…we’ll be in the studio for the first time since we threw a party and made ‘Live at the Creamery’ one night in March, 2013. We’ve got three reels of tape coming via USPS and we’ll be setting up in the Creamery, tucked just next to the Pulaski Bridge between Brooklyn and Queens. We’re going to record live in the studio in one room. Shane Kerwin (originally of the Isle of Man) is playing drums and hopefully singing sea chanteys between takes; Olivia Mancini of Olivia Mancini & The Mates is on bass and backup vocals. She’s a hell of a singer. We’ve got one day with Alex P. in the studio and hopefully he will do some funny dances before he heads back to his home base of Basement Floods up in Hudson, NY. Alex P is a guitarist who takes after Mike Bloomfield (both the guitar skills and his shock of hair). We made the last few EPs there and I told myself that we would never record there in the winter again because that Greenpoint cold seems to permeate its concrete walls.
Quinn McCarthy will be manning the controls. That dude always puts things into focus, whether it’s an additional instrument (or lack thereof) or just trying to get the vibe right so we nail it. All of us are friends and have played with each other in Leland Sundries and in other bands, too. We’re going to go in Friday and get all the sounds right and then Saturday and Sunday and Monday, hit it hard. It’s more of a rock & roll LP this time around. We’re going to record 12 songs and then hopefully 10 of them will fit together just right. It’s the first full-length for us after two studio EPs, a single, and a live release so this is undiscovered country.
As usual, the sessions will be brought to you by Acapulco Restaurant in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, where there’s a section of the menu labeled “For Gringos And Our Texan Friends.” No Creamery project would ever get made without those fine folks. Hopefully, by Monday night of next week, we’ll have the scaffolding of a record in place with a song about a creepy town in northern Idaho, a waltz dreamed up from a phrase overheard in west Texas, a deep blues song, a waterfront neighborhood tale of yearning, a rocker about one’s worst fear right before a date, and a few songs that, well, maybe you’ll tell us what they mean someday.
Other stuff will be happening, too, while we mix the record and try to figure out when and how and where to put it out (throw copies out the window of a car speeding down the BQE?): We’re working on booking a couple of duo mini-tours, one to NC at the end of February and back and the other in the northeast during warmer months. We’re cooking up some music videos (and figuring out how to get back on the water to film them in our band canoe!). Our friend Chris Thieke is illustrating the album cover and it may even be a painting (we promise no still lifes of flowers).
