Spent 8 hours in the studio this weekend working on 2 tracks with a studio drummer friend of James, named Rob Kelly. Excellent drummer — very creative, very pro. We recorded drums and percussion on a country song that we wrote a couple of weeks ago, called “Dead End Road,” and an untitled acoustic, spanish influenced song. The session started out with Rob tuning the drums properly and making the kit sound awesome. Even though we finished building the studio a few weeks ago the drums still needed to be tuned. James and I aren’t drummers, so we did the best we could. After the drums were tuned we moved on to “Dead End Road.” We recorded a galloping snare drum throughout the whole song, then recorded the whole drum kit, Rob playing an old-style, Johnny Cash-type, drum part, then a few bongo overdubs to get another galloping effect, kinda the way wood blocks would be used in an orchestra.
With “Dead End Road” in the bag we moved on to the untitled, Spanish-flavored tune. We played through the song a few time for Rob to learn the song. We recorded the song in 2 takes as a live trio, drums, bass and guitar. Where on the other song the drums were very simple, this one has a very interesting, melodic, moving drum part that accents the bass line and supports the rhythm guitar. After the drums were fnished we moved on to recording some percussion — cymbals, toms, tamborine, bongos and djembe.
Now that we have finished drum tracks on these we can upgrade the rest of the tracks from demo to finished. This week James will be travelling, plus we have a couple of shows this weekend, and the warped tour, so I’ll re-record my guitar and bass parts on Monday, and James’ parts the following week.