• Donia Love

The Bad Things: "Twilight" (Listen, and hear Mad Wilcox's saw)

The sound and world of a saw player is like a slow motion scene of a crocodile lurching out of water onto a pack of show poodles for a kill. It’s jarring and brutal, but in slow motion there’s a raw, backwoods majesty to the action: The red of the blood and the bright white of the quaffed dogs’ fur mixing into the side-to-side thrash of the beast’s teeth and dinosaur jaws.

Mad Austin Wilcox is with us now:

How do you play a saw? What’s the technique?

• Ouch My Eye

Is it as hard as it seems to get good tones and sounds?
It's a little tricky at first, but you get used to it. Mostly it's just figuring out where to bow on the blade, and at what tension.

What type of saw do you use?
My first saw was a Mussehl & Westphal musical saw, I bought it on Ebay for $40. My favorite one is a Freud English Steel crosscut saw I bought at a pawn shop for $7. The musical one is a bit easier to play, but they both sound pretty equal as far as sound quality.

Do you ever use the saw to saw off the limb of a tree, just for the hell of it?
The musical one is too dull for that kind of thing, but my other one is pretty sharp and cuts through wood like butter. A buddy of mine has some old two-man crosscut saws ranging from fifty inches to seven feet that he's been bugging me to play. I'll let you know how it goes.

Have you ever accidentally amputated anyone's leg while playing a show?
Never accidentally.

What is your set up? Do you use a pickup? Do you add effects?
Generally I just set up a regular vocal mic underneath it pointing up. I haven’t found a pickup that I liked very much, but I'm sure I haven't tried them all. I don't use much in the line of effects, but engineers have put on a little reverb here and there and that sounds pretty good.

What made you want to play the saw?
I don't really know, it just had such a great sound.

How long did it take you to learn?
I messed around without much success for a few days, then a friend of mine who knew how to play gave me some pointers, and it seemed pretty easy after that.

Is it ever weird to be carrying around a saw?
Mine has a case that it fits in with a handy shoulder strap. Looks like I'm carrying a pool cue or sawed off shotgun.

The first annual Seattle International Cabaret Festival begins tomorrow, Friday 11/6 at the Moore Theater with the Tiger Lillies. The Bad Things play the after party at the Can Can. (Doors for the after party are at 10PM.)

The Bad Things also play Friday the 13th at ACT Theater for Cabaret Macabre.

It has happened. Neil Diamond has gotten onstage and performed with the Neil Diamond cover band, Super Diamond. Yes, the Neil Diamond: “Cracklin Rosie”, “Sweet Caroline”, “America”. Now wait just a fucking second here, you may say. This isn't something that's even possible, it makes no sense. If Neil Diamond got onstage with a Neil Diamond cover band, the Earth would stop rotating. Or the Earth would explode. It’s too strong an anomaly, or paradox, and it isn’t comprehendible. I’m talking no more air, no more ice caps. Locusts everywhere.

But it has happened, more than once. The first time was at the Hollywood House of Blues in 2000. Neil got onstage with San Francisco based Super Diamond and sang “I Am I Said.” And there were no locusts. Cover bands are a risky business. Pulling it off well is incredibly tricky. Super Diamond has been doing it for sixteen years. (See them on Letterman, and hear Neil talk about them — here.) Can you imagine going to see a Led Zeppelin cover band, and having the real Robert Plant come out and sing? Or seeing Hell’s Belles and having Angus Young come out to solo? Or imagine it from the band’s perspective, getting to play with the person you’ve been covering.

I tracked down members of Super Diamond for further investigation:

What was it like to actually be onstage with Neil Diamond? Your “Surreal” Neil and real Neil onstage at the same time? Isn't that some form of paradox? Or shouldn't the earth stop rotating? Like a Y2K? Maybe a school of whales beached themselves? Were there locusts?
Randy Cordero (Singer / Guitar): Neil singing with us was amazing. He was super nice, super cool, super friendly, and he already knew the songs! No locusts.

James Terris (Keyboard): It definitely felt like something strange, good or bad, might happen. One thing did stop, and that was the crowd at the House Of Blues on Sunset Strip.

How did it feel to actually perform with him?
Cordero: Words can't describe how it felt, especially the first time he sang with us. To meet your master and your mentor, and then jam with him? It also made my parents happy.

Terris: It was a surreal experience. I had played the song "I Am I Said" a hundred times prior to Neil singing it with us. As I started the beginning and watched Neil Diamond himself walk past me, I got tunnel vision. I thought, “God, is this happening?”

What did people in the crowd do when the real Neil Diamond walked out onstage?
Terris: There was dead silence. It was like the Twilight Zone episode where the guy could stop time and freeze everyone. The crowd just stared in wonder, curiosity, amazement? I think for a moment they weren't sure if he was real, or an impersonator.

Mr. Cordero, how does your voice differ from Neil's? If you had to compare? How do you approach singing the songs?
Cordero: Neil's voice differs from itself, really. His voice in the last two decades sounds so different from the first two. I'm a bigger fan of Neil's studio albums from the first two decades. I'm not as fond of his live albums from the 80's on. My voice doesn't sound like Neil's much, but styling it with Neil-isms makes it fit into the occasion, I think.

Seattle sketch duo Black Daisy has released an instructional guitar video. Danny Barnes and Devon Sheilds star as muffed, lighter versions of Lemmy Kilmister and Don Dokken. Really though, I can’t get over the Ice Wizard. A real man of metal, with real hair down to his knees. I caught up with them (and the Ice Wizard) to get their thoughts:

How did this Burn 2 Shred Instructional come together?
Danny Barnes: It was 1990 and we knew we couldn't keep these guitar secrets to ourselves any longer. We had been seeing so many shitty videos that were NOT teaching the right techniques. So we grabbed some lights, went into the garage, and created one of the hottest instructional videos on the market.

Where and how did you meet the Ice Wizard?
Devon Sheilds: Really, little is known about the Ice Wizard. He appeared to Danny in a dream, and we were at the local watering hole for "two fers" (which means you get two drinks for the price of one) and he was standing in the corner holding some punk rock kid up by his neck. We went over and asked him if he would be in our video and he made a grunt noise and slapped me.

Barnes: It was pretty scary because after he slapped Devon he started chanting. Then he said he would do it if we provided beer and transportation. So he gave us the address and we picked him up in the middle of this field outside of Bellingham. We were freaked out because the little shack that he lived in was on fire. We asked him if he wanted to put the fire out before we left and he said, "You may see fire, but I see the eternal soul."

Describe the Ice Wizard. What was he like off camera? What bands does he play in? Does he do drugs? What are his hobbies?
Sheilds: Off camera, he would just go to a corner of the room and face away from us. We could hear him mumbling something, but he was mostly unresponsive. His hair is longer than the Skykomish River. We heard a rumor that his real name is Rob and that he enjoys channeling Ramtha and watching The Cash Cab. No wait, that’s JZ Knight who channels Ramtha. My bad.

Barnes: Yeah, Ice Wizard was quiet until he heard the words “beer, guitar, or pussy.” Then he perked right up. He definitely drinks, but we really don’t know much else about him. After he shredded his guitar and went back into that room in the video, he disappeared. He was gone and we haven't heard from him since.

Where does your shredding come from?
Barnes: It comes from years of blood, sweat, tears, and alcohol fueled nights at the Roxy in LA, ripping it up in various metal bands.

Sheilds: You have to be born with it. There’s a shit ton of poseurs out there.

What’s the point of shredding?
Barnes: What's the point of going to work in the morning? What's the point of feeding your babies? What's the point of that retarded show Lost? Shredding is a way of life, a statement about how we're being fucked everyday in this world.

Sheilds: You can't tell me a solo hasn't changed your life at some point, or in my case, it's actually stopped me from killing somebody.

If you had to describe shredding in terms of us being animals, with sperm and eggs, how would you describe it?
Sheilds: We're the dick. The listener is the birth canal. Plain and simple.

What kind of guitars and amps are you all using?
Sheilds: I’ve found my signature sound with a Gibson SG and a ‘59 Tweed Fender Deluxe. When combined with the Boss HM-2 Heavy Metal and a Pro Co vintage RAT distortion pedal, my tone can cure cancer.

Barnes: I really have no idea. I go through guitars like Nikki Sixxx went through coke spoons in ‘87. I guess my main battle-axe these days is my Gibson Explorer.

Line Out exclusive interview with the Ice Wizard after the jump.

