, The Admiration Day Parade, and Songbirds. We’ve had very little rehearsal time on these three so that means we’ll probably just have to build them with the red light on. That’s not exactly ideal but it should be interesting. We’ll see.