Austin Again & Again

Last Wednesday Televators played with three other bands at Red Eyed Fly in downtown Austin.
Hooka Hey from Paris France was really good. (Their video is NSFW, in case you look it up)


We played well, and debuted our new song 'Sonetto' which features acoustic guitar, a more melodic bassline than usual, and Led Zep-ish vocals and drums.


My favorite moment was when we finished our set with the driving 'My Paradigm'. After the thunderous ending there was 3 seconds of silence, then a member of another band on the bill yelled "How the hell do you follow THAT?!?!"
Exactly how it should be done, my friend. Take no prisoners--go out and kill.
We cracked up.


Still deeply in love with my new-ish Ibanez Iceman bass and Peavey MAX tube pramp. Great tone inspires me to play better.


Just two days later we were back in the State Capital to return to Wire Recording studio and get down to work mixing the 3 unfinished songs recorded last April.



Our producer Lee Popa spent too much time and called-in all his favors mixing 'Milk Run' on his own, delivering a fine final product. Then he dropped the rest of the project, violating our contract and exposing himself to a nice lawsuit, but instead we chalked it up to lessons learned and we're still going to attach his name to the final results since that's all we have left of any value.


We used Wire engineer Joey B for mixing last Friday, in a marathon 7pm to 7am session.
Joey really knows his way around the studio, and is a cool relaxed cat to hang with.


It's interesting that we get to combine the convenience and speed of recording digitally with ProTools, but get to enhance and warm up the sound with piles and piles of vintage tube audio gear culled from famous studios world-wide. My bass might get run through a compressor used by The WHO while Bex's vocals are catching a vibe from something that the Beatles or Stones once used.


The rest of the band went back to re-do vocals and stuff on Sunday, but I missed that trip.


Not to fear, because I just went back up to Austin for the third time in a week for more mixing this Wednesday.
10pm-7am this time, and we finished 'The Visitor', our next release. The other two should be done in a few days, hopefully without my help.


Mixing is a tedious and exacting process, and we found the perfect engineer for us. Joey and Televators plan to work together from now on. But man, after hearing the same song again and again and again all night long, I'm so burned out on it that listening to the results is the last thing I want to do.
No wonder many artists never listen to their own recordings.


Some of you might wonder why I didn't mix it myself, given my 25 years of experience mixing live shows.
Well, the studio is a totally different animal and the results will be heard for years on all different kinds of sound systems from iPods to car stereos, home theaters to REAL theaters (SHHH--it's a secret for now).
I just don't have the gear or experience to do it justice, and that's cool.
Besides, live sound is more like playing an instrument.
It can be creative, spontaneous, and fun.
Plus, if you make a mistake people often blame it on the band and forget about it two seconds later.


Once 'The Visitor' gets mastered (yet another engineer performs final tweaks to make it fully compatible with all playback environments and CD pressing) I will post links so y'all can hear it for free (before you buy it on iTunes).
Once the final two songs are mixed and mastered, we'll be approaching record labels to try for a recording contract as well as looking for opening slots on major tours.

Again I ask: "Why didn't all this happen when I was younger?"
But hell, if bands that I grew up listening to can still do it...

Nostalgia Night

I try to NEVER get involved with booking shows, especially when it involves throwing together a group of people that aren't already used to playing together.
Tonight I made an exception, and hopefully nobody will depend on me to create another night as magic as this again. Lightning struck once, and that's enough.



It all started with a loving husband trying to make his special wife's birthday unforgettable.
The phone calls and texts finally reached down the chain to me, and the only thing that made sense on all levels was using the Sea Monkeys plus Mike G to almost re-create the legendary Hitmen.
We had the sound and lights, Steve (drums) and me (sound) are former Hitmen, and Mike was THE singer everyone remembers.

All I had to do was brush-up on some bass parts so nobody else would have to learn new (to them) songs, and suddenly a good approximation of circa 2002 Hitmen was possible.
I loved getting to play bass with Mike and Steve again--just wish I could have remembered to suck in my gut for the photos...


Mike's an entertainer in a way that a lot of "musicians" aren't. He's got the Dean chops plus the Jerry ring-a-ding-ding:
Mike will act the fool if it means people have a great time.
That's brave and comes from the heart.

Rikk on bass is the heart and soul of the Sea Monkeys as well as our country band A Beautiful Mess, so major props to him for playing along and letting us turn back the clock. He's actually a closet Hitmen fan, so that probably made it easier.


I had to play bass on a mini-set of the very best Stone Temple Pilots tunes like Plush, Interstate, and Vasoline:
No rehearsals, so theoretically my quick onstage schooling on tempos and keys and such saved untold amounts of precious time and gasoline in the days prior.



Sea Monkey's Chris Cortez is our gifted guitarist and lead vocalist, and I already try to make him sound rather similar to original Hitmen/Televators guitarist David McCall, so again we made a good go of it without wasting too much of anyone's time having to practice. As usual he carried most of the show with skill and passion yet didn't have an ego problem with Mike coming in and getting all the attention.
A true pro.



The bonus tonight was that Mike's children finally got to see their daddy sing in a rock band, now that they are old enough to "get it".
That might be my favorite thing, but it's hard to choose with so many people getting so much joy from a single night of stupid old rock music.


Happy Birthday, AmyDawg!
Glad you had a good time but to tell the truth, we ALL did!

Introspection (Looking Inside)

I've had this photo rattling around in my head for well over a year and tonight I finally decided to just give it a try, fully expecting to learn something but then have to do the whole thing over.
But it turned out just like I imagined, and was far easier to make than expected.
10-15 minutes was all it took, with a handful of lighting tests, three exposures to get one of me I could live with, then 4 or five of the skull to get it placed exactly where it belongs so I didn't have to screw around in PhotoShop for an hour.



I wish I had so many teeth!

It's been a LONG time since I posted anything on Flickr or changed my FaceBook profile picture, so that's why I got off my ass and finally just did it.

How Was YOUR Christmas?

Ours was great, and is almost over.

I'm still trying to figure out why my prints come out exactly like they look on my monitor unless people are the subject, which results in too much red and much darker than they should be.
Strange...
I got to use the IR remote my brother ordered from Hong Kong in July again.

Tried to buy another slave flash today using a gift card but it was sold-out everywhere due to a major price reduction because it's being discontinued.
Crap!! At the listed price I could have bought a bunch of them to sell for profit every time I taught someone how this clever flash stuff works.

As much as I want/need a specific lens for my camera system, getting a bass amp rig assembled is more important right now.
It's ironic that we'll be ordering a tube preamp/DI from B&H Photo in NYC, which is where I have gotten some essential camera stuff in the past during the holidays.

Hoping to find a decent used pickup truck this week while the sun is shining, and shooting next year's Christmas Card photo a few minutes later.

Work = Play

I got called onstage to play with Bliss again tonight, and it's always a fun surprise.
Glad I have a friend who knew where my camera was hidden and also knew that I would like a shot of this.

I have great affection for Rikk's Ibanez bass.

Loud Nine, Live At Oasis

The full story is here.


And let me just say that I love everything about my shirt.
Fits well, thin (cool) material, design on chest is on the right so it doesn't conflict with the bass's strap (surprisingly hard to find--most are on the left), got it at Ross for cheap--what's not to like?
Black longsleeve shirts aren't very comfortable in Texas during the day but at night in a nightclub with your own electric fans onstage it's not too bad.