oh, damn. I'm tired. I hadn't noticed.

Thank God I have a bottle of Absolut that someone gave me. And some OJ. (I'm out of NyQuil.)

sleep - and process what has happened.

SKIMMING mix day

This is it. The last day. Blake keeps having "breakthroughs" on the snare sounds, and we keep listening to the choices we made, and nod in agreement with them. After battling with this song structure for (literally) 2 years, and releasing an acoustic version called "Skimming (slight return)" on "Tonight I Drink You All", I think we finally found the direction for the original concept of the song. Now people will understand the "(slight return)" part from the other version.

As always, I'm policing the shit out of the vocal, and it passed inspection. A couple of tiny volume rides was all that was needed - I'm happy with the spirit of the take, for sure. The doubles were a touch hot, and I realized that I always think they're hot because I've never done vocal doubles on anything I've ever recorded. I've also never done a guitar double on anything except "7 Bottles", and I remember having to fight for that. Blake couldn't believe it when I told him. "'Daylight' has no vocal or guitar doubles?" "Nope." "And this was a major label..." He slapped his forehead. I mean, even the Beatles were using vocal doubles, and that was the friggin' '60s. On a four track. You can imagine what goes on, now. I have no idea what Susan Rogers was thinking, on this score. Live and learn.

Neal's back on this one, and adds that weird something that organ always seems to add. I'm so glad he's on this disc. He's just such a great spirit.

We listened down. The song ended. And we realized that the disc is mixed. Done. Blake broke out the scotch, and we hung out late into the night, both totally exhausted, drinking, and talking music.

I can't believe it. I can't even process it. I was up all night, even after a healthy shot of NyQuil which I occasionally abuse (I'm an insomniac), just shocked. I can't see the picture we created. I'm going to have to take a few days, step back, and see the forest instead of focusing on the trees.

Sequencing is starting to creep into our conversations. Blake's worst/best idea: end "underwater", and fade straight into "coney island" to finish off the disc. is that great, or so cheesy I can't stand even considering it? I don't know.

We're going to have to make index cards w the songs, and lay them out on the floor, and move them around until it makes sense. Pairs are emerging as worthwhile, and
Jail
Be Your Man
Strawberry

would be a great beginning three...

(not so) sad
monday morning

wouldn't be bad, either.

...and what about a title dumbass??? so far, nothing

UNDERWATER mix day

Back at it to wrap up UNDERWATER. Again, nothing to fix. Lower the doubles on the lead. Give the kick drum more...kick. Ride the bass on some notes. By the time Blake did the big moves, the changes were simply custodial.

There's one guitar track, pulled from my demos, that we called the "psycho guitar track". It's meant as an abstract way to create subtext for the lyric. We pulled a few distracting parts (it's "sub" text, after all), and rode it here and there. The middle section has eBow on, distortion on 11, phase shifter on 11. Still, it provides a harmony for the vocal, and a ceiling for the stereo picture being created. I hope. I'm going to have to listen carefully to this section when we comb over this on our final listen.

We fooled around with the aptly-named "nuclear guitars" at the end of the middle section, rode them up just a fraction. Blake is worried about mastering this one -- the song fluctuates by -12 db, right now. When it's quiet, it's super quiet, and when it's loud, it's loud. That was the idea -- it's just going to take some doing to nail it all down. "Rock and roll" doesn't usually fluctuate like that. Think of the difference between AC DC, and, like, an orchestra, or something. There are very different considerations for each, from an engineering standpoint. Not that this song is on either side of that spectrum. It's pretty dynamic, though. We decided not to be shy with the ambition of the song. 'Broad strokes' is another mantra for us. When Blake gets nervous, he mumbles, "Pocket protector...." and I respond, "...off." We're dorks.

At the end of the first real listen, I snapped back a little, in fear, and in anxiety. Part of that unsettled feeling is the point of the song, but part of it is a sense of separation anxiety from coming to an end of some of these songs that have been with me for a while. "Underwater" has really heavy associations attached to it, and a really heavy story behind it that I won't go into, here -- and it's hard for me to sign off on it. Have I honored the desire behind the song? Have I done everything I can to communicate this? Have I used all my resources? Do I even have the capabilities to execute what's in my head and get it on to a piece of plastic? Or are we just totally alone in the prison of our own skulls, lucky just to get a percentage of it out in a vaguely recognizable form?

Swimsuit models don't worry about this kind of crap after a shoot. They smoke cigarettes and bitch about makeup artists, ugly outfits, their boy/girlfriends...and, as usual, I'm overthinking. Luckily, the song won't suffer this retroactive mental masturbation. I'll just have to process this on my own, this letting go of a pain that has kept me company.

Blake just looked at me and said, "I know. It's heavy. On the other hand, this is one of the best things I've ever had to do with." Me, too.

10 down. 1 to go.

Titles: no title?
Skimming
shit....

(NOT SO) SAD/ UNDERWATER mix day

Fatigue is setting in, but I'm clenching my jaw and powering on. It would be SO stupid to leave a song off. Just a couple more days. I occasionally fall asleep on Blake's couch as he EQ'es stuff. I drool on my shirt. He asks me how it sounds, and his voice startles me awake. "I...don't know...I wasn't...listening close enough..."

