Well, mostly cowbell. Actually, at this point, no blood, but it's always possible.
By popular request, meaning one guy asked for it, I thought I'd share the experiences of ND's best-loved cowpunk band, the Surreal McCoys, in recording a cd. So here goes, the tale of our Exile on Miami Street. Only the names and facts have been changed.
Armed with our $80,000 budget and a multi-million dollar, five-record deal with Universal Music Group, we entered the studio...
No, wait, let's not get ahead of ourselves. First a little background.
As some of you know, The Surreal McCoys started in the very early 90's at ND Law School and quickly became self-described cowpunk legends. The band merged the intensity of the Clash with the...intensity...of Johnny Cash. Intensity. It was intense. Anyway, quick with a bottle and a gun, and always favorites with the ladies, the band never sacrificed showmanship on the altar of musicianship. The shows were whiskey-soaked, glass-breaking free-for-alls (frees-for-all?) and by the end of the evening the audience had laughed, cried, and maybe even learned a little bit about themselves.
But offstage, things were falling apart. The band splintered after fisticuffs broke out during an argument about whether to cover Left of the Dial by the Replacements. Without pointing fingers, all I'm going to say is that the smart one in the band wanted to cover it. Half the band graduating, two-thirds of that half leaving town and half of the remaining third half studying overseas or some damn thing like that may also have played a part in the breakup.
A few years ago, we dusted off the chaps, re-learned both chords and got the band back together. Because we're spread out across this great land, we only play together two to three times a year for long weekends, everywhere from the the Porn Belt to the Corn Belt and the East Coast. Last Fall our tour included Simeri's in South Bend the weekend of the ND/MSU game, with the unstoppable Brian Bond (tm) opening.
This year we decided to record some old original songs along with a batch of new originals and release a cd. We had recorded shows before, and some demos in the studio, but we decided to do it up right with full production, mixing and mastering. It's the equivalent of a vanity press publication, and I expect it to be nominated for a Pulitzer prize once we scrape together $50 for the application fee.
On to the recording process. They say that every true story ends in death. This is a true story.
Oops, wrong quotation. The one I was looking for was Voltaire, "[t]he perfect is the enemy of the good." Well, our band is not in any danger of trying for the perfect recording - the process has been humbling to say the least. A few weeks ago, Cletus, Gator and Elvis rode into town and we went into the studio and laid down some tracks. Clint and Goat Boy couldn't make it, so they will record separately using the magic of modern technology, including an amazing software program called Pro Tools. Pro Tools is a digital platform that, in overly simple terms, pulls the different musical parts together and allows an engineer/producer to combine the various elements and mix them appropriately.
Each instrument was mic'd separately and had a track associated with it. For my drums, there were two mics on the snare drum (top head and bottom head), one in the kick (bass) drum, one on each of the three toms, and two overhead mics, for a total of eight tracks. Elvis' guitar was mic'd through his Dr. Z amp, rather than directly from his effects board. As an aside, Elvis has acquired a Trailer Trash custom pedal board the size of Rhode Island. Gator's accordion was mic'd directly, and Cletus sang into a mic with a spit screen (thank God) on it. The drums and guitar were set up in the main room, with the vocals done in a separate vocal booth with a window to the main room. The master control room was behind glass and included a sizable mixing board and a digital keyboard setup. I recorded my lead cowbell tracks in the vocal room, without a spit screen. We cowbellists call that playing bareback. I just made that up.
Clint, bass player and actual musician, resides in sunny California, meaning we had to play without a bass line. Bad Clint.
We warmed up and then jumped into some new original pieces. First we'd set the tempo so Chris, the producer, could get a click track going. The click is a metronome and plays through the headphones. For Pro Tools especially, it's important to keep the beat steady, as digital bits of music can be "cut and pasted" from other parts of the song (more on that later). Plus you just want the beat to be steady for obvious reasons.
Let's choose a random new song, say "Words To That Effect", which was written by the good-looking one in the band. When I,...I mean, when that song was written, it had a basic power pop feel to it, but once we started playing it, it took on a life of its own and ended up with a chunkier guitar sound. We played it through to the click track, and got the rhythm line down. Let's just say it wasn't done in one take
At this point, I made a serious tactical error. While the "musicians" were recording, Cletus ran out and got some Subway sandwiches. During a playback break, I ate half of my sandwich, then noticed that Elvis had eaten both halves of his sandwich. Cletus had only eaten half of his, but he's slender and stylish and from the East Coast and all that, so that doesn't really count. I couldn't leave Elvis hanging by himself, so I polished off the second half of my sandwich. I didn't need it, exactly, but with Elvis leading the way, I knew we could send Cletus out for pizza or something in a few hours. About an hour later, I realized that Elvis had, in fact, cleverly and somewhat deceitfully tucked the second half of his sandwich into his potato chip bag, meaning that I had no more sandwich, while my bandmates each had half left. I slipped the shiv out of my sock, and moved ... and then reconsidered. We needed to get this record done. The time for retribution would come later.
Where was I? Oh, getting back to Voltaire. The perfect IS the enemy of the good. When you hear yourself played back, you immediately hear all of the flaws, and could go crazy trying to make the record perfect. On a limited budget, and with (as far as you know) no illusions of grandeur, we just needed to make it good enough, and something we can be proud of as we gaze over stacks of unsold cd's gathering dust in our respective garages for years to come. A single tear rolls down my cheek as I write this.
Wrapping up -the producer compiles all of the tracks using Pro Tools, and each track has a graphic aspect as well, on the computer screen. Think of the image an EKG or a polygraph makes, showing the sound waves. Pro Tools has a line like that for each track. The embedded video below shows a Pro Tools Youtube demo of some sort. The producer can "cut and paste" sections, or even single notes, just like in a word processing document. It's amazing, and much faster than splicing tape or recording take after take after take. By the end of the weekend, we had nine original songs roughly recorded, with all the drum tracks complete, much of the guitar work done, and most of the lead vocals recorded. Chris put these materials on 2 dvd's that I overnighted to Clint, who recorded bass tracks within a couple of days. Clint sent the bass tracks back, and we await final guitar and vocal tracks for the balance, as well as additional harmonica and accordion on some songs. We will somehow lay down three additional songs, including "Eddie Was A Towel Man." We hope to have the cd released by our Monagheghagelllealla Valley tour in April.
I know this was self-indulgent, but I thought you may like to hear what the process is like. Thank you for your time, and keep up the good work.
Remember, the Surreal McCoys believe that children are the future.
P.S. I put in a lyric about couch burning.
