2015 Journal
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01/01/15 - Now entering our 16th year of operation.
01/06/15 - Ran through the new stuff. Moved some parts around on Puff Adder. Mani gave me some salad and Steven shared his homemade beef jerkey afterwards.
01/13/15 - Worked through the set. Adding 2 new songs next week.
01/20/15 - We may have lost some of our Harriet mixes to a power surge. Verdict pending. Added Little Shootin' Elvis to the set.
01/27/15 - Added Every Penny Gets In The Way to the list.
02/03/15 - Added a bridge to Breeders. Paris is in New Orleans and New Orleans is in Louisiana.
02/10/15 - Second session with the giant bottle of 1792 Ridgemont Reserve. Songs are coming along nicely.
02/17/15 - Lovely session. Got an OK recording so that we can work on bits offline.
02/24/15 - Same as the previous two weeks but with slightly more alcohol and slightly tighter performances.
02/28/15 - Began the process of re-posting the lyrics from the first two albums on the website. Not sure why we pulled them. I have "12" done and about 3/4 of "Sleepnovox".
03/04/15 - Last session with the giant bottle of 1792 Ridgemont Reserve. Very cheerful and productive session.
03/10/15 - Started on a fresh jug of Jameson Irish Whiskey. Patrick is already able to sing most of my parts so we are nearing the end of phrase one of the process.
03/25/15 - Took a week off last week. Still rehearsing about half of the songs for the new album. Paris recently discovered Paul Williams and I unearthed the bands Forever More and Titus Groan.
03/31/15 - Wanted the Girls to cover this. Failed to convince Paris.
04/07/15 - Still grinding away. I'm not saying its unpleasant. I enjoy it.
04/15/15 - Added Patrick's beautiful Miss Majesty to the list. I think that he said that he had 3 more to bring. I have one remaining.
04/18/15 - We get hundreds, nay, thousands of letters (LETTERS, not e-mails) every day asking when the the 3rd ablum will be available for purcahse at the nearest Peaches Records and Tapes or Musicland music store. Thank you so much for your interest in our work. The sad answer is probably not until the Autumn of 2015. A series of unfortunate incidents have significantly delayed the mixing process. While several songs are done or nearly done, Paris is still painstakingly converting the songs from Sonar to Pro Tools track by track. Your patience is appreciated during these dark days.
(Because of the volume of correspondence, we will no longer be replying to each letter personally, but still cherish every one of you. Especially Patrick's Mommy.)
04/28/15 - From Patrick regarding the status of mixing "Harriet":
"On the plus side, here's an update on my progress with our 3rd record. As of this weekend, all of the sessions have been transferred to Pro Tools. I am close to having Thomas's mixes for Follow Me, Domino and Mary rebuilt (with a few additions). I don't have a lot of the plugins Thomas was using so I had to recreate his settings with counterparts and by using my ears. I think they're pretty close. Also, I have mixes for Harriet, Stupid Cloud and My Wing almost finished. So we're almost half way through the album. Don's prediction for having the album finished by autumn might be spot on!"
05/14/15 - Marveling over the counterfeit Sleepnovox CDs on popular auction sites. The album was released in a sleeve so your primary clue is "sealed in jewel case."
05/19/15 - Paris finished the mixes for Harriet. Instead of rehearsing the 4th album this evening we spent the 2 hours listening to his beautiful work and making notes for minor tweaks. Now we can talk about mastering, artwork etc. and eventually send this monkey into space.
05/26/15 - Patrick completed the mixes with revisions. Talked about mastering and artwork. Ran through the 10 songs for the new album.
06/09/15 - More chatter about artwork/mastering for Harriet. I think that Thomas is going to have a go at it. Noticed that all of the songs for the 4th album are short. The songs on Harriet are longer than normal.
06/16/15 - Still doing the two acoustics, bass and keyboards thing for 4th album rehearsals.
Tracks from Harriet scheduled for KKFI tomorrow:
"...At 11:00 Mark welcomes Guest DJs Michael Tankersley and Joelle St. Pierre who will spin music from: Girl for Samson, Lizzy Mercier Descloux, Crissy Hynde, Pretenders, Suzi Quatro, Tom Tom Club, Nina Hagen, and Danielle Dax."
06/23/15 - Spent the night settiing up an area for Thomas to have a go at mastering Harriet. Paris called him a "jerk" at one point. That's pretty colorful language for a Girls session.
07/05/15 - Tentative track order for Harriet. Always fun deciding where to put the title track. Do you kick off with it, embed it in the middle or finish with it? I think Thomas played it by feel.
Wrong Star
Riding a Wave
Blacktop
Mary
Harriet
Follow Me
My Wing
Gander
How Do You Sleep
Domino
Stupid Cloud
End of Summer
07/07/15 - Patrick brought Old Into Young. That gives us 11 songs. He still has 3 or 4 more and I have 2 more so we'll be cutting some fat at the end to get down to 12 tracks.
Had a spirited debate about track sequencing and how critical it is to the quality of the listening experience.