We checked out "(not so) sad". Turns out, it's great, and the acoustic part was now crying out to be recorded. 20 minutes later, the part was in, and the song snapped into place. Thank fucking god. Acoustic now runs all the way through it, but the guitars on the choruses are among the biggest of the disc. The ending's a freakin' heart attack. It reminds me of a Replacements song, something that Paul Westerberg might do. Of course, no one would ever agree, I'm sure... but whatever. Some of the voicings were inspired by having loved them. But more than anything, it sounds like me, now. Crisis averted.

UNDERWATER begins... the great opus of the disc. The Pink Floyd moment. The bong candy. The acoustics are brilliant -- Blake has an ancient Martin that he refurbished, and the middle section feels like it's off Zeppelin IV, or something, except for the PJ Harvey-ish samples and the sine wave sonar blip like the one I used in "1000 Miles". Damn, I love the sound of sonar. We got half way through it, and just the sounds of the samples, and the patterns they make against each other...I got a contact high.

We decided to finish this up tomorrow.

9 1/2 down, 1 1/2 to go.

(NOT SO) SAD mix day

Just when you think you're rolling...something jumps out of the bushes.

This song has always been a little hard for me to understand. Unlike all the others, it's got a straight rock beat, and a definite desire to be a Weezer tune. A revised version of the demo of this song was re-worked into the theme song for VH1's disastrous show, "Nevermind the Buzzcocks" (it had different lyrics, of course). It's a lot of fun, and the disc needs fun (we ALL need fun), but...something was itching.

We started examining. It wasn't the drums - Ellinghaus is nailing it. It wasn't entirely the bass, although we noticed that pulling the bass in the beginning of the bridge was awesome. It wasn't the lead vocals. We moved the background vocals around, and took out a very Weezer-ish background in verse 2. Reluctantly. But the song got a little better...

The problem was in the verses. They started with drums/bass/vocal, and a supportive electric picked up the transition sections. It just didn't feel right, and I began to have a crisis about maybe throwing the song off the disc entirely. I figured we'd tried everything, so maybe it's the song's friggin' fault. We spent about an hour deciding whether this one was up to the level of the others. John Turner, who'd come over, and Blake both thought it was going great. The problem was that I just wasn't feeling it, even though we'd made a few great strides. The problem was still in the verses.

Then we figured - DUH - why not add acoustic guitar in the verses, have it pumping along, supporting the lyric, and filling out the part with the one thing that it seems people associate me with? We decided to wait a day to record the part, but we both knew it was right.

Almost 9 down...

GRACE mix day

We're rolling at this point, mixing a song a day with very little controversy, since the decisions have all been made along the way. The big issues are how the parts sound, and not whether or not the parts are right, or if the song is in the right order, or if the players suck, or if the song sucks, or all the other minefields that blow up on mix day.

Questions raised were things like whether the "La La's" should be subliminal and textural, or if they should poke out a little more. Are the "Ahh's" just giving a sense of falling, or are they a bigger statement, an actual vocal part? Blake wrestled with the effects on these for a while. Everything else was pretty much cake. A concern we left for another day is whether the lap steels are loud in a good way, or loud in a bad way. I've just noticed how lap steel is a big player on this disc. I fell in love with the instrument listening to American Music Club. You are what you eat.

Turner came by again, and confirmed Blake's feeling that they're loud in a good way. For me, as long as the lyric is served, and the mood extended, there's no volume issue. So we left it for our final listen down day which is...the 8th? Holy crap. I can see the finish line.

Ellinghaus, in true form, had broken his snare while practicing the song for this session. Did I mention that he hits very hard? He grabbed another snare that was in the room, with a deeper, metal body, and we thought it'd be good for a sense of difference. Still, it took a little noodling on Blake's part to get it where it is. Every decision made along the way shows up at the mix - funny. I've been really picky, but really consistent, about the right snare sounds for my material. I think that was the first thing Blake and I discussed in this entire project. I think we've gotten really close.

This was the last lyric to finish. Verse 2 read:
There are two kinds of people in this world I pretend to know so well:
The ones who get it, and the ones who can go fuck themselves...

Simple enough, I figured, but Blake felt, rightfully, that the song became all about the word 'fuck', and that the second part of that thought messed up the overall message of the song, anyway. I agreed, and spent MONTHS coming up with every permutation of every discarded line I've ever recorded. At the time of tracking, we began talking about people in our lives who can't seem to get out of their own way and do what they want to do with their lives. They just screw things up, and can't help it. Self-destruction is ingrained in them, as it is, to varying degrees, in all of us. The lyric moved away from being angry at these people, and towards having a larger picture of them. Another weird theme is developing, as this thought is approached in "Free" as well. Hating people (including yourself) for being dumb is a waste of time. But at the same time, allowing dumb people to stop you from living the life you want to live is an even bigger waste. As a friend told Blake, "So much of life is just stepping over the bodies." Amen. "The ones who get it, and the ones who cannot help themselves."

The mix was very good, and we walked around the block to clear our heads. When we came back we listened down one more time, pushed the bridge guitars, the giant bridge guitars, ducked the lap steels in two places, erased the bass rides, and suddenly, the whole mix snapped into place. When it's unsatisfying, it's like you have an unlocalized itch that you can't get to, and when it's right, it's like you just found it. Ahhhh....

8 down. 3 to go. Damn.