The Righteous Hillbillies

Sunday August 9 th 2009
Drum Sticks & Gas – Post #1

So Kenny shows up to record all day with 1 pair of drum sticks that were about dwindled down to tooth picks, so Kev being the gracious kind man that he is, said that he would go to Guitar Center for Kenny, with Johnnys money to get an extra pair. So kenny hands Kev the keys and says here take my van. Off goes Kev and we go back to work. About a good 45 minutes later I get a text from Kev saying "I am going to kill Kenny' his car ran out of gas! #$%&!!!!" Kev eventually made it back, he got a ride from a gracious Slovak women named Smelna who happened to have a gas can in her car (strange). So he put exactly $1.00 in gas in Ken's van, just enough to get him back to my place and send poor Kenny into the Joliet night after recording with NO GAS. I will let Kev take it from here.

Brent

Well, after Brent and I spent all winter writing and collaborating on a bunch of new songs, and not to mention a brand new band, we felt confident enough to start cutting the trax at Wolves Den Studio (now officially moved to Brents house) and fully engineered by Brent. On ..probably the hottest hell fire day of the year; Sunday August 9 th 2009 at 11:00AM, Kenny and Johnny began laying the drums and bass down. Where do I begin??? Kenny’s drums were tuned up and sounded great. Ya know folks, lots of studios use tons of mikes to record drums and we’ve just never been into that....We fell in love with the old school styles of Glyn Johns, T-Bone Burnett and Daniel Lanois methods of recording drums as one instrument, and Brent set Kenny’s drums up the same way..... Good mikes, Good room, Good drummer! We were up and running.

For 10 hours straight and about 50 bottles of Gatorade later..(I’m not promoting Gatorade folks, actually I hate it...but we bought Kenny a bunch that said “No Excuses” on the bottle! Get it?) Kenny pounded out 8 songs playing to a rusty ol’scratch track and our savior the “click”! Johnny played bass on every track and I gotta tell you folks..I was really blown away with some of the very melodic things he was doing. Brent and I have sweat blood and tears over a lot of these new songs and Johnny has brought most of them to a whole new level. The boys called it a night around 10:00PM. Brent said he new it was time to quit when everything started to sound the same. That ol’ ear fatigue will get ya every time! Hats off to Kenny, Johnny and Brent on Day 1 for a job well done.

In closing Id like to add that everyone that’s heard the 1st record has nothing but good things to say about it. I’m very grateful for that. Some of the songs on that record were brought out of my dusty ol’closet and I thought they were long since dead. Funny how things work out. But look out for this next record ....Brent and I have gotten very serious about letting the music speak for itself this time. The songs are just plain ...better! See ya’ll next post.

Kev

For the Gear heads:

The mics used on the drums are as follows:

Overheads- Nuemann KM184’s
Snare- Shure SM57
Outside Kick Drum- AKG D112
2 AKG C414’s room mics about 10 feet away from the kit
1 AKG C414BXLS11 room mic about 40 ft. away
Bass Guitar-Direct with the King of DI’s the Avalon U5

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