Day 1 & 2: Hit the Ground Running.

MONDAY, DEC. 12

We wasted no time getting to work today. Everyone arrived at Smoakstack Studio by 10am and we hit the ground running. I personally didn’t sleep a whole lot the night before because I have that little kid on Christmas eve thing going on every time we start a new House of Heroes project.

The studio is quite spacious which affords us some pretty cool and unique opportunities. For instance, we can all set up exactly what we want to use gear wise and play together in the same room live. We try to execute our parts as flawlessly as we can and when it’s done we have drums, bass, and 2 guitar tracks done minus a few things that need fixed. We started with a song called “Out My Way” that is a very strong contender for track 1 on the record. Paul has a pretty absurd collection of sweet guitars and amps, so Eric and I went through a few of our favorites before landing on exactly what we liked. I’m playing a Les Paul Standard with a mini-humbucker in the bridge through my Marshall JMP and a Dr. Z Prescription ES. Eric is playing an early 70’s Les Paul Deluxe Goldtop with P-90’s through his Marshall Plexi head and a Vox AC-30.

One of our main concerns for the recording of this album was not having as much time as we would need to get it all done. That was almost entirely erased by the end of the day because we had the entire song done minus a few harmonies here and there! If we can somehow keep a “song-a-day” pace through this entire process, then we are MONEY!

My observations: I’m always reminded of what a freakin GREAT drummer Colin is when we do an album. I think we’ve taken that for granted along the way because it’s become commonplace to explain some ridiculously complicated drum part to him and without thinking he just plays it. I love the fact that Eric is playing guitar on this album. It brings some fresh perspective guitar-wise, and he can play a whole bunch of things that I can not.

-Tim

TUESDAY, DEC. 13

Today, we worked on a song called “Dance/Blow it All Away”. AJ was quick to point something out now that we’re finding our groove. He said, “So we set out to make our most pop album yet, and it’s going to turn into the most rocking thing we’ve ever done!” I’m OK with this! Holy cow what a scorching song this is! It’s loud. It’s fast. It’s relentless rock n’ roll. Colin ended up playing a tighter drum kit today because his drums needed to be a bit more punchy and AJ busted out his Japanese beauty of a bass. There’s something about this certain Japanese foto flame bass that AJ’s had for years that is just superior to all other basses that we’ve ever tried. Eric and I stayed with the same basic set up, but I played a different Les Paul and he ended up playing a Fender Jaguar, and his Peavey Wolfgang for the solo.

Again, we made it through the entire song today and remain on our song-a-day pace. Even armed with the knowledge that 99 times out of 100, our first instincts are best, it’s still my natural inclination to want to pick everything apart and over-analyze it. This has made me a bit nervous about just plowing through these first 2 days. But every time we listen back to what we’ve done, there is nothing that I would change, so I’m beginning to just embrace this new creative process and it’s a lot of fun!

My observations: AJ is a fantastic lyricist in my opinion. Colin and I will come up with a few lines here and there, but 98% of House of Heroes’ lyrics come from AJ. A sampling from the song we worked on today:

Maybe we could make another life in the blazin’ lights,

Maybe we could rebuild in the rubble of our ruined lives,

But if we start the fire then we can’t turn back,

We’ve either gotta stay, or blow it all away.

More updates coming! Colin’s been posting photos to our Facebook page. www.facebook.com/houseofheroes And of course you can follow us on Twitter. @houseofheroes @timhoh @colinhoh @ajhoh @ericnuke and @paulmoak3 for good measure. Love you guys!

-Tim