The First Album: Rolling Stone
Here’s a link to the album:
We were at Bucer’s in the late summer of 2019, post gig. Not drunk but we drink a reasonable amount at every gig to stay loose. Combine that with the tired satisfaction of just sitting down after finishing, before breakdown. He says I was adamant about touring (I don’t remember being that adamant, but I am an engineer and terrible at gentle communication. With me it’s all blunt force trauma verbiage).
Me: “Let’s tour.”
Colby: “Not without an album.”
Me: “So let’s make an album.”
Colby: “Ok.”
It’s basically us sitting there double daring each other into an album.
Great. How, and where do we make an album?
It’s really weird how providence works.
Colby was at his buddy Alex’s bachelor party (a Beta classmate of his), out in the woods. Drinking, campfire, etc. Colby brings out his guitar and starts playing. Kyler, a high school classmate of Alex’s hears Colby playing and gives him the pitch:
“Dude, you play with a subtlety and understanding that is rare in music. I think we could work together.”
Turns out, Kyler had just returned from Nashville’s Belmont university with a degree in Audio Engineering Technology and Music Business. He had built an affordable recording studio in his basement in Boise and invited Colby to record there. Now, Colby is an amazingly quick and accurate judge of character, and the two hit it off pretty well. A week later I was at Alex’s wedding, which Colby and Kyler both attended, up in Post Falls, and Colby points out this dude
and says:
“That guy’s going to record my album.”
Here’s a link to Kyler’s studio:
We set the date for recording. We could only afford a five day session. Maybe not even that much. I seem to remember recording on a Thursday afternoon from 5 to 9, then same Friday, then maybe going thru the weekend (maybe thru Tuesday). At the time, Kyler had a job managing a phone support center and the studio was evenings and weekends.
I do the math for the drive, badly:
“We need to get there by 2 and it’s a 6 hour drive so we have to leave at 6.”
Completely forgot the time change and missed that6am plus 6 is noon, not 2pm. Arrived a couple hours early so we went to the only music store in Idaho that sells acoustic basses (I think the store is now closed, but it used to be on State street). We walk in and ask to try out an acoustic bass. The guy behind the counter says:
“We only have a brand new on in stock and it’s $4500.”
“Fine, bring it.”
“Are you sure? It’s $4500.”
“Yes, bring it.”
“It’s never been tuned before.”
“BRING IT!”
“Ok”
So I tune up the bass. It takes a lot of turns because, damn, he was right. Never been tuned before. He’s lecturing my like I never tuned a bass before.
Dude.
I finally get it there.
“Colby, pick up a guitar.”
I mean, they got a couple hundred guitars hanging on the walls.
We start playing and the guy takes a step back with this awesome awed look on his face.
It was then I knew that this was going to be a very fun career. We could essentially break down in a tour bus anywhere in America and a party would break out.
Hell, the whole trip was great. On the way down, Colby took control of my stereo and started schooling me on country music:
“You really need some Hank.”
And
“Listen to this lyric: ‘beating these strings like they owe me money’.”
For some reason, I always fall in with experts on a topic or genre that have a penchant for teaching. And I like nothing more than being schooled. Crazy, but at 24, Colby was a master of the genre.
The recording session was tough. It was our first, and so we (us and Kyler) had to figure out how to do this. Up til now we had only played live, and as I mentioned before, I watch Colby like a hawk for cues on what’s going to happen next. Normally the rhythm section is recorded first then the leads and vocals. But I could not play any of these songs be myself without the aural and visual cues. So Colby recorded his guitar first (also very difficult without singing, and I can point out a number of spots that have extra measures that were unintended)
Here’s Good Moonshine, and it has an extra measure at the end of the song that we don’t play live. Oops.
But that’s how we pulled off the first album. It was rough. There was only the vocal, guitar and bass tracks, to which Kyler added lead guitar licks, keyboard fills, and harmonic vocals. We got the main three tracks for all twelve songs down in the first two days and then did post production the next three days.
Kyler was amazing in post production. His sound booth had a big board and a keyboard that rolled out like a wide drawer from under that. He had a box with about six guitars and a TV tray full of stomp/effects boxes off to the right of the board. He’d pull out a guitar (say the telecaster) and bang on the stomp box switches until the right sound came out, sometimes standard telecaster, sometimes steel guitar or slide.
Colby and I would sit behind him on the couch, listening, and Kyler would throw out a lick. Nope. Then another. Nope. Then another. Closer. Then Colby or I would go:
“Ooh, try this.”
Kyler would do it once. Perfect. Then he would roll tape, record the phrase as rehearsed, usually one take. Print it, next section.
One to two hours per song. We’d finish one song. It would sound great. Then starting the next song was so depressing. Back to square one with a bare song. The only analogy I can come up with is playing a video game where you start with a weak little single shot pistol, pick up bigger guns and power ups until you’re fast and indestructible, die, then start over with a slow, wimpy character again. The start over hurts.
All of the songs on the first album Colby had written sometime in the last four years or so. The title track, Life of a Rolling Stone, was the first song he written since he started taking his music career as a serious possibility.
It’s was written just for this album and obviously is an homage to Hank Williams and generally the life of itinerant musicians.
Of all the songs on the album, that one, What is Love, Good Moonshine and Songs to Remember are my favorites. Good Moonshine, I mentioned in the “Colby” blog entry. What is Love just has a really nice easy rhythm that bumps right along. Songs to Remember has a great yodel chorus on which Colby goes high octave the second time. Plus they’re really good songs that could benefit from a re-recording with our now-full band, higher quality recording techniques and the higher exposure that Colby’s recent increase in listeners would provide.
One other funny story. Colby and I traveled together, usually in my truck, but he’d stay with his friends, usually flopping on a couch, and I’d stay with my friends, who were my age, and had deluxe guest rooms. That’s fair. Kids can take that.
I dropped him off after the first Thursday night session, then picked him up at 4pm the next day for the 5pm Friday session. Turns out he went day drinking with his buds and was pretty far gone. He gets in the truck all giggly, saying he got in a fight, stomped on one if his buddy’s face for some reason, and he was really pumped. On the way to get coffee at a Circle K (“Dude, you gotta be recording vocals in a half hour.”) he was going on about when he used to get in lots of fights but his girlfriend Whitney asked him to stop so he did. But I’ll never forget his next line:
“If we ever get in a fight, W’ERE GONNA WIN!”
Its been our catch phrase every since.
We get done recording an album:
“WE’RE GONNA WIN!”
We get invited to play a festival:
“WE’RE GONNA WIN!”
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