Mo Carrey has been in the studio for 6 sessions.  We have finished the first mix tape and most of the second.  The album is next.  Last night he brought in Big Ron, The Professor, and J Maro.

Travis Jay was here for a session.  The sessions are getting seriously big now.

Bud Berning brought in Jamie Drake and Sally Jaye for backing vocals on his project Black Kettle.  These girls can sing!

Kevin Pugh was in for a full day and we got a final mix for his first single to release.

Dead Letter Six was here for two consecutive sessions to record drums, bass, keys, guitars, and backing vocals.  Guitars and final vocals coming soon.

Justified Cause was in for a marathon 13 hour session.  We tracked 16 songs over two sessions with 4 guitar tracks per song.  Do that math!

Harlequin Bureau was here to recreate the beat behind a beautiful piano ballad that now has some great energy.

Today I just picked up a Wurlitzer organ.  I have no idea where I am going to put it, but I will find a place for it!

Justified Cause came in on Saturday to track 12 songs in 8 hours.  We tracked them all with overdubs in that time.  Only 2 tracks were decided not to make the cut.  That is a great accomplishment for that amount of time!  They are a punk rock band with a driving sound.  The rough mixes of the day already sound great.  They will be back in a couple weeks to add more guitars, vocals, and maybe even a few surprise tracks for the genre.  Stay tuned.

HB is band and is ready to finish up a few projects that had been ready for final touches for quite a while now.  With some fresh vocals, some minor arrangement changes, and a small slide guitar part, it looks like we have finished up Train.  Next up will be laying fresh vocals on Balcony and that one too will be in the can.  It feels great to finish up a couple projects that were starting to collect dust.  Now on to the new stuff!

We did another round of dialing in what is left to complete the album.  We are close now.  Just some drum parts, vocals, and acoustic guitars and we are mixing this thing.  Stay tuned.

David Portal is back in studio, this time with his own project.  He brought his single Bumblebee to Ditch Road Records to have it mixed.  We reamped a couple instruments and tracked a couple bars of guitar and then we were off to mix.  The song is really a great track with a cool pop and R&B feel.  I look forward to seeing more of David’s work as we move on to the album.

The Radical 80’s website is up with all the tracks that were recorded here at Ditch Road Records.  Take a listen to what were were able to do in over 20 hours split between 2 sessions.

http://www.radical80s.com/our_awesome_tunage

Two great sessions back to back today.  First with Travis, we cut final vocals and acoustic guitar on “Swallow My Smile” for the first completed track of the album.  It has been a long road, but all the pieces are finally coming together.

Directly following that session, Jonas Cabrera came in to track his new ballad “Love Is Gone”.  He had me play the acoustic guitar part and then I cut a light shaker part.  He did a couple vocal takes and some harmonies.  With only a few elements, the track is already very big.  We have one more session to finish up, but this song is one that will be heard for sure.  Great tune, great vocals, great session.

Check out Jonas and The Skeletones at http://skeletonesmusic.com/

The Radical 80’s came in on Saturday to cut their demo of 7 cover songs from… you guessed it, the 80’s!  We did 12 straight hours and got all of the band and vocals tracked.  Now we have one session left on Tuesday to edit, mix, and make clips of the tracks for the final product.  I look forward to a shorter session tomorrow and getting this project all wrapped up for the group.

Travis was back in for some fun bits to make some of the bridge sections sound a bit more interesting.  We did some weird and fun things with reamping.  To get a cool stereo effect with the vocals, we took an amp and hung it from the ceiling.  Then we stereo mic’ed it and swung the amp around.  This was inspired by the Paul Ward interview at The Home Recording Show (show #82).  Here is a picture to illustrate the point.

In just over 6 hours today we cut a complete songs from the ground up.  We started with scratch piano, a beat, and a scratch vocal.  From there we built a drum beat, bass, piano, electric piano, percussion, and 7 vocal tracks.  A quick mix and then out the door.  Here is a picture of Iason hard at work.

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