Recording "Road Map to the Soul" Part 1

Well what an accomplishing weekend. We all woke up and arrived at Ante Up Studios (Cleveland, OH) around 10am Saturday morning (June 13, 2009). Marco was all hungover from the Tequila him and Alex pounded the night before. It was great! You can just see the buzz on his face. Alex, was fine! Must be nice to have such tolerance! We met up with our Engineer Jimmy and began loading our equipment to set up and begin recording our new album "Road Map to the Soul".

It was a slow start at first because Jimmy was flying solo on Saturday. No interns to lend him a hand in the studio. It was no big deal because it only took him about 2-1/2 hours to get the gear and drums properly mic'd. Recording got underway and I (Justice) spent most of the morning posting details to our twitter site.

John our Marketing and IT guru from G-Management came along to video record all the hilarity's and craziness that would take place over the weekend. Unfortunately Kim our manager could not make it but she made sure she cooked Meatballs on Saturday for us and they were AWWWEEESOME! Just before we began recording we all had to set up in different rooms because their weren't enough isolation booths within the studio. What was funny as hell is we set up Tyler's rig inside the women's bathroom. We we're expecting him to play in their to just for laughs. Either way, the whole rig in the bathroom produced a killer tone and sound for recording. So, now if you ever need to list the uses of a bathroom; of course, why in the hell would you make a list! But, if you do, you can list the following uses (doing your business when nature calls, sex, and great location to mic an amp for recording). Ha! Go figure.

Well, 7 hours later on day one, we managed to record all the bass and drum tracks for the record. It felt like we we're in fast forward. We packed up and left around 9pm that evening. Not too bad. Marco and I decided to celebrate one hell of a productive day with a few of our fans at the Hi Fi (Lakewood, OH) that evening. By now Marco had all ready sobered up, so he was cool to party. We enjoyed ourselves listening to some good stoner rock bands. It was nice to be reminded that night that I don't have as much of an alcohol tolerance as others. My brain was in quite the frenzy! Man, gotta love Astro Bombs. Believe it or not, they went well in between all the Guinness I was drinking. Don't worry I was safe, the bartender (Our Cover girl Leah) made sure she sobered me up before I left the bar that evening. Marco however was in much better condition than I was. He did not drink as much this evening, especially after getting plastered the night before! He even got his but whooped by Yoda on Friday night. LMAO! Oh, I'm sure he'll tell you the story if you ask. He He He.

So, the next morning we arrived back at the studio, except this time I was the first too arrive. Shocking as I was the one who drank the most the night before. Well, correction, John showed up first, then me! :-). Day 2 got underway, and we started off by listening to the tracks from the day before. Inspecting them for any errors. Once that got done I went back to posting on Twitter and Marco got underway with doing his touch ups. Soon after, Alan started working on his. Well around 2pm on Sunday, we took a break to let Jimmy and his band perform at the Cleveland Police benefit show at the Hard Rock that afternoon and got back around 4:30pm.

We finished up Al's tracks and proceeded to do vocals. Well, things were going great until my schnoz touched the mic and screwed up one hell of a good take on one of our songs. I got so pissed at the moment that I decided to skip the song for the day. Thankfully the rest of my recordings did not have any flubs. However, due to our extended break we had to end at 8pm as scheduled because another band was booked for the studio. So in short, we successfully recorded all the music and we're able to get the vocals done for 5 of the songs for the album. All in a matter of 2 days or 16.5 Hours to be technical...

We shall return back to the studio on July 5th. We wish everyone a safe and fun 4th of July weekend coming soon and hope to see as many of our Ohio Fans at the Wheels of Steel Benefit on June 28th at the Nautica (Plain Dealer) Pavilion.

Keep Rockin

Justice
3SO