EP IN A DAY!

Hey Guys, Nick here with anther absurd logistical pressure cooker disguised as an art project!

Sam King is the best record producer in the ACT and I’ve made him do some pretty cockamamie things over the years. This one might have taken the cake- putting a band together for one 14-hour day, in which 4 songs of mine were learned from scratch, arranged, and then recorded while also being filmed as a ‘live-in-studio’ performance vid.

I always like to be the weakest link in any project I put together. This whole thing was a cheap tactic to get to put together the most bullshit-awesome backing band I possibly could to cut versions of some of my more Americana-ish songs. As well as Mr King himself on guitar and and slide, my Murderers Row included Julia ‘and the Deep Sea Sirens’ Johnson on vocals and ‘lectric, Nick Peddle (Fun Machine, Pocket Fox) on drums and Matt Lustri (Spartak and Los Chavos and well as playing with me in Cracked Actor and Prom).

 

Our ‘studio’ location fell into our lap in somewhat comical fashion. The gym where I work, Elements Fitness, used to be an RSL-style venue. Bizarrely, the original stage has been walled off from the rest of the building and remains intact, leaving a room with little functional purpose aside from providing an acoustically-sound room with an endearingly odd feel for EP-in-a-day projects.

 

Some of the guys had played  a couple of the songs in other bands with me so I thought we might run ahead of schedule. Ha! My naive dream of an 8-hour day disappeared on the breeze as each song was tipped, flipped or turned completely upside down by the rogues gallery. The guys exceeded my hopes in terms of their engagement and the efficient way they explored creative side alleys. 

After 10 hours of woodshedding, it was time to roll tape (read: laptop) and turn on for the cameras. The film crew was every bit as over-powered as the band: Luke ‘Another Fine Mess’ McGrath, Shane ‘Nick Wants To Do What?’ Parsons and Adam ‘What Would You All Do Without Me’ Thomas (who is also responsible for these fine still photos). The cameras were extremely patient with a shoot that involved even more hurry-up-and-waiting than the usual film set. Thanks also to Leon Twardy for his exemplary engineering assistance.

I’m blissfully happy with the rough mixes of the audio and will post them soon. The whole thing is a big experiment in Instant Musical Gratification and we’ll see how it scrubs as a video thing, but in the meantime I’m sold on the format as a fun and rewarding way to record.