• Hilary Harris
• Mark Playing that Stolen Guitar

Mark Pickerel is a country / honky tonk singer songwriter who fronts His Praying Hands band. He’s also a drummer, seen and heard throughout the years in Screaming Trees, Nirvana, Brandi Carlile, Neko Case, The Dusty 45's, Jim Carroll, Beat Happening, Mark Lanegan, and Carrie Akre. There’s a lonesome pageantry to Mark Pickerel and His Praying Hands. Rock n’ roll that twangs with a trucker’s heavy heart.

So you opened the case and saw that the guy was trying to sell you your own guitar. How did that feel?
Pickerel: I was dumbfounded.

What did you do?
I told him I wasn’t an expert in acoustic guitars and that I wanted to make sure he got a good deal. I said I had a friend who knew guitars that I needed to call, and I stepped into my back office to call the cops. Last thing I wanted to do was tip him off that I knew. I didn’t want him to bolt, or do something crazy. While I was on the phone with the police, I saw the preacher’s son come in and put a Misfits box set and some Betty Page trading cards up his shirt. I could see through a window from the office. I didn’t tell the cops about the preacher’s son. I knew who he was and figured they could deal with him when they got there. The kid was a minor and I wasn’t ready to send him to the can.

How did the busts go down?
There were no sirens or anything. The cops walked in quietly. When the preacher’s son saw them, he burst into tears, producing the box set from his shirt saying he was sorry for what he had done. The officers were confused, they thought they were there to bust the guy crying. I had to say, “No, it’s this other guy, he’s the one I want you to bust. He just tried to sell me my own guitar. You can bust the kid, but I don’t want to press charges.”

What did the guitar thief do?
He was shocked. There was nothing he really could do. He went to jail. But he didn’t cry.

Did he ever find out that he tried to sell the guitar back to its owner?
Yeah. I guess he was pretty humiliated. Turns out he was a big Screaming Trees fan too. He told his friends to come in and apologize to me.

He was a Screaming Trees fan? I love that. That is perfect. What happened to the preacher’s son?
He came in and worked it off. I put the Misfits box set on hold for him and gave it to him in the end. He didn’t want his dad to find out he was into stuff like the Misfits or Betty Page.

That was very cool of you. Did people try to steal from the store often?
Oh yeah. All the time. There was this whole contingent of fashion conscious punk guys from Moses Lake who dressed all Hot Topic. They would come in and chit chat and steal Iggy Pop and Black Flag CD’s. I caught one of them trying to steal a Black Flag parka and a Black Flag skateboard at the same time.

Nice. He was going for the matching set.
One kid stole a Bob Marley box set, and was playing it for his Dad, who was a friend of mine. The Dad called me to tell me how much they were enjoying the Marley CD’s his kid had gotten from my store. I was like, “What Marley CD’s?”

For your show at the Comet, will there be any special treats?
We play early. It’s a stripped down set. Just myself, Barb Hunter (Afghan Whigs) on cello, and Johnny Sangster on guitar. I might play some kick drum with my left foot.

Mark Pickerel and His Praying Hands play the Comet Saturday, Oct. 17th at 9 PM

• Will Austin
• Camilo Estrada: Not a String Boiler

What’s this about boiling strings? Do you boil your strings?
Camilo: No. I don’t boil my strings. I’ve heard of other bass players doing it to refresh their sound. I did used to burn my fingers though, to toughen them up. I wouldn’t recommend that. It’s kind of stupid.

Who boils their strings?
I personally don’t know anyone that does it. If you really need to save money, I guess you can do that. Maybe I’m too lazy. I should try it.

How does boiling them in water make them sound better?
When the acito-coline membrane of the inner tubule is brought to the boiling point, the coils recoil and are able to produce clean frequencies again.

Seriously?
No. Just kidding. I think boiling them would just get all the dirt and grime and grease build up off the strings. I’ve heard it works, but that it only lasts for a short time. Then they’re dead again. It depends on what kind of sound you want. Some bass players like a deader, rounder sound. Like Funk Brothers’ James Jamerson from Motown, he never changed his strings. He liked that tone. You should see Standing in the Shadows of Motown, it’s great. For players that slap and go for a higher, super bright sound, maybe they boil their strings. Like fusion players, Victor Wooten or Stanley Clarke who use some thinner strings.

What kind of strings do you play? How often do you change them?
I use D’Addario XL Medium Brights. They’re punchy and maintain a tight sound on the low B string. It can get a little unclear down there. But the D’Addarios keep a really defined sound. I change them every four to six weeks or so.

How was playing with Dyme Def at Bumbershoot?
That was fun. They have incredible stage energy. It’s always fun to be a part of a show that draws people in. Luckily, the weather cooperated with us that day. I love their song "2 Go". The live band played it with this dance hall type feel, which was different from the recording, but they liked it and went with it. And their song “Get Down”, they’ve been doing that one for a while, but playing it with a live band really rejuvenated it for them.

How was backing Dyme Def different from backing Blue Scholars? Did the band (Big World Breaks) do anything differently?
We didn’t necessarily do anything different. When there’s material to learn, I approach shows the same way. I’ll learn the parts at home, and practice it on my own, however long it takes to learn the stuff. The other guys in Big World Breaks are the same way, everyone learns the parts on their own, then we’ll come together for rehearsals as a band and work it out.

Was the Dyme Def stuff tricky?
They were particular and detailed about certain breaks, and parts where stuff cuts out. With a live band, it’s not going to sound exactly like the CD, but we approximated, and added the live element. It was exciting to hear and play their music that way. There were more layers with the live band. I think they were happy. I’d love to do it again.

You have a new band right?
Yes. Devon Lewis on drums, Owuor Arunga on trumpet, Andy Coe on guitar, and Gary Palmer on keys. We’re called TRIUMPH. It’s some funk, jazz, and latin. We hit on some drum n bass with it too.

How is it playing with Devon? That guy is an absolute monster. Watching him play is like riding a roller coaster.
Yeah, he’s a monster, really adept. We have a show November 12th at Waid’s on 12th and Jefferson.

Will you be burning your fingers for that show?
No. No finger burning. But Waid’s will be cooking up the Akra Fritters - sautéed shallots, taro root vegetables, and black eyed peas. So good. Waid’s is a cool spot. The best Haitian eats in town.

See a man in a Jaco Pastorius hat boil his bass strings after the jump.

Rain was falling in Chapel Hill, NC. A thick southern rain. Big drops drenching everything, lurid and slow through the intertwined gold-red maple and poplar trees. Changing colors stand out in the grey of a storm. Brooklyn based trio School of Seven Bells has arrived at the beginning of a U.S. tour, the last in support of their Ghostly International release Alpanisms. When identical twin sisters Alejandra and Claudia Deheza sing, they sound so similar, sound engineers can’t tell them apart. Live, the combination is rousing and possessed. School of Seven Bells’ music is a charmed snake. Poised and unsolved, inside the caravan's ear-brain. Cobras rise from baskets, controlled and moving to sound. These twins know each other’s thoughts, and somehow yours as well. All ears wait to hear what they’ll say when they sing.

Guitarist Benjamin Curtis spoke backstage before their Chapel Hill show:

You guys are headlining this tour. How is headlining different?
Benjamin: Headlining is very different. It means we can play longer sets. We’re not on and off in thirty minutes. We can settle into what we’re doing, settle into the sound. It was important for us to do this tour, headlining a tour in the U.S. We’d headlined in other countries, but not here. I think when people go to a show to hear a band, their ears are a little more tuned in to what the band is playing. You know? People are listening a little more intently, as opposed to hearing an opening band that they didn’t come to see.

Do you play differently knowing people are there to see and hear you?
No, not different. I’d say we play darker. With longer sets, the band can explore the darker corners of our world.

You all have been touring so much, does it ever wear you down?
We definitely get in a daze from all the travel. But getting to play so much makes the music better. It gets to a point where playing the songs becomes automatic, and we don’t really have think about the mechanics of playing them, it’s just second nature. And I like that, because then, you can take the songs to other places and make different decisions with them.

You all are playing new songs now. How are the new songs? How does playing them affect your set?
It’s exciting. Invigorating. Playing the new songs makes us play the old stuff in a fresh way. I think the new stuff is more simple and powerful. I wouldn’t say there’s less subtlety to them but more depth. Melodically, they’re stronger. The good parts of Alpanisms are magnified and honed in on.

Is a new album in the works? Any plans for a release?
Yeah. We’re almost finished with our next album. It’s called Disconnect from Desire. It’ll come out sometime next year.

