Friday, October 25, 2013

Getting ready to record

So Huxster is a day away from our show at the New World Tavern in Plymouth and a five days away from heading into Power Station NE to begin recording our next full length release. we have ten songs we've been playing live for the past few months and been able to refine arrangements as we've been working them out. i've tapped my old friend Paul David Hager to work on the record with us, at least for basic tracking.

Paul has become a fantastic engineer and has relocated to California to be more connected to the music industry. i've always known Paul to be a great engineer locally in the Boston area. Paul and i started engineering bands around Boston at the same time. i was working with Big Hot Sun and Paul with his brothers band Elevator Drops. we used to run into each other all the time. once my first real band Wrench started playing out we had Paul mix us, he was the prefect choice. Paul went on to work with all the Disney brats like Miley and the Jonas Brothers, rock legends like Devo, Goo Goo Dolls and Van Fucking Halen. right after Van Halen released their last disc i and a chance to meet up with Paul at his studio in Burbank where he played me some of "his" rough mixes. Alex Van Halen's drums never sounded so good.

Once we started planning to record this next disc there were a few things we wanted. first we needed to find people to work on this that we trusted and allow me to focus on playing drums. being an engineer sometimes has it's downfall. Paul was one of my first choices and as fast as i asked, he agreed. i thought awesome we have one of the best engineers in the country now we need a studio with a great sounding room. we had done our last record at Outpost in Stoughton Mass with Jim Siegel. the problem is Jim dismantled the studio and moved most of the equipment to his new location. the new location is really just for mixing and overdubs. then we thought maybe we could move the Huxster studio to what was left of Outpost but that fell apart due to a water pipe burst at Outpost over the winter.

Next issue was to find a studio that worked for Paul, many studios were talked about on both the west and east coast. due to costs it was decided to stay on the east coast. we had reduced the list down to three or four studios with Power Station looking like the best choice.

The last road block was Paul's schedule because during the summer he tends to do shed tours with different bands. this summer it was Devo and some TV with Miley and Arvil which filled his schedule. well we got him locked down for a couple of dates which will allow us to record basics for all ten songs. we are hoping to get drums, one guitar track and a keeper bass track during this session.

As we head into the next few weeks i'll post more insight, pictures and maybe video as we progress through the recording process. I hope everyone who assumes a record takes no time and doesn't want to pay for it will understand how much time and more importantly, MONEY goes into making a record. studio time cost, production costs, instruments cost, strings, sticks and heads cost, travel to gigs and studio costs. Huxster is not signed to a label, we did do a kickstart pledge drive. it's just us doing it with no commitments to anyone but the people who like our music. when we're done, simply buy our records, buy our t-shirts, and support us at our gigs so we can continue the Huxster machine.

Joe