Guster Studio Journal

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Fri, 31 Jul 2009 17:09:46 -0400

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Dear 109 Followers...

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 15:20:00 -0400

Today I realized my last two road journal entries were accidentally posted here in the studio journal. A minor blogging technicality to some of you, but the difference between a tickle in the back of the throat and a nasty case of swine flu to me.

Huh?

If you’d like to follow along as I mock deadly global pandemics online, you ought to click this link and join up with the road journal, where I’ve been blogging for the past month under the accidental header “What the #$&! is Tumblr and how do I use it!?”

Together we can prove that twittering is for people with A.D.D. and tumblring is for people with slightly less A.D.D.

Yours!

Brian

Fluglehorn solo

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 17:00:07 -0500

I’ve been delinquent again, but I have good reason. I can’t find my digital camera anywhere, and without my camera these entries are just bland walls of words. Obituaries. Thankfully Adam has a FLIP video camera, and did his best D.F. Yonkman impression yesterday while our friend Larry played fluglehorn on our record.

Working title for the song is “Lost at Sea” — yes, we are in a room full of old televisions.

Last week I wanted to snap a photo of Ryan playing the Omnichord on a song (working title: Cars/Love) (Shut it! Working title are always lame). But I couldn’t find my camera. It’s an old keyboard that plays chords and beats and generally has an awesome harpsichord-like tone, and we’ve tried to use it on records before without much success. This time I think it’s going to stick.

In lieu of Ryan performing the Omnichord, I found a photo of some woman playing it online. And she’s hot, to boot.

Letter from a fan!

Mon, 22 Dec 2008 16:29:00 -0500

“Kenny R.” in California writes…

Brian-

It has now been one day short of a month since you last updated the road journal’s new “Tumblr” page, and that can mean just one thing. You have quit the band after a heated debate with Ryan over what you thought was Bruce Willis’ worst performance on screen. I don’t want to get into the argument or studio in-fighting, but if I had to guess, I would say that you went with “Last Man Standing,” and Ryan took “The Bonfire of the Vanities.” Both valid opinions, but unfortunately, you are both wrong. The film is of course, “Hudson Hawk.” (Though the case can be made for both “The Sixth Sense,” AND “Hart’s War.”)

It’s so cool that someone was checking our website because they wanted an update. My bad. I think it’s been all downhill for Bruce since “Moonlighting” but that’s not what we’ve been arguing about. We’ve been arguing because while recording the second batch of songs at a studio in NY last week, someone slobbered all over my snare drum right before a really important take…

I know what you’re thinking. I know what Kenny R is going to write about next. Oh no, the new direction of the studio journal and the band in general is to make corny jokes about their kids and post adorable photos of them holding instruments.

All I can say is this… wait until you see the lyrics, Kenny R. You wouldn’t think a band could rip off “Cat’s in the Cradle” in so many unique ways. In the end, I forgave Ryan for drooling on my snare drum because his daughter Leo is so damn cute.

At this point, the drums on the record are all recorded, and it’s my job to sit on the couch, listen while the flaws slowly sink in, and then figure out the perfect moment to go fix them on the computer. One of the things I’m most proud of so far on this record is that I used these old crappy old 12 inch hi hats I once bought on the road on like, more than half the songs. They sound like someone throwing a toaster oven in a metal trash can when you play them next to your ear, or next to Leo’s ear, but somehow they sounded like sweet creamy butter in the mics.

I didn’t pay ten dollars for them, I think I paid $200. But someone, once, paid ten dollars for them, or at least wrote $10 in permanent magic marker on the underside of them. They sound best on Jesus & Mary, which is a kind-of-reggae song we wrote with the hi hat chugging through all the verses. I know, reggae. I know. We try to write one reggae song every album and then it never even makes it to the studio because it sounds like reggae. This one’s actually getting recorded and might end up on the album. Probably because it’s not really that reggae. It’s reggae in a clashy way.