07/14/15 New track sequence:
Blacktop
It's Summertime (Riding a Wave)
Mary
Harriet
Follow Me
My Wing
Gander (Sulfur)
How Do you Sleep
Domino
Stupid Cloud
Wrong Star
End of Summer
07/21/15 The Girls have gone electric. Both Paris and I rehearsed tonight with vintage Greco guitars courtesy of Vintaxe.com.
Thomas is a day in on mastering Harriet.
07/22/15 Harriet limps towards completion!
Thomas has finished mastering, (Blackberry and Wrong Star changed places in the track order.)
We've settled on Indyground Entertainment doing the artwork. By the way, the face of Harriet has changed from the girl superimposed on a flower tp the woman standing on a porch struggling to keep her skirt from blowing up. Thomas suggested going back to using Shooting Grandma, but I think we are going to use that shot for the next album.
Working out final artwork layout instructions and Disc Makers options on Tuesday.
07/28/15 Last meeting about the artwork before it is submitted to Ray. Had some bumps in the mastering that Thomas and Paris anquished over while Steven and I drifted out of doors and talked about gardening.
08/04/15 I can't think of anything interesting to relay but still feel compelled to document that we ran through the set on this date.
08/18/15 We spent the session listening to the mastered version of Harriet. Patrick, whose auditory sensitivity is in mongrel territory, heard some clicks that he'll be cleaning up. Should see next revision of artwork tomorrow morning.
08/26/15 I greeted Patrick with a "Is it too late to re-mix End of Summer" blow to the stomach. It took about an hour but once he was able to stand upright again we came up with a few tweaks to sex up the song a bit.
08/27/15 Getting close on the artwork. Going to try using font colors taken from the cover image so that the text isn't so stark. Trying #519FA1 for the band name and #D0C9C3 or #BFC5C5 for Harriet.
09/08/15 Trying another resource for the artwork. Couldn't quite get it where we wanted it. First session in a long time where we actually ran though the new songs.
09/15/15 Got a new layout for the Harriet cover art. Looks beautiful! Patrick sent me a new mix of End of Summer and I dig it. Will audition tonight before turning it over to Thomas for mastering.
09/22/15 Didn't make it through the set but did make a few arrangement changes and enjoyed some quality chit-chat.
09/25/15 Carrie is finished with the artwork. Beautiful.
10/07/15 First session with full compliment of players since September. Patrick had never heard Wichita Lineman so we ended the session with a listen.
10/13/15 Thomas gave Patrick "Harriet" with the new "End of Summer" mix. We should be sprayed around the web in a few days.
10/16/15 "Harriet" is available for listening and purchasing on the SOUNDS page. Please do both.
10/17/15 "Harriet" is now available on Spotify, Google Music and Amazon.
10/18/15 eBay still selling bootleg copies of Sleepnovox. At this point it is more comical than hurtful.
10/19/15 "Harriet" CDs are in production. The estimated delivery is between October 30th and November 4th.
10/21/15 Harriet is now also available at iTunes, Amazon, Google Music, Rhapsody, Spotify etc.
10/30/15 Harriet CDs are in hand. Kind of the last celebration for this project. Celebration list:
finish writing and rehearsing 12 songs
finish recording 12 songs
finish mixing 12 songs
finish mastering 12 songs
finish artwork
distribute digital version of the album
distribute physical CDs
stream 2,000 songs for $20
11/03/15 Third time in our history opening up a box of fresh CDs. They look marvelous. We already have a tenative title and cover for the 4th, which we are probably 3-4 years away from creating. Patrick mused that perhaps people will no longer be buying and selling CDs by then.
11/14/15 Hey Paul is our most streamed song. Still.
11/17/15 Ran through the 11 songs and then talked about moving on to rehearsing with drums. Listened to 4 of Patrick's demos. Loved them all but settled on Bone and Marrow so we now have our set of 12 for the next album.
Patrick's mother called him Paris. This is good.
11/19/15 Patrick empathizing with my technical challenges in another project: "Trying to record shit on a computer is hard."
11/24/15 Paris (who has been awfully quotable lately) summing up our little orchestra while working together on re-working lyrics for Miss Majesty today: "We're a band that writes about poor nobodies and birds."
11/25/15 Counted six eBay sellers peddling counterfeit Girl for Samson CDs - most likely all made with .mp3s.
11/26/15 Talking again about releasing a re-mixed and re-mastered version of "12" soon.
12/01/15 Used the session to get ready to start rehearsing with live drums.
12/08/15 An abbreviated session fraught with issues but we made it through 3/4 of the set as a real live band.
Eight copies of Sleepnovox up on eBay priced from $10-$20. One copy of 12 priced at $4.99. Guess which one isn't counterfeit.
12/22/15 Probably the last session of the year. Struggled with technical issues for the most of the evening and then ran through a few things live to see how it held up.
...and a rare journal addendum from Paris:
"But....it was all worth it because we installed a new interface that added another 8 channels to our recording setup, giving us a luxurious 16 in total. Now we have the ability to mic up the rest of the drum kit and run Thomas's keyboard in stereo. We are fancy."
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