Distant Fairs Station to Station

Wednesday, February 14 - Fresno - Royal Dutch Company Studios - This was Ricky's day. After some frustrating time spent working out hard drive issues, we finally got down to tracking some tunes. Ricky's Strat's frets definitely need some work - one in particular is making a string buzz lke a sitar - so he played my Riviera with the Seymour Duncan humbuckers in it through the Fender Twin.

"Station Girl" - This one's in 5/4 and has a pleasant lead part I wanted Ricky to play. Nailed it. It's got a bit of a low end twang to it. Beautiful.

"Kenny Filthy (The Distant Fairs)" - Tracked some pretty sliding swells on this song. Then we went on to record some trippy harpsichord to inlay into the end of the song for a dreamy fair-like atmosphere. This will be an epic tune - the epic tune of the album.

After recording, I took the Riviera to Backline in order to fix a sunken pickup I'd damaged in a previous feedback session of guitar abuse. All fixed and leveled and ready for another session.

This recording is developing!

As always, more to come.

Feedback Loveliness

Friday, February 9 - Fresno, CA - Royal Dutch Company Studios - It was all about the Riviera and it's semi-hollow body humbucker tones through various beautiful amps, including a Vox 15, and Fender Twin, and one mystery boutique with no label. Pretty standard mic set-up - a Sure 57 just a bit off the center of the cone for a nice gritty sound.

"Up Tonight" - I played it rich through the boutique, with an overdriven tone out of the neck pick-up. This was the rhythm track to accompany some acoustic sounds we've got running through this song. Also set down a strum track with pretty Bigsby tremolo bar swells throughout.

"Suffragette Chrysler" - This song is a problem child. It's kind of a straight ahead rock form, so there's always the danger that it turns into a generic cheesy rock tune, which is not really what we're looking for on this album (or any Dalloways album!), so it challenges us to get creative. For this song, we played it through the Boutique as well because it was such a nice tone. I came up with a simple little riff - more of a Go-Betweens style riff than a Slash riff, if you know what I mean, something very easy and catchy, for the background. Stumbled across this line in the way the best lines are just stumbled across, through experimenting around. This song's got hope yet!

"Stop Hangin's Around" - I tracked an overdriven rhythm line through the Fender turned way up. Beautiful! Then it was all out feedback - turned the whole rig up and through a nasty distortion pedal and set down two atrocious feedback tracks to use in and out of the song, to give it some atmosphere and depth. I abused and banged the poor guitar so much it popped a pick-up screw, and the humbucker sank into its slot like it was finished for the day.

Wednesday, February 7 - Fresno, California - Royal Dutch Company - It was all about Ricky and the Strat through the Fender Twin today, but I forgot the camera! I think we worked on "Trona" and a few others. I've got to write these things down as we go, as we're writing our own history here!

As always, more soon.