Welcome to the lead up, through and out the other end of our upcoming album!

So a handful of gigs under our belt and we are staring down at 4 weeks of practice to top and tail everything drums for the 14 tracks we will whittle down to 11 or 12.

This fine gentleman on the left is Jack Thomson drummer extraordinaire, he is going to get hammered with tweaks to his drumming on all tracks before he hits the studio. (here he is at Island Studios where i will probably record my vocals with Joseph Cheek)

The idea is to record 14 tracks and as we build them up to completion 11 or 12 of those will be the strongest and which ones they will be might surprise us.

Not a lot to change really but we have to be clear on the grooves, the changes, the stops and where the kicks and snares fall in relation to what Bret is doing on bass. Jack is a pro and super intuitive so it ain't gonna be hard!

As i am going to be the tracking engineer i need to head down to Twin Earth studios to see John the owner in the next few weeks to get the lay of the land and make some mic choices. From a tech point of view he's got a cache of really nice drum mics along the lines of what the Legendary rock engineer Steve Albini uses so we should get some decent results.

I am also tracking Bret Hann on bass at the same time as we might just get some great takes from him considering the vibe of the recording. We are basically going to play along with Jack as a guide so in a way we will be "live" which always helps with the feel of the drums. That's the kind of band and musicians we are, always going to play with more energy together.

Here are some links to my conspirators, have a look;

Until next time ....