Note to self: overnight recording sessions at Machinehead Studio can decrease life expectancy significantly.
The recording session was scheduled to run from Friday, Oct. 12th, 9pm until 5am the following Saturday; eight gruelling hours of playing music bearing perfection in mind and focus would inevitably take its toll on Soul Plane. We knew this.
In order to prepare for the ordeal, we planned out well in advance what we had to do. The Friday of, I had a job interview at 1 15pm. Kevin, Gideon, and Aaron were with me – I had told them to tag along since I couldn’t see the interview lasting more than 20 minutes. After that, we had planned to head back to Kevin’s place to crash and get some sleep before the overnighter. We were going to just wake up at around 7pm, and meet with Patrick at Finch subway station by 7 30pm. We also formulated the plan around the fact that we only had one car: Kevin and Aaron would drive down to the studio with the equipment, and Patrick, Gideon, and I would just take the subway there. Nickie and Blythe were taking this session off to get working on the vocals together so that they would be prepared to record at the following week’s session, which was when I was to record my parts as well. The whole point of having this planned out was so that we could arrive at the studio by 8 30pm, get set up, and be ready to record by 9pm on the dot.
Of course, when you’re Soul Plane, nothing ever works out according to plan. My job interview lasted two hours (don’t laugh, assholes, I got the job), so by the time I was out, it was already 3 20pm. The four of us were starving. We bought subs at Quizno’s and ate, after which we left at around 4 30pm. Then we decided we had to buy provisions in order to keep our bodies functional throughout the recording session – we walked out of Shopper’s Drug Mart at 5 15pm with water, energy drinks, cereal bars, trail mixes, and candy. “Isn’t it a little to cold to be camping these days, boys?” asked the cashier, smiling, thinking she was being funny. We almost slapped her. After Shopper’s, we had every intention of just going back to Kevin’s house to get sleep, but no such luck, because apparently you can’t sleep without first smoking weed. Shit. 5 45pm, we’re finally back at Kevin’s, high as blimps. Aaron: “Yo, that sesh energized me, man, let’s play Guitar Hero.” Clearly, no one is sleeping anytime soon. This was going to be dangerous.
7 30pm rolls around, and we’re at Finch. We head down to Machinehead and meet up with Kevin and Aaron there by around 8 15pm. The first question we ask Dave, the owner of the studio and the engineer we worked with, is: “Hey man, is it safe to bun in here?” He just laughed and went into the control room of the studio, and re-emerged with a bong the size of a fucking saxophone. “Studio bong, boys. Go nuts.” We all immediately liked Dave as more than a friend, and invited him to join us in our almost-daily, albeit recently developed, ritual of smoking ourselves into submission.
Dave was a man who paid attention to detail regardless of how much he got paid. I was thoroughly convinced he took utmost pride in his work when he asked Aaron, “Yo, mind if I tune your drums?” Aaron looked at him dumbly and said, “Oh… um, I kinda already did tune… does it not sound right?” Dave diplomatically replies, “Ahhhhm… they sound… okay…” He took 2 hours total tuning each drum in Aaron’s kit to pitch perfection, and another 20-30 minutes per guitar to make sure all the sounds were levelled properly. We didn’t end up recording until 12 45am, Saturday morning, but we didn’t mind – the instruments sounded impeccable as they were being recorded. This is the kind of attention our band needed from a studio engineer from day one, and everything Dave did in advance just meant that much less of a tail to pick up on during the mixing and mastering process.
We ran through several of our new songs (don’t worry, you’ll know about them once they’re in my hands, trust me), and laid out the instrumentals. With Dave’s expertise, they came out sounding crisper than a pair of freshly-ironed khakis, even raw and un-edited.
After having knocked around the idea for a while on the Soul Plane table of business discussion, we came to the conclusion that we should focus on four or five songs in our repertoire that we thought were the best and most marketable, and make a promotional demo based on those alone. We knew that labels generally don’t give a shit beyond the third song on any given demo they receive in their submissions department anyway, and that was being generous. Reality check: label execs hit “eject” thirty secs. into cassettes, don’t you know? So let’s be serious: trying to cut a full-length album with no exposure or distribution results only in lost money, energy, and time. The other reason we felt another demo was in order (remember Countdown to Launch?) was because the band had since made several changes to its roster and instrumentation since its last effort, not to mention the current situation of two female vocalists rather than the Dan-and-Blythe combination we used to roll with. Obviously, a new promotional product needs to be implemented – and so, the official Soul Plane electronic press kit (EPK) is on its way. Also, Conor needs it so that he can promote us so that we’re not Unicef-penny-eating, minimum-wage-earning, low-standard-of-living-having musicians for much longer.
Speaking of energy and time, we had too much of the latter and not enough of the former during the massacre that was this recording. Of course, collectively smoking a half-ounce as a band (shared between 5 people) before half-time into the recording session (by 1am we were running painstakingly low on our sesh supply) wasn’t exactly healthy, either. I swear, on that level, we really need Jesus in our lives.
By the end of the recording session, we had gotten all the work done that we went there to do, and smoked all the pot we had brought – there was no other way to put it: Soul Plane was on top of its game. As we pulled out of the parking lot, as Conor was driving Gideon, Aaron, and me back to Gideon’s house – our final resting place for the night, as the sun was just peeking out over the horizon as we looked eastward (this was around 6am), I couldn’t help but feel like I was in a band whose number one goal wasn’t the fame, fortune, glamour and glitz that can come from having an incredible amount of musical potential and talent, but rather that our focus was primarily on making good music and having fun. It’s almost as if we all share the mentality that as long as we take care of the important shit, the little details that make life so beautiful will all just fall into place. And if the mission’s accomplished, or at least, going so far so good until next weekend’s recording session, then who can argue with that?
Stay posted… part II of this story is coming as events follow!