Also, after many experiments with “rocking,” and many failed experiments with “rocking” (see: The New Underground, circa 2006), we are making an album with little-to-no rocking on it. It’s energetic and up tempo like never before, this record, but there are no songs you’d want to put up devil horns with three fingers while listening to. There is one song, working title: Ry Plays Guitar where you might put up a half skull or something, but he’s rocking on an acoustic and it rocks in a more slackery indie way. That one is tentatively titled as such a) because we need to write the lyrics for it and b) because it’s the one song that Ryan plays guitar on.

We’re breaking for the holidays now, but before we split up, we tried out a vocal on Hebrew Joe, which is one of my favorite numbers. It’s this soft graceful Nick Drake-y song we wrote where Joe was singing gibberish in a Russian accent during its conception. Lots of “chuh’s” and “shne’s” and stuff. It’s kind of silly but kind of awesome, and we’ve had conversations about whether to put English words on it, but always thought that it would sound weird with real lyrics because it was conceived in a real moment, an inspired moment, and it just strangely works with foreign gibberish lyrics.

Well, we recorded the gibberish vocal, listened to it, and everyone unanimously decided it sounded ridiculous. Producer DK said “I think you’re ruining a great song.” He was right. Ryan had a set of lyrics he was working on about that girl who fell in a well and those sounded much better. Stay tuned.

What the #&%! is tumblr and how do I use it

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0500

November 21st 2008.

We’ve recorded 8 basic tracks now. It took us 3 days to do it. That’s 2 and 2/3rds songs per day. Most bands that David Kahne works with knock out 4 in a day, but we’d never done more than one a day before (we started in a dorm room! we’re just cavemen!), so for us this represents a real accomplishment. Should there be pride in recording songs quickly? If you’re Guster, and you can spin your heels like nobody’s business in the studio, absolutely.

We actually practiced the songs this time. Usually we’ll get into the studio and say things like “it feels like the click track is speeding up in the chorus” because we’re used to slowing down in the chorus (my bad). This time we got that out of our system in rehearsal, where the rent is cheap. I don’t think we did more than 4 takes on any song, and we usually got what we needed from the first couple of takes. There will be fiddling and tweaking, as we are wont to do in the studio, but there will be no “take the bridge from take 18 and the second verse from take 31, but use the fill into the chorus from take 4” this time around.

I’m on a plane to San Diego where our tour manager Seth is getting married this weekend. It’s been an exciting month for the Gusters, with Dave Yonkman’s wedding, Dave Zamboni’s wedding, and the much-anticipated beginning of this recording. As I sit down to reflect on our first few days in the studio, I’m not even sure what direction the studio journal will take this time around. I could get into each song, as I’ve done in the past, describe the sound, admit the influence (did I ever confess that “Satellite” was just us trying to write “Under the Milky Way Tonight” by the Church?), or maybe I’ll let people be surprised when the record comes out, and write about other things.

Like the fact that I got a full on “bye-bye-da-da” on my way out the door this morning (my wife speaks in crude remedial phrases, not unlike a baby).

Or crashing the set of a local cable access show when we discovered it was just down the street from where we were recording. Oh wait. That happened two albums ago.

Or maybe I’ll offer up little tidbits, here and there. Like the fact that we have a song we call “Yacht Rock” (working title) that will be so polarizing, it’s destined to be the “Highly Suspicious” of this album. But better.

We’ll just see how things go. Working until midnight and then waking up at six (I’m a morning person now!) doesn’t leave a lot of energy for journal writing, but thankfully the kind of journal writing I do doesn’t take a lot of energy either. I just hammered this shit out in twenty minutes and now it’s back to 36 channels of DirectTV and my cushy leather seat and wondering if I should have paid the extra thirty bucks for an exit row because I have to pee, I’m in the window seat, and there’s an old man on the aisle sawing away with his mouth open. Maybe I can hold it for another three and a half hours.

Journalists note: I did actually wait three and a half hours (successfully)