How has the recording been? How do your songs come together?
We build stuff up and tear it down. Less slid through the filter this time around. Our songs come together a million different ways. We’ll work on something and get it to a point, then step away. Later, if a different harmony or sound comes to mind, we’ll try it. If it sounds better, we’ll delete what we’ve done. It’s painful to delete a day's worth of recording, but sometimes it’s necessary. We’re not using a producer. There’s a lot of energy right now for these new songs. We’re riding that. Until we hit a wall, we’ll keep going.

Does SVIIB consciously create, or do songs arise out of jamming and messing around?
For me, if I’m writing a song, it’s something I intend to do. Accidents happen yeah, but we set out to make this record, and write these songs. So I guess we’re consciously creating. Playing live as much we have has influenced us. We’re writing like we’re playing live, with a bigger sound. It’s more visceral. We weren’t aware of the danciness so much before. I didn’t realize the beats had so much drive. The new stuff goes with that drive. Like a car on a road at night with no headlights. When you know the road well enough, you don’t need lights.

Who makes your beats?
I do. I was a drummer before I was a guitar player with Secret Machines. I’ve always been into beats and spent a lot of time making them.

Have you ever played with a live drummer?
We played a show with Matt Shultz, from Holy Fuck, and it was cool. There are tons of drummers I’d love to work with. But our sound comes from us playing to sequenced drums. It’s an aesthetic decision for us to play this way. Playing with a live drummer almost feels like too fundamental a change. It’s like the songs don’t feel right that way.

School of Seven Bells play Neumos Saturday, Oct. 10th

• Hilary Harris

Grand Archives new Sub Pop release Keep in Mind Frankenstein is out now and waiting for you. The theremin, pedal steel, cello, and accordion doused album sits richly in a set of speakers. It lilts through to ears like a late, low afternoon sun angling through a dusty ridge cabin window. Some form of hawk overhead sees a field mouse from two hundred feet up but doesn’t dive to snag it because the taut soaring bird is locked in an updraft and a memory of its previous life as a lumberjack making love to a stack of blueberry flapjacks five high. The footfalls of the songs on Keep in Mind Frankenstein are familiar and walk into the room with intent. You can picture Mat Brooke, Curtis Hall, Jeff Montano, and Thomas Wright sitting there, playing and writing these arrangements. Right there, feet away, in and of themselves; old dogs asleep, smelling biscuits, draped by the static of an AM radio tuned to Kitty Wells.

Grand Archives: "Witchy Park/Tomorrow (Will Take Care of Itself)"

One of the reasons the songs sound so mint is that many were written and played for the first time moments before they were recorded. Mat Brooke broke it down:

What was different about putting together Keep in Mind Frankenstein?
Mat: This new album was unique in a way for us because nearly every song we went into the process with got thrown away for one reason or another. Most of the songs ended up being written the same day they were recorded. It’s not an approach I would necessarily suggest, but for us, and this record, I think it has a refreshing honest sound.

What were some of the reasons you decided not to go with the original songs? Did they just not fit the sound of the album? Or was it that the new ones were that much better? How do you know when to cut a song?
It’s hard to know when to throw away a song. You work so hard writing and recording some songs that you almost want to keep them no matter what. But at the end of the day when you are listening to it and you find yourself cringing a just a little bit, that’s when you gotta let them go.

Any weird instruments on the album?
We used a thin metal tray table as a snare drum. The kind of tray you’d eat your dinner on in front of the TV. If you throw all of your pocket change and keys on it, mic it just right, and tap on it with your fingers, it becomes a cool snare drum sound. You can hear it on “Siren Echo Valley Pt. 2”.

Grand Archives: “Siren Echo Valley Pt. 2”

Jeff also built this elaborate sixteen wine glass instrument where he filled each glass with an eyedropper to get the perfect pitch and then played it like some kind of spooky organ. You'd have to see it, but he accidentally smashed it. And we usually like the combo of this old piano with the strings all taped up accompanying a plucked cello for some soft undertones.

Do synths ever show up on Grand Archives albums?
Generally as a rule we don’t allow any synths. I think the new record might have snuck one on though, but that’s not entirely for sure.

Where do you all record?
We’ve recorded our records with Ben Kersten at the helm. We start at his studio MRX in Sodo, and then really dig in at this amazing studio in the mountains of Index, WA called Paradise Sound. The town has this perfect, peacefully haunted vibe to it and I think it always has a huge influence on our state of mind and the way we write and record the songs.

Grand Archives play The Crocodile Thursday, Sept 24th

What’s your job for the Sonics?
Jim: I’m their front of the house engineer, their mixer.

How’s it been? Were you a Sonics fan before?
It’s been amazing. Yes, I am a fan, especially being from Seattle. Before Heart and Hendrix, there were the Sonics, the Wailers, and the Kingsmen. The shows the Sonics have been doing lately are bigger festivals and large club shows. It’s a real treat for me to be in this role after so many years at The Croc where I waited hand and foot on the big bands and their sound engineers. It’s nice to be that guy for a change.

• Jim Anderson
• Ink & Iron Festival in Long Beach, CA

How did your involvement with the Sonics come about?
Buck Ormsby of the Wailers and Etiquette Records knew they were looking for a sound man. He talked to Susan Silver, and she suggested me. I certainly appreciate the recommendation.

The Sonics, with you running sound? It just makes sense.
It’s a real privilege for me to work with these guys and to present their music the way they want it to be. It’s cool for me to get to do it. When you get to this level, especially with a band that’s been around for a long time you need to recognize that you have apply yourself fully and give it your best shot and do the best that you can while you have the opportunity. It’s really neat the way they want to do things.

How do the Sonics do things?
They’re a little older you know, and don’t want to spend their time on a tour bus. They would rather fly in. They want to have adventures. They like to get to a place a day or two early and acclimate. They like to see the sights. After the show, they hang out for another day. Nothing is too rushed.

Is there anything special to your Sonics mixing?
I approach sound the same for every band. Being hired to mix for one band is a little different because I can concentrate on just them and really dial their sound in. With the Sonics, I know the music. I know the sound they’re going after. When I got the job, I listened to their first couple albums over and over to learn their feel. I’m not trying to emulate the sound on their records exactly, I’m trying to maintain that feel.

• JIm Anderson
• Board Chart - Toronto

How do you do that? How do you get their sound?
It’s kind of a different overall approach to the EQ. It’s the entire sound spectrum. It’s a different focus, the way I want the whole thing to fit together. There are obvious things, like I wouldn’t want their kick drum to be punchy. It wouldn’t be appropriate for them to have that super sloppy high-end sound out of the kick drum. I’ll also do things like bump a guitar solo a little just before the vocals come in. It’s about knowing the band and knowing the songs.

Mixing is about taking the sounds the band is giving you and adjusting them to make it blend together as a whole. It’s not about me trying to re-work anything they’re doing. Since I know the band’s sound, I can help express that sound. If you listen to them, there’s subtle interplay between the keys and sax. That provides a textural feel. Don’t get me wrong, the Sonics are definitely guitar rock, but the sax and keys give it their texture. Sax and keys act like their rhythm guitar in a way.

Is dialing in their sound hard?
Given the situation, it can be a little difficult. Daytime shows outside can be tricky. Rock and roll is meant for the night! It’s hard to rock at 11:00 in the morning. The conditions for an outdoor festival can change so much. If you’re sound checking at 11 AM and the band doesn’t play until 9 PM, weather, humidity, and temperature change, and that needs to be accounted for. It’s simple physics. Sound engineers need to be aware of science and how sound propagates in air. The hotter it is, the less dense the air is, molecules are farther apart. When it's 100 degrees, you have to put more energy into getting the sound out. When you’re making sound, you’re propagating waveforms.

What are they like to work with?
They’re great guys. They have their own quirks, sure. One thing that’s unique about them is that they’re not used to all the technology. They basically took a thirty year break and in that time, technology advanced a bunch. The Guitar player Larry Parypa says they’re not used to monitors because back in the day, they had their amps and a couple of Atlas horns so the audience and band could hear the vocals. This gets back to remembering that PA stands for Public Address. That’s what they had. PA horns. So vocals could get over the guitars. That was it. That was production. That’s what it used to be.

