studio update!!

Another productive day in the studio. Yesterday was the first real dip back into recording up here in LA since the tour ended. There are a lot of ideas floating around on these hard drives, and it’s great to be getting back into it. Making noise. Loud noise. Into microphones and onto recording machines. Robots. Recording robots. No tape, just anthropomorphic machines. Anyway, I played bass on a track that Tom had been working on last week, and Travis played drums on another one.
Then today I came in and slappad-da-bass on the track Travis destroyed on yesterday. Sang some background vocals. Wrote some harmonies. Then Travis came in and played drums on another one. Also, I ate half of a chef’s wrap and half a breakfast burrito. Possibly the highlight of the recording day. Lunch always is.
Bass used yesterday: Petey, the off-the-shelf Fender Precision bass that I bought during the recording of Enema of the State, and used on most of that album. Here’s a photo:


Bass used today: Lettuce, my custom signature-model Fender that I’ve used on pretty much every recording since Enema. This one’s a champ. No photo of the bass from today, but here’s the mic’ing configuration we used for the cabinet, for all my fellow studio geeks out there. Please feel free to postulate to yourself about how YOUR mic’ing technique is infinitely superior.


Now tonight I’m trying to write lyrics for a song we’ve been working on for a long time, that I want to sing tomorrow. This track is near(ish) complete. Drums, bass, guitars, percussion, and keys already recorded. I think it still needs a great guitar lead, which Tom will kill. If I can write and record the lead vocals, doubles, and harmonies tomorrow, I’ll consider it a win. A passing first-down plus yardage with no penalties, if you will. I’d also like to re-track the bass on Up All Night, the elusive track that we were very close to releasing last summer, but decided to wait till we could record more and figure out exactly where this album is headed.
Lots of work ahead of us these next few months. We’re leaning into the studio and trying to get this new album released sooner than later. We’re not going to rush anything, but we’re not going to lag, either. For those of you who are interested in the day-to-day minutia of the recording process, I’ll do my best to keep posting to this here site, and not flooding anyone’s twitters or facebooks or myspaces with a bunch of studio updates. Instead, I’ll flood those accounts with Star Wars references, non-sequitors, and “what’s the deal with”’s…
OH SNAP!!! As I’m writing this post, I just heard Travis’s new take on the drums for Up All Night. He totally MURDERED it!! Damn!! Excited…
AAAAAnnnyyway, that’s it for today. Now, just to show you how much I care, here’s a photograph of a penguin I took while in Antarctica. For realz.