Stories

Recording Stories You Wouldn't Believe

The first morning I started recording my debut album ‘Less Than Perfect Day’, I was so damn nervous that I was physically ill the morning of the first session. I don’t know what the problem was: expectations, fear of failure, the early morning start? Whatever the reason was, it wasn’t a pleasant beginning. The experience I gained however was invaluable. When it came to starting album no.2 , I held little fear and just wanted to put my head down and get on with it as quickly and painlessly as possible.

In the last week of June 2004, Graeme Trewin and I started rehearsing the drum tracks. I had originally planned to record them all myself, but it just would have taken a little too long. Luckily, Grae was on university holidays, in between jobs and had just finished a long Peabody tour supporting the Hoodoo Gurus and Spiderbait. We did a weeks practice at my place, kinda unplugged I guess you’d say. We then did much louder rehearsals at Troy Horse in Alexandria. I think all up it was nine days for about four or five hours at a time. We are best friends so it wasn’t a chore or anything; we just were determined to get the drums perfect.

Thursday July 8 2004

I picked up Grae in the morning. We head into the drum shop in Surry Hills to get some new skins tuned. There is nowhere to park. Sheesh. We arrive at Sony Studios in Darlinghurst. Our sound engineer for the next two days is Ben Hudson. He will go on to impress us over and over again. Legend.

The studio is a big one. I’d been here with Jenny Queen so I was pretty comfortable with the somewhat musically luxurious surroundings. Grae was impressed by it all, though he is certainly no slouch when it comes to recording experiences. He set up in the main room because we were purely after achieving drum tracks. I would be recording in a far booth, with him facing me for direct eye contact. I used both an electric and an acoustic, and somewhat surprisingly, some of the takes would be mixed in by Wayne Connolly in the mixing process.

Even though we were well rehearsed, were fortunate enough to have time to run through the songs as much as we needed to. We also did a few different versions with differing tempos for selected songs. For the majority of songs, we used a click track but a few songs like ‘Trying Not To Think About It’ and ‘Out of the Question’ sounded much more natural without the click. As far as parts went, being such close friends and both being drummers, it was a flexible kind of arrangement. For some songs I had very specific parts for Grae to play. Other songs he totally saved me by creating parts I couldn’t. ‘My Friend and a Free Day’ is a perfect example of that.

We had a late lunch / early dinner around 5pm. We said goodbye to our work experience fella, young Scotty, on our way out the door. Scotty was in year 10 at a school out in the west of Sydney and is a pretty handy drummer. I am pretty sure I can speak for Grae when I say that we saw a lot of ourselves in young Scotty. He’d be back tomorrow.

After dinner Ben makes us real coffee from the rather spectacular Sony coffee machine. We had already achieved great takes for ‘Scotty Come Home’, ‘I Don’t Belong Here’, ‘Game Over’ and ‘My Friend and a Free Day’. ‘Out of the Question’ had Grae dancing around the kit pretty freely, and this is as close to Peabody drumming as is he going to get this time round. Around 9pm our stomachs were rumbling again, and Ben took us to a Thai restaurant three or four blocks up Oxford Street.

The final part of the night had us recording ‘Until Sunrise’, as well as a late night version of ‘Wyoming’. We listen back to what we’ve done and call it a night close to midnight.

Friday July 9 2004

I picked Grae up around 11am and head to the studio. Ben, like any great engineer, is already working at the large console. We have some coffee, listen to all the takes from yesterday and then head to the main room to try and record ‘The Drifter’. This is the longest song on the album, and one I am extremely proud of. I mean, I am proud of them all. There is a line in the song which leads to an instrumental break, and the lyric states “I’ve got some music on and it’s carrying me, Max Weinberg’s in my ear and I’m walking to the beat”. We had always played this part with Grae going into an exaggerated drum fill. He had some reservations about recording this on the album though, but in my mind I knew that he had to play this part for the song to maintain its feel. I didn’t want to press the issue initially, but the take without the fill sounded flat. With some encouragement from Ben as well, we re-did the part and it sounded so great. Ben was a great engineer and he had some productions ideas too. I loved how he wasn’t in the slightest overbearing about them though, and when he did pipe up with some ideas they were certainly ones we ended up using.

The last song was ‘Getting Too Old’ which Grae didn’t know very well. I had intended to keep the 8-track version Wes and I had done, but a few days before we did the drums Grae actually came up with the idea to re-record the song in the bigger, fancier studio. It was a very good tip too. I basically talked him through it whilst recording and we ended up getting a great take.

Our friend Matthew Hancock had stopped by with his new video camera and documented a few hours of footage. During ‘The Drifter’ something really funny happened. Matthew was in the main room filming Grae. Scotty, the word experience fella, was also hanging about. We didn’t mind in the slightest because he was obviously passionate about music and having a ball. He was in one of the ‘live rooms’ (as opposed to where Ben was engineering from). He was supposed to be silent because you know, any sound is going to be picked up on the recording. About halfway through a take, I hear this strange noise but Grae is firing so I don’t want to interrupt him. The noise gets louder and louder and initially I think it is a mobile phone. Grae stops, and looks towards the piano room. (Keep in mind that all these rooms and booths have windows). Turns out Scott the work experience chap believes The Drifter needs some of his piano musings! He had started playing in the middle of the take! It was such a funny and innocent mistake that we fall about laughing. Ben does no such thing and promptly tells Scott to go sit in the mixing room with him. We tell Ben to go easy on him. Needn’t have worried though, Ben wouldn’t hurt a fly.

We listen back to everything and farewell Scotty who heads home to the west. Ben takes myself, Grae and Matt to this East Sydney Maltese café. It is certainly the most inexpensive meal I have ever had and also rather tasty.

Ben starts the long process of converting the drums into a rough mix of the click, drums, guitar and vocal so we can use these tracks on a specific recording machine. Matt and Grae both leave and I chat to Ben as he tries to work. Hours pass. I read studio magazines trying to understand it all. My friend Konrad Skirlis has a few articles in there which is very interesting to read.
About 10pm Ben tells me it might be best if I leave and return during the week to pick up everything. Again, Ben makes the right call. I would have sat there all night for nothing. I have thoroughly enjoyed working with him.
Grae picks me up and drops me back at my car outside his place. I thank him again for doing such a fantastic job. He has made this the most rhythmic music I have recorded so far and we have a great foundation to build upon. Sorry for the cliché but it’s true.

I drive home.
Tired.
Instore for me at Troy Horse at 1:30pm.
I feel busy. Music busy. Good busy.