They find it slightly frustrating having to rely on all this technology to do what they want to do. They want to play rock and roll. It can be exasperating to have to deal with the glitches and snafu’s of complicated sound systems. Also, they don’t travel with any gear so they are using a supplied backline. Lots of their sound check is spent dialing in their individual gear. They do a top-notch job dealing with it. It’s nice for me to be able to take care of how it sounds, and just let them play. I want to give them confidence in knowing it’ll sound how they want it to.

• Jim Anderson
• Playing "The Witch" at the Echoplex in LA

Jim Continues after the jump.

Recently, he started making his own Recovery Class pedals for the masses. We spoke:

What do you call your distortion pedal?
Markel: Dust to Burn. It's a warm distortion pedal that ranges from a rich full overdrive to thick, deep saturation.

What type of sounds are you going for? How do your pedals differ from ones you might get at Guitar Center?
Unlike commercial pedals or even most boutique pedals, Dust to Burn is completely hand wired. There is no printed circuit board. I use new old stock whenever available such as vintage carbon resistors, vintage germanium transistors, etc. I use American made stock whenever it's available. The Dust to Burn pedal is about 20% American stock, and I'm always looking to improve.

How did you get into making pedals?
I'm fascinated with tools that help me create unique sounds, and I'm obsessed with learning how to be a more versatile and valuable artist. I love playing guitar, but I also love producing, twisting knobs, and building stuff.

What’s your process for pedal making?
After I've completed the long and arduous process of building my design on a breadboard, interchanging parts and tweaking to get it sounding just right, I look for parts to build two or three at a time. I search eBay, Mouser, and other online stores to get the parts I need. Then I sit down, solder, and listen for a long time to music and various news programs. Have you used the Stictcher app for the iPhone? You can listen to podcasts, news, etc, and arrange the order in which they play. Oh! After soldering, I drill, paint, and assemble. It's very therapeutic. Although I don't think inhaling lead is very good for you. That reminds me, I need to look into some of that lead free solder.

What do you have to say about Vinnie Vincent?
Vinnie Vincent was a songwriting partner with Kiss for a long time (Vincent Cusano) before his high speed shredding was exposed as studio trickery on his solo record. See, he slowed down the tape so much that it sounded like chipmunk guitars. But fuck him, he wrote mostly only whack Kiss jams, it's not like he co-wrote Rock and Roll All Night.

Have you ever electrocuted yourself?
I'm messing with DC, not AC wall current with these pedals, so my risk of getting lead poisoning is way higher than getting electrocuted. I have been shocked bad a shitload of times though from various musical adventures. You know the bass player from Uriah Heap died from getting shocked on stage? It's true. Also, the Shell station down the street, where I buy most of my beer, sells fake gum that shocks you when you try to pull out a stick. There's a misspelling on the packaging. It says "TULL HERE". They also sell XL and XXL Obama T-Shirts, dreamcatchers, lotto tickets, knives, and crack pipes.

• Photo: Annie Beedy

The quirk and jangle of a Fruit Bats stomp is lighthearted and driving. Singer / Songwriter Eric Johnson puts a tilled, country air into his key changes and modulations. Songs on Fruit Bats’ third album The Ruminant Band take unexpected turns while Johnson’s happy-ish vocals sit in well wrapped, well placed swells. Uniqueness to Fruit Bats' sound stems from their knowledge of recording, their musicianship, and their mastery of the fabled Mattel Electronics Optigan. Yes, the Optigan (OPTIcal orGAN), or musical “assist” organ, an entity that has been changing music since the seventies.

Fruit Bats: "Flamingo"

Eric Johnson and Fruit Bats Drummer / Producer Graeme Gibson spoke:

Is that an Optigan I hear on your song “Flamingo”?
Eric: Yes. Yes it is. Graeme has a studio called Clava in Chicago that's filled with good stuff. The Optigan has been in there for a while. Any time I'm there I sit down and play with it every spare moment I have. I think most bands that have come through Clava get snared into its net of radness. I know that Califone was in right before us and had used it, and it was on a recent Joan of Arc record, right Graeme?

Graeme: The Optigan was just barely on the Joan of Arc record. They insisted it make it on somehow, so it ended up as the fade-out of a song on their new album Flowers. The Optigan is sort of a Melotron, but uses an optical disc for the source instead of tape. It has rhythm tracks and sounds sick, and only works half the time. Eric would always do joke Optigan versions of songs until we loved them and had to record with it. We ended up making a version of a song with the Optigan that live, we can only play like Isis.

What is it about the Optigan that you love? Is it the power and mystery? Or is it the Bossa Nova, the Nashville Country, or the Latin Fever disc?
Graeme: It's hard to describe love, but to me, these things make everything around them sound better.

Eric: For me it’s the light sensor. The Optigan runs off of LP sized floppy discs that have pre-recorded musical loops of a full band playing in various keys. The Latin Fever is sweet indeed. Hit a button and a light sensor, not a laser, plays back that key. It sounds like the soundtrack to a psychedelic children's show that you control. The organ sound cuts through steel. One of the most ridiculous and gnarly organ sounds ever, really. And the loops are brilliant. I try to imagine the dudes who played on these and who they were. They must have been the most grizzled sesh-cats ever. The sound of an Optigan makes you smell menthol cigs and Brandy Alexanders. And it makes you see burnt orange and lime green. I actually had a pretty clear idea of the song I wanted to use this on, and it worked out.

How did you track it? Which disc did you use?

Eric: We tried a bunch of the discs, but we needed one that was in 3/4 time. I can't remember which floppy record it was. Can you remember, Graeme? All I know was it had the option of this amazingly weird church bell to chime here and there. Graeme and I sat there and both operated it at the same time for the basic tracks. It's a good two-man instrument. We only used it on "Flamingo", which makes it stick way out. That's kinda why we decided it would serve as the epilogue of the album.

Graeme: I think it was the disc called Organs. It had a couple different rhythms and drum fills that you could add in for the transitions. It's not a very stable piece of equipment and it's very noisy. I had to take the tracks in to Colossal Mastering for noise reduction and hum removal before mixing.

Does anyone in Fruit Bats lick the Optigan like the bass player from Whitesnake licks his bass?
Graeme: No Eric: Yes! Graeme: Gross

How do you feel about the licking of instruments? How do you feel about just plain licking?
Graeme: Instruments are usually old and dirty, I would prefer to lick young and purdy.

Eric: Licking is good. It can be used in foreplay, eating popsicles, or ice cream cones, or in the case of cats, cleaning your young.

Graeme: Gross

Fruit Bats play the Crocodile on Thursday, Aug. 20th and Mural Amphitheater on Friday, Aug. 21st.

Tiny Vipers' Jesy Fortino has lived other lifetimes. From her songs, she sings of these lives. Some previously lived, some yet to be. Her playing and arrangements are a stasis, vicariously balancing between these ancients and futures. Jesy’s sound is sparse and forlorn. She haunts the beauty of a room, singing lowly and lonely, whistling at times. Her songs are serums, almost awkward in how hard they hit. In "Dreaming" she sings, “Can we learn when we can’t understand?” A solid question. Cut to Saint-Remy, France. It's 1889 in the room of a mental asylum there. A painter named Vincent paints, it's what he does. A night, with stars. Yellow, dark blue. He hallucinates. A match in the dream is struck.

Tiny Vipers: "Dreaming"

Jesy Fortino also lives in the sound of her acoustic guitar. There’s a connection, a symbiosis of vocals and instrument. She spoke:

Is there a story to the guitar you play? Is it special to you?
Jesy: Yes. I went to the guitar store about five years ago and I played every guitar there until I found the one with the right tone. When I found it, I wrote down which one it was and how much it cost. It was $1900. I’d never spent that much money on anything but I told myself going in that once I found the right guitar, I would commit to buying it when possible.

How did you end up getting it?
I went to my work and signed up for as many shifts as I could. It only took a couple months to come up with the money. I would go back to the guitar store from time to time to play it to make sure I really wanted it. I was only a few hundred short the last time I went in and the guy working there saw me checking it out again. By then, we sort of knew each other because I had come in to look at it so many times. You could see the dollar signs in his eyes when I said I was actually interested in buying it. I finally admitted that I really wanted the guitar but I didn’t have all the money for it yet. He asked how much I had and I told him and he said if I bought it that day, he would sell it to me for the amount I had. I was so excited, I ran home and grabbed my envelope of money. I couldn’t believe I was actually getting it. I was listening to The good, the Bad, and the Ugly soundtrack on my headphones when I walked back up the hill to my house with the guitar. I hid it in the broom closet when I wasn’t playing it, I was so paranoid it would get stolen. I loved it so much. I still do.

Why is this guitar magic?
It has a special tone. A very special tone. I made up a way to tune it to really use these tones. I don’t have a name for it or anything like that. I just think it is perfect for what I like to do.

Have you ever lit a guitar on fire?
Nope

What do you think of lighting instruments on fire, in general?
—

You have toured over seas so much the last couple years, do you like the travel?
I like touring in Europe. Everything is closer together there. It is tougher in the U.S. because everything is so far apart. Plus, I like the different cultures. I like being there. I think I can relate to peoples’ attitude toward living much more there. Especially in Switzerland and Germany and Holland.

Where is your favorite foreign place to play?
Germany. People are really supportive and I have some friends there. I think Germans have a good sense of humor. Norway is good too. It’s nice to play for focused people. I think there is a larger group of more focused people over there.

For your over seas tours, do you have an entourage? Who goes with you? Do you have a system?
Every time I have gone it has been different. The first time I went I toured with a rock band called Buffalo Tom. I brought a guitar player with me. We all shared a van. Buffalo Tom has a good following in Europe. Mostly older people. The shows were big. I mean to me they were big. A lot of rock venues and rockers. We didn’t have a lot of time to see anything. I learned a bunch from Buffalo Tom because they’ve been doing it a long time. I only brought my guitar and a reverb pedal. The guitar got smashed on the airplane ride home. Luckily, I had it insured so I could get it fixed. With some of the remaining insurance money, I bought a flight case so it wouldn’t happen again. It's an ATA approved flight case, custom made to fit my guitar. It is huge. A huge metal box. It’s so stupid and big. When I went to go pick it up from the place I ordered it from I instantly regretted it. I can hardly carry it and the company forgot to put wheels on it. Just to check it in at the airport I pay $100 in fines for it being so big.

The second time I went to Europe I went alone. Most of the shows I played I either headlined or played with local bands. I bought a Eurail pass and took the trains. I didn’t have a cell phone or a computer. Before I left I made a notebook full of information: each place I had to go, what time I had to be there, what train I had to catch to get there, what time I had to wake up to catch the train, where the hotel was, what buses to catch to the hotel or venue, various contacts for each place, stuff like that. All my merch was in a backpack, as much as I could cram in there. It was heavy. I only had room for one change of clothes. The guitar and flight case were a huge complication. Riding the busses was very difficult. Some bus drivers wouldn’t let me on. I would have to argue with them and even if they let me on, everyone glared at me. The case was too heavy for me to lift so I bought a collapsible hand truck and used bungee cords to tie it on. I would push it around wherever I went. If I could avoid riding the bus I would, even if it meant walking for an hour or so. A lot of that tour was me trying to pull the flight case through towns on cobblestone streets. I got strong and had crazy muscles by the end. That was definitely the hardest I have ever had to work. I woke up around 6am everyday to put in motion all the things I had to do to get to the show on time. Cabs were out of the question. I have personal rules about how to spend money and cabs are out of the question.

It was weird to see all these places and have all these experiences alone. Some days, I wouldn’t even talk. I had no one to talk to. By the time I did get to the venue and met the promoter, I was so happy to talk to them and I would ask them questions about the town and the venue. I learned a lot about all the places because of this. And I made great friends. When you travel alone, people take you into their lives a little more. People would take me to their favorite restaurants or parks, show me around and hang out with me. When you are on tour with other people this doesn’t happen so often. I’m not sure why. I guess when people see you sitting there by yourself, they want to include you.

Ben Verellen is a Seattle man who makes amps. Verellen Amplifiers are beautiful, sturdy creations that give your sound tube strength, solitude, and solid foundation. Each amp is made with care. Each amp bestows the player with a sense of magma, power, and touch that only mountains and feathers know. Playing through a Verellen amp is not unlike a God creating the earth. Let there be light, and there is light. Let there be a finely crafted amp you can trust and love, and there is a Verellen.

If Ben were in Velella Velella, the band could be called Verellena Verellena. But Ben is actually in Helms Alee, who will be playing Total Fest VIII on August 21st and 22nd.

Ben spoke of his amp creating process. Next up, his process for creating birds and sea creatures:

How did you get into amp making?
Verellen: I played in bands, got into recording bands, and got interested in sounds and gear, which led to electronics. I went to electrical engineering school at UW, and didn’t want to get a job building airplanes or computers.

What is your specialty?
We do an amp right now called the Meat Smoke that we’re really excited about. It’s a 300-watt bass/guitar hybrid that can do both the duties of an Ampeg SVT and a Marshall full stack. You could backline an entire band using only these amps. They’re all tube, two channel, and very beefy with tons of headroom. Some might say it’s too loud, but that’s what a master volume control is for.

Let's talk amps and orgasms. Have you ever designed an amp that squirts a white foamy liquid? Prince has his guitar that jizzes, it would only seem natural that there would now be an amp that jizzes, or at least emulates some form of spraying bodily secretion.
No jizzing amps yet, but that’s something to think about.

What would you say the Verellen sound is?
Our custom orders have us making such vastly different amps that it’s really hard to identify one specific sound. One thing we can say is that whether we’re doing a fifteen watt, class-A combo, or a 300 watt, class AB 8x10” bass rig, we’re using all tube technology, and classic era guitar amp construction methods. We think this gives the amps a truer, and less sterile and filtered sound than most modern production amplifiers.

Do you ever get people ordering amps that are like, "I need the most evil guitar sound ever. Can you make me that?"
Totally, or, “Can you make it sound like a waterfall in outer-space?” Audio is a hard thing to articulate, and people can get pretty adventurous with trying to get their point across.

What's the craziest amp request you've gotten?
We had a customer who ordered a stereo guitar amplifier, basically two amps in one box. Each “amplifier” had foot-switchable clean and overdrive channels as well as a tube-driven effects loop. That was definitely an intense tetris experiment getting everything to fit in a way that looks nice and works well. Orders that haven’t gone through include a 2000-watt tube amp and a remote control laser inside the amp. We really ought to rein in just how custom we’ll go.

What's your process for making a guitar amp? Walk us through it.
This is how making an amp goes if you’re me. The first thing you need is a design. You can directly lift a design from something that somebody else has already, or you can take a working design and modify to taste, or you can start from scratch and break out the graphing calculator and tube data sheets and get real nerdy. Our design process uses some of all three of these approaches.

Next, you choose and source all of the parts you need. Once they arrive, you design a chassis layout, machine the chassis, and mount all of the components to the chassis. Finally, you wire up all of the components to complete the circuit. The amp is tested for bias voltages, tested for power, and tested for “Stairway to Heaven”. Once it passes, it’s “burned in” (left on) for a full day.

While this is happening your buddy Mike is building a beautiful dovetailed Baltic Birch enclosure that is stained, varnished, and covered in hardware. Once the working amp is mounted inside the enclosure, it’s ready for delivery.

Truckasauras do not make waltz music, nor are they the Throat Singers of Tuva. Truckasauras make disgustingly sick, radiant, and electroid hip-hop hymns. Think dirigibles with miniature golf courses inside; an aerial and pimping sport of leisure.

Ryan Trudell, Truck’s Korg scholar, has pre Block Party words:

What is up in Truck land? You guys got to play with Egyptian Lover a couple months ago. How was that?

Trudell: First off, Egyptian Lover is the effing man. We played with him at Chop Suey. He showed up to the club with two turntables and an 808 in hand and proceeded to thoroughly rock the spot. After sound check, Sir-Mix-Alot and posse scooped him up outside of the club so they could go grab steaks and mob around town before his set.

Did he break you off any old school knowledge?
After our set, he signed our 808 and bestowed his 808 wisdom upon us. He told us that you can essentially get another sound out of the machine by using the trigger out (normally used to clock other synths / drum machines) as an audio source. The 808 has three trigger outs: clap, cowbell, and accent. Whenever a step appears with a programmed hit from one of these instruments a pulse is sent from its dedicated trigger output. By using the trigger out from the accent you can utilize this pulse and program it independently from the other hits. The result is a filthy electro click-ish hit.

Beautiful. What’s this about Truckasauras and mechanical bulls?
We were contacted by an insurance company that insures establishments that operate mechanical bulls. They were interested in using the Truckasauras brand and its inherent mega-patriotism to promote their company. Naturally, we were eager to work with Mechanical Bull Insurance, rated #1 broker by mechanical bull operators across the United States. By offering affordable $7,500 premiums, we feel that Mechanical Bull Insurance is doing a great service to the American people, allowing more establishments throughout the country to bring the joy of mechanical bull riding to the people.

Also insured are: Inflatables, Rodeos, Climbing Walls, Jousting, Castles, Petting Zoos, Mobile Quad Pods, Bungee Jump, Extreme Rides, and Adventure Races

Like Slash has Vodka, Truckasauras has Mechanical Bull Insurance. Tight. Have you been riding much?
A little. In exchange for Truck reppin' Mechanical Bull Insurance we were provided with a fully insured mechanical bull. We received it about a month ago. At first, it was pretty cool, but it seemed to be lacking something, and that something was MIDI. So we hit up a couple of our techie homies and they were able to engineer and install a MIDI retrofit. At that point our mechanical bull was fully MIDI equipped and its movements could be controlled via MIDI cc's or sequences. This proved to be awesome but it still seemed incomplete. Then it struck us. What this mechanical bull really needed were PECS and motherfucking BICEPS. After quite a bit of trial and error, our techs managed to mount the upper half of a mannequin to our mechanical bull and equip its arms with hydraulics. We now have a fully MIDI controlled, and fully insured, mechanical centaur. It's a sight to see, our MIDI centaur bucking and flexing, bucking and flexing, bucking and flexing. Keep a look out for Street Truck in Pioneer Square and our mechanical centaur at Cowgirl's Inc. in the near future.

Truckasauras plays CHBP at 7:45 on Saturday, July 25th in Neumos

Sleepy Eyes of Death are an instrumental band utilizing epic sound space and optical interaction. They put a room into a programmed capsule and launch it. Their shows build, mount, explode, escape, and veer. Sounds are synthesizer heavy, guitar flanked, and given life with even, thrusted beats. The four players and the lighting engineer are purely musical. Some Sleepy Eyes songs are molecules. Others are twenty-story water towers containing what remains of the Earth’s drinking water. 2012 is at hand. The Age of the Fifth Sun is coming to its end. Galaxies will align. Poles may shift. Sleepy Eyes of Death creates layers and domed cities for safety.

Drummer, Moog synth man, and programmer Keith Negley speaks:

What would you say are the most integral parts of Sleepy Eyes’ live sound?
Negley: Live, I'd say a Juno 60 and Moog Opus 3 are probably the synths you hear the most. They're used for all the main leads and any parts we want on top of the mix. They're really bare bones synths, extremely simple to program, and hard to make sound bad. We have more gear at home that gets used a lot on our recordings, but for live, it's all about the Roland and Moog combo.

Are you all playing to click tracks during your live sets?
Just the drummer gets the click usually. There are occasions where drums don't come in right away and someone on keys needs to keep time, but that doesn't happen very often. Our light engineer is also fed the click to help with some of his cues.

Sleepy Eyes of Death - "Crushed By Stars":

Sleepy Eyes of Death - "Crushed By Stars" with Click Track:

Does playing to a click come naturally?
We started out playing without one, but quickly realized the limitations to that. When we figured out how to send a click track to the drummer, it was a welcomed addition. I think it makes us better drummers in general. It definitely makes us more aware of the slightest changes in tempos.

What other effect does playing to a click have on the songs?
It keeps the songs tight. Multiple samples and sequences are being triggered at any given time and with the drummer playing to a click it makes things solid. No guess work when the fog is ablaze.

And with Sleepy Eyes, fog is ablaze. What was the evolution of your click?
We played our first year together without a click, and our songs were simpler then. We couldn't really utilize any sequences or arpeggiators without it. So to get the sound we were going for it was a necessary evil.

What would the songs be like if you all didn't play to clicks?
Let's just say they'd be jazzier.

Is there a downside to playing with click tracks?
It can suck the feeling out of song if you're not careful. I think a lot of what's exciting about seeing a band live is that subtle push and pull of the tempo. We don't have that. Playing to a click also puts the drummer in a different head space than the rest of the band. Much more militant and less fluidity. It's a trade off, but I think we make up for it in other ways.

Does gear turn you on? I mean, attraction is attraction.
Synths are sexy. They're covered in knobs, well, the good one's anyway. They beg to be touched and fiddled with. They're not like guitars where exploring sounds requires a suitcase of boutique effect pedals. With a good synth you can dial in a tone that's a unique one-of-a-kind sound. No other instrument let's you sculpt sound to such a degree. What's not to love?

Have you ever wanted to have a robot companion?
Doesn't everybody?

Is there a downside to having a robot as a companion? Have you heard of Real Dolls?
I have heard of Real Dolls, but they're completely inanimate aren't they? They just lay there and don't make a sound? I'm only interested in things that make noise.

Run us through the Sleepy Eyes stage set up.
Let's see, we've recently streamlined things a bit. It used to be a lot crazier, but we learn from every show how to simplify things. The main station has the Roland Juno 60 that sits above the Moog Opus 3. They're both poly-synth work-horses and can handle a wide range of tones, have all dedicated knobs and sliders, and of course are analog. We used to use a few other Moogs but they couldn't stay in tune due to constant humidity changes on stage, so they had to go. The Moog Opus 3 is the only Moog I've ever owned that stays in tune. It's sort of the bastard child of the Moog line, but we love it.

Next to that is our MPC1000 which is the brain of our set up. Nice and compact the MPC plays any samples we want sync'd to the beat, and also runs a click track on a separate output to a Rane HC-6 headphone mixer. The click track goes to whoever is on drums and our light engineer.

Sleepy Eyes of Death play CHBP in Neumos @ 7:45 on Friday, July 24th

For further breakdown of Sleepy Eyes set up:

Hollow Earth Radio is an online, streaming, DIY radio station based out of a Wallingford mothership house. They champion local and Northwest music with live house shows and in-home performances, and they feature indie / underground music from around the world. Hollow Earth Radio is interested in what they call the “human experience.” They want to know the stories behind the songs and musicians. They want connection of internet to souls. Hollow Earth also airs audio oddities such as found sound, field recordings, paranormal story-telling, and dream analysis. Hollow Earth broadcasts twenty-four hours a day seven days a week.

Co-founder / director Garrett Kelly broke down the station’s make up:

How does Hollow Earth Radio broadcast its signal online? What is the technology used?
Kelly: We broadcast from an iMac computer at our central station in a Wallingford attic. We use software for the Mac called Nicecast that costs $40, and while not free, it’s really easy to setup and use. Using Nicecast, we broadcast our 'signal' out to a Shoutcast Server that is hosted by Rockandrollhosting.com and that server handles all the bandwidth of multiple people connecting to the radio at once. When you tune in via iTunes, you're actually connecting to that Shoutcast server which is being fed the stream by our attic computer, The Mothership.

Another piece of the puzzle is the service called LoudCity.com, which is how we pay royalties. LoudCity has an interesting way of dealing with the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) laws which basically say that royalty fees must be on a domain by domain basis. Instead of small broadcasters having to pony up a bunch of money in order to even get started, LoudCity has found a way to share the costs. Basically, they have a huge user base who all host their streams at the same website and each pay a small fraction of the bulk royalty rate. When you browse to the 'Listen' page of Hollow Earth Radio site you are technically on LoudCity.com but it looks fairly similar to the rest of the Hollow Earth site so most people would never know.

Walk us through your setup? Gear wise, what equipment do you run the station with?
We have the main iMac computer that is sadly in the shop right now after a hard drive failure. Right now, we're on a backup machine that someone donated. We have a small mixer next to the computer, a compressor, and a huge mic that Alex from 20/20 Cycles donated to us. He called it the 'Donkey Dick' mic. I saw Howard Stern using one. We also have two PC's tucked away in the corners for volunteers to upload new music and do behind the scenes stuff on. One of the PC's has also recently been setup to handle transfers of old reel to reel recordings - someone donated about a 1000 old reels to us and we're going through and digitizing them all.

What's the most embarrassing thing you've accidentally played on the air?
Eek. Maybe Rachel's drunk Georgetown / Capitol Hill Block Party interviews? Although, we didn't play those on accident. Sometimes DJ's don't realize they still have the mic on and you can hear what they are doing and talking about. But I like to listen a while before I tell the DJ’s they can still be heard.

Have you ever had a Canadian man on the air who claimed he was reptilian?
Sasha, Amber's sister, did in fact interview a man in Canada who said that he was a reptilian being, and he meant it. I was convinced of his reptilian-ness. Shannon Perry had a good show last weekend where she did two hours without playing any music - totally just winging it. She called up her friends and shot the shit. Forrest's Star Wars / Star Trek nerd show got simulcast by a terrestrial radio in New Jersey — very exciting!

How often does nudity occur during broadcasts?
I'm not so sure about this one, although one of our DJ's did have a first date while on air and we have the whole thing recorded. Amber and I went up to check on them and caught them kissing so we left them alone.

Run us through the setup for your remote broadcasts.
This is something I'm really excited about. I wrote some scripts and instructions for people so that they can use this program called 'ssh' to login to our Mothership remotely via their terminal window. It's all like War Games and shit. Anyway, they can login and there are these scripts I wrote so that they can stop the main broadcast and fade out the music and then as that's happening, they can start the broadcast on their computer. If all goes right, people listening will have no idea that the broadcast just switched from our Wallingford headquarters to say, Billy Joe in Albaqueque, New Mexico (who DJ's on sundays'). We've done live remote broadcasting from What The Heckfest in Anacortes, Wa, Folklife at the Vera stage, various house shows, and events around Seattle. Just this weekend we setup a remote broadcast system at YMCA Camp Colman over in the South Sound so that they can broadcast their 'campfires' over the summer. We're hoping to have a few more substations set up around the Washington area so that we can get more diverse voices and small broadcasters all hooked in together and sharing the same Hollow Earth Radio infrastructure.

Campfires? Internet campfire broadcasts? Will you be close mic'ing s’mores? Ghost stories? Ghost stories scare the ever living shit out of me.
I think it's going to be mostly skits and singing. Our first test run was with the Camp Counselors doing their version of American Idol. It was out of control.

Neumos head sound engineer Evan LaSure is an amiable and skilled man. He and his beard have become fixtures behind the Neumos board. LaSure has keen ears and nimbleness on the faders and knobs. He’s quiet and in the early stages of sagedom. LaSure knows the room and how to dial a band’s sound in for the room. Most of all though, he’s patient. LaSure lets musicians do what they need to do.

We spoke and thoughts on his science of sound flowed. Then his beard came alive, leapt off his face, and tackled me like a charging black bear:

What is your approach to running live sound?
LaSure: The way I look at it, I'm more of a translator than anything else. I listen to what's coming off of the stage and try to mix it in a way that gets the musicians’ point across. Beyond just being able to hear everything, you have to make a call on what the focal points of the songs should be, and what overall sound the musicians are looking for. For example, if I'm mixing a reggae show, I need to make sure that the hi-hat is more prominent in the mix than it would be for a mellow indie rock band, because that's part of the sound of the genre, and the musicians expect the audience to hear that. Basically, I'm trying to make the band louder in an artistic way.

What makes a band easy to work with?
Nice equipment and good tones are a plus, but honestly, as long as people are friendly and relaxed, the work environment is awesome. Personality has more to do with it than anything else.

What makes a band difficult to work with?
When they're dicks. Or when the band is just plain awful. Neither one of these situations crop up very often. Usually my job is pretty fun.

What's the loudest band you've ever run sound for? How do ridiculously loud bands change the way you run the board?
I did monitors for Dinosaur Jr., which has by far the largest guitar setup I have ever seen. J. Mascis surrounds himself with guitar amps, which basically turns his vocal mic into one giant guitar amp mic. I had to do some pretty fancy things to get his vocal into his wedge, but it ended up being great. A lot of nu-metal bands have some pretty ridiculous stage volumes as well - do you really need to run your Marshall stack that loud? When that happens you just kind of have to work around it, keeping the guitars low in the mix to compensate for the ridiculous levels coming off the stage. There have been nights where I take the bass amp completely out of the mix. Doing some drastic panning can help get some separation out of the instruments as well.

Talk beard for me. You have a great and sturdy beard. Any inspiration behind it? Have you ever gotten an omelet caught in your beard?
Never an omelet, but stuff does have a way of getting caught in there. Rice can get a little tricky. Does laziness count as inspiration?

Is it true that someone barfed on the sound board at a club where you worked? Can you talk about that barfing?
Yeah, it's true. We had a guy come in, get through sound check and immediately start drinking tequila on his dinner break. He showed up on time for the show to start, got halfway through the first band and left. He just went home without telling anybody. I get up to the stage to do the changeover, go up to monitor world, and find a huge pile of puke all over the place, three empty beer bottles, and no monitor engineer. Luckily he managed to miss anything expensive, but it was still really gross. I had to get through the rest of my night by myself, while cleaning up puke. The worst part was, there was a garbage can not three feet from where he did his business. Needless to say, he doesn't work at that place anymore.

Walk us through a night. During sound check, what are you doing? Do you really remember the levels for all the bands?
The first thing I do when I get in is to go through any paperwork to see stage plots and input lists. Then I prep the stage for when the band gets there. When the headliner arrives, we get them set up, put mics in all their gear, and figure out the best way to patch the stage and organize all of our cabling. We create a chart for the patch, and make sure that all of the mics are labeled according to what instrument they go on, so we can get the correct mics back on the instruments when they go on during the show. Essentially, the entire first half of the day is organization, and making sure we don't have any problems during the show.

Next we listen to the P.A. to make sure that all the equipment is working properly. The P.A. is also tuned to make sure the room sounds good to start off with. Then we run through a check instrument by instrument to make sure that A) everything is working properly and B) all the instruments sound good individually. After that, the band plays some songs, both to get a good overall starting point in the room, and to make sure the band is happy on stage and that the monitors aren't feeding back. The worst thing a sound person can do is let mics feed back all night.

While I'm doing this I'm going through all my outboard gear, making sure that my compressors are patched in correctly. I make sure I'm getting good gain reduction while at the same time not pumping the life out of a vocal. Also, I make sure that the levels are staying consistent on my preamps, and not clipping all over the place. I want them to be reading a nice, solid input level.

Next, I set my bus structure, get my effects sends figured out and set to the proper levels, and do any tweaking to the graphic E.Q. that controls the overall sound of the P.A. I'm also listening to the room, and trying to figure out how it's going to change for the show. One thing a lot of people don't realize is that the number of people in a room, the actual temperature of the room, and even the humidity have a huge effect on the way sound travels in a given space. Variances in temperature and humidity actually slightly change the speed of sound of a given frequency, and I have to compensate for that at the desk. An empty room on a cold, dry day is going to sound more quiet and thin than a packed house in the middle of August because of the way certain frequencies travel at a given set of atmospheric conditions.

Pictures by: Blush Photo

London Bridge Studio is a mecca. It is a bastion of gear head fantasy with its vintage Neve 8048 console and drum room of Bonham delight. Being a gear head in London Bridge Studio is like being a necrophiliac in a morgue. There’s too much to like.

On the other side the inputs and keyboards is an enmeshed intestinal world of circuits and wire. There the gear head feeds. Underneath knobs, faders, and screens lies a minute constellation of geekdom and know how. Ram, bits, and chains run. Can you feel it? The beauty. Electricity is the soundcard’s dreaming.

When working with computers and sound, signals are constantly being translated from analog to digital and back again. When the guitar player lays down their part, and you are editing it on a computer, you want the quality of sound to be the highest it can be. When you burn the song to disc, you want the disc to sound as good as can, right? Of course you do.

A/D converters do the translating. Different types of converters operate at different resolutions. That resolution determines the sound quality. Then there is the dithering. Dithering takes signal and allows the computer to understand it. Having good converters can make your home recording. Converters can provide the magic.

Like the stone mason knows stone, and the astronaut — space, the gear head knows gear. And revels in gear. Jonathan Plum from London Bridge Studio is one of those gear heads. He spoke and revealed knowledge:

What do the converters do?
Plum: People are often unaware of how important A/D converters are. Or even what they are. An A/D Converter converts an analog audio signal into a digital signal. Any digital recording device has one. It's as much as an important link in the signal chain as your microphone, preamp, and cables are.

Get techie with it.
Gear heads like us at London Bridge can endlessly debate on which A/D converters sound better. The cheaper the home recording gear is the cheaper the A/D converters are. Now-a-days most musicians own some form of ProTools or something similar. Usually it's the LE version. LE stands for Light Edition. It also stands for cheap and shitty sounding. When you’re paying $1000 for a Digi 002 that has 8 ins, 8 outs, 4 Focusrite mic pre's, and headphones etc. How good of quality do you actually expect the A/D converter to be?

I don’t know, tell me. And stay geeky.
Well, it's not great. It's the main reason why a Digi 002 can't sound as good as a ProTools HD system. At London Bridge we spent upwards of $12,000 on just our converters alone in the form of three Digidesign 192's. This gives us thirty-two quality digital ins and outs from ProTools to our Neve mixing board.

