I’ve been playing bass in a band called, Rival Waves, for the last year or so. I’ve had a blast and the leader of the group, Joel De La Garza, recently asked if I would be interested in joining them in the studio to record all of the bass lines on their second record. “Heck yeah”, I said! “I’m all in!!” Joel was going to record the next record live with all of us just jammin’ it out at the same time.
This was the first time that I had recorded at The Bubble here in Austin, TX with legendary, John “Frenchie” Smith at the helm. Frenchie is producing and engineering the record with help from his assistant, Yosh.
The first night, Friday the 7th, we started around 5pm, although Paul had come in at 2pm to the drum sound squared away, We spent most of that first evening getting everything set up and dialed in for recording. I set up my gear in the main studio along with, Paul, on drums.
Guitarists, Marc and Eric, were set up in the isolated room together with their amps and pedal boards, Marc’s Badcat and Eric’s, Bogner.
Joel was set up in the control room, in a small closet, to record scratch vocals to help guide us in our performance.
We started tracking with a song called, Country of Ghost Towns and then Smile Empty Soul.
My gear setup is pretty simple and straight forward, I used my Fender Jazz bass with round wound strings and a pick through an Acoustic B200H head direct with a 2×10 cabinet. The sound was really brighter than I was used to and after a bit of tweaking with the amp head we settled in on a sound that I liked, but was still very different from what I was accustomed to with my Mesa Boogie Subway 800 amp. I was also having an issue with a pickup buzzing noise due to the single coils on the Jazz Bass, which was not helping.
Frenchie said this is a common problem with Jazz Basses…the only fix was to move around the studio until I found a spot where the noise was at a minimal, then stand and hit my mark on the floor for every take.
We worked that first night until about 10:30 pm or so, then decided to head home to rest up for the marathon, Saturday session.
We agreed to start at 10:30am on Saturday with Marc bringing us all breakfast tacos from, Pacos Tacos, to start the day off right. After our tacos, we started the session with a song called 100M, a quick spacey number with a programmed drum loop. After 2 takes, we had that one in the can. The next few songs were Monument, Meaningless Chaos and Isla 3, and then, Desperate Days, NAMI, Ultramanifesto, What She Could Be and Iron Will rounded out the evening.
We recorded straight through the day with a short burger break from “In & Out”. Joel asked Paul to pick up a tray of double cheeseburgers done “Animal Style” which is basically a double cheeseburger with everything they have available on it. It was a tasty mess for sure. I had also stopped at Rudy’s on the way to load up my 50/50 sweet tea for the day, so I was all set.
At the end of the evening, Frenchie, mentioned that he wanted me to rerecord all of the bass lines for everything we had done so far so he could have additional choices when mixing, etc. I as so tired though, I suggested we wait until Sunday morning and we could knock it out quickly, which is exactly what we did.
Paul, on drums, finished up all of his tracking on Saturday so he was a wrap, as they say, so he didn’t have to come in on Sunday. We started out, the next day, with the song, Invisible, which I had only heard a few times before. Marc and I set up in the big room and recorded a few different passes with Joel helping guide us on vocals in the main control room. We then tackled, Heartless, which was another song I was not too familiar with. We basically recorded both of those songs in just a few takes.
Then, it was my turn to re-record all of the bass lines fore each song again. This time, I used my Fender P bass 1959 re-issue with heavy La Bella flat wound strings on it to add a very different flavor. The Fender P bass really sounded good, no pickup noise, so we just decided to use it on all of the tracks. We also decided to switch to the, Orange AD 200 Bass MK 3 tube amp head with the same 2 x 10 cabinet. The Orange has a super cool grungie feel to it…I must have one!
I went with a pick on most of the songs, which added a kind of cool punchy, driving, sound to the mix. This took about 3 hours, from 1pm to about 4pm, to get her done, then it was a wrap on bass! Whew! Kind of workout for sure, multiple takes on each of the songs without any other musicians in the room, just me and the headphones. This can be tricky as I’m used to playing with a drummer I can see which helps with kick drum patterns etc. but it all worked out and sounded great in the end.
After that, it was Marc and Eric’s turn in the hot seat!! I packed up and headed home after a long 3 days. Marc and Eric moved their gear to the big room and started recording their parts for each song as well to give Frenchie even more options. Frenchie kept telling us to just keep, “feeding the computer” as we went along, “more, more, more”. Eric and Marc were able to get through 4 or 5 songs before Eric blew a fuse on his Bogner. After a trip to Home Depot, they got through a few more songs and then wrapped it up for the evening. They’ll have to go back in later this month to finish up.
Joel still has to record all of his vocals and I’d like to go back and add a few licks here and there.
Frenchie’s dog, Agnes, kept a close eye on the project from her comfy spot on the couch. Agnes was great, she listened patiently to take after take and didn’t make a peep while recording.