So how can home recorders improve?
There are many manufacturers of quality stand alone converters that can be used in conjunction with an LE system. Here at London Bridge we just upgraded our private studio suites into two identical public overdub suites. Both rooms feature a ProTools Digi 002 system running the brand new ProTools 8 software with Apogee MiniMe A/D converters. These converters are the perfect solution to making an LE system run like a pro system. They are a simple two channel A/D converter that feeds directly into ProTools digitally. All they do is convert the audio signal into a digital signal which then is fed into ProTools digital input. Fortunately, the cheap components of the LE system are thus bypassed. The MiniMe's are also capable of going hi res which simply means they can sample at higher resolutions than the cd standard format of 44.1 Khz. The MiniMe can go up to 96 Khz. With these 2 channel converters we can record at exactly the same quality as our main Neve room can. Only 2 channels at a time. Which is really all you need when overdubbing.

God that is sexy.
I know.

Mark Heimer of No-Fi Soul Rebellion is a gyrating Vesuvius of dance and singing screams. He gets in faces when he performs and spreads the sweat of his love. He is an explosion. He’s also a gear head. Mark and I sat in his jacuzzi, drank cold Strawberry Quick through looped straws, and he talked about recording and editing audio with a system called Reaper.

No-Fi Soul Rebellion: "Dark Arts"

What is Reaper?
Mark: Reaper is a digital audio workstation for Mac & PC. 'A multi-track audio and MIDI recording, editing, processing, mixing, and mastering environment' so they say. Using just your trusty computer and no other software, you can import any audio and MIDI, synthesize, sample, compose, arrange, edit, mix, and master.

Why do you like it?
3 main reasons: 1. The feature set is huge and is always being updated and expanded based on user suggestions and comments from Reaper's online forums. Version 3 came out a couple of weeks ago and there have already been three big updates since then not only fixing bugs, but adding more features. 2. The routing is super flexible and easy. You can have as many tracks as your computer can handle and any of the tracks can act as a bus. 3. The price. For a non-commercial product license (for users who make under $22,000 a year from music) the cost is $60 and that includes updates up to version 4.99. For commercial users the cost is $225, which is still way cheaper than a lot of industry standard programs with the same features. You can also download the installer (which is a ridiculously small file size considering the scope of the program) from their website and try it for thirty days with all the features. That’s a pretty generous amount of time to figure out if the program is up your alley.

How did you discover it?
Just nerding around the internet. A couple of years ago I was still using a hard disk recorder to record all my No-Fi stuff. Then I got into FL Studio and became obsessed with computer based audio and midi recording. It's amazing how much you can do recording and production wise on computers and how inexpensive it is.

If you were an animal, what would you be?
A tree sloth because they are super slow and always look strangely happy and self-satisfied.

Why should people use Reaper?
The workflow is really nice because it is based on a tool-less editing system and I really appreciate that the developer listens to what the user wants and is always seeking to stabilize and improve the program.

Who is it best suited for?
Reaper can be as simple as Garage Band or as complex as Pro-Tools all dependent on the user. And if you get confused they have a great Wiki page / manual and forums to help you along.

What are the advantages to using this Reaper?
The power, performance, flexibility, compatibility, and stability are all major advantages of using the program. Plus, you can customize the appearance and colors and themes, which is I think is pretty sweet, just because it is.

Sweet. What are the disadvantages to using it?
I have yet to find a disadvantage, but I am a sure by the time I do they probably will have fixed it based on user comments and suggestions.

Where do your instinctual dance moves come from? Do you rehearse them? You don’t move like a tree sloth when you are gyrating on people in the crowd.
All moves are improvisational. No rehearsing. My instincts stem from what I wished I looked like when I dance and what I actually look like when I dance.

No-Fi Soul Rebellion plays Saturday, June 20th in Tacoma at Hell’s Kitchen.

Drum n’ bass drum-lord Kevin KJ Sawka has made an iPhone app called DrumBanger. It simulates his half-electronic drum set and lets you remix and sequence his music and sounds from your iPhone and iPod Touch. The app is a multifunctional looper, drum machine, and sequencer. Arrange and rearrange cd-quality samples of Sawka's live drums and synth sounds. Construct, deconstruct, and record the drum n’ bass frenzy right there on your iPhone. Plug it into your speakers where the insta-rave will begin. Make sure you’re wearing soft, bright, furry clothing, and put your pacifier in. Sawka's drumming impossibly conjugates. It re-evolves freehand robotics. Jungle calculates out of your head. Formats unformat, fractals answer, beats become function. When you watch Sawka play, do not try to understand. Take it in, then step away from the venue or screen, and go somewhere where you can stare at water or at a screensaver of water. Now the dnb drum lord is in your pocket.

To create DrumBanger, Sawka teamed with GroovWare’s Brian DeWaide and developer Jason Thane from General UI. Sawka spoke about the process:

How did you approach Apple about the idea? Was it accepted immediately?
Sawka: It’s pretty simple. You make an app and then submit it. If the app is functional and rated for any age, it most likely will get accepted. I originally wanted to call the app FingerBanger. Because you bang the drums with your finger. Makes sense right? Well, we had to change it, and DrumBanger was born. It was accepted immediately.

How did you mix and master the sounds to make them sound decent coming out of a phone speaker? I know they’re CD quality through headphones and real speakers, but how does one mix or master sounds for a phone speaker?
Basically, I mixed it like mixing a track. Panned things a bit, and mixed levels for a club sound system. We had to turn everything down quite a bit, it was overloading the iPhone. Other than that, it was similar to mixing a tune.

How much were you involved in the set up and layout of the app?
We all were involved in the photo process, Brian, Jason, and I. The drum kit and pads needed to visually make sense to hit with your fingers. I made all the sounds, loops, and samples.

What other apps do you want to invent?
I’d like to invent an app that helps with everyday life. For simple things like putting your socks and shoes on. Or maybe something more in-depth, like iPhone laser hair removal, and brewing coffee.

Is it true that you almost French kissed Ellen Degeneres backstage when you played on her show?
Yes.

Get DrumBanger for FREE: The first 5 people to respond to FreeDrumBanger@gmail.com get it for free! (I got the codes for you.) UPDATE: No more codes left. They have all been given away.

Sawka plays tomorrow - Friday, June 12 at Nectar.

Seattle's the Quiet Ones have three brothers from Tennessee in the band. The Tottens: John, David, and Chris. Being brothers, they argue and curse at each other. But they also write and play some of the finest songs an ear can hear. Solos and melody rip and make love to an indie rock sound. They have a new album coming out called Better Walk Than Ride Like That. They recorded it themselves, mixed and mastered it themselves, and are releasing it on their own label In Advance Records.

Album release: June 18th at the Crocodile with Marty Marquis (Blitzen Trapper) and Kinski.

The Quiet Ones: "Girls and Uniforms"

Brother John Totten (vocals, bass, guitar) talked about recording the album:

How did Better Walk come together?
John: All sorts of ways. We started recording a long time ago back when we still lived in Tennessee and the recording continued across the country as we gradually made our way to Seattle. It’s co-produced by myself and Mason Neely. We started out with portable hard disk recorders. I had a Korg 16 track and Mason would dump the tracks into Digital Performer. Then I switched to 4 track cassette for a while. Then I got this thing called a computer and it was like that song from Aladdin, "A Whole New World". I started on Logic. Then I met Better Walk engineer and future Quiet One bass helper John Herman (who also mastered the album) and we started recording with this big board and Sony Vegas in his bedroom upstairs in my house. The next step was Pro Tools. We went over to Phil Peterson's (Kay Kay & His Weathered Underground) house and recorded some more. And seeing as how technology is cyclical, my brother David and I went back to 4 track cassette for the most recent song on the record "Valerie". Our mantra when recording is, "There is no shitty recording gear, only shitty performers.” We used all kinds of crappy mics and preamps. Sometimes, we would put one Radio Shack mic on the drums and we would keep that take.

One Radio Shack mic for the drums? Get off. Which song is that? What was the mic placement?
A new song actually, called "E.K.G.” Yeah, one Radio Shack mic. To me, it creates this Bonham-esque sound. The placement was just on the other side of the room.

The Quiet Ones: "E.K.G."

Where did you mix the album?
In my bedroom. Our friend Troy Brandt who also worked on all the BOAT records came over and was gracious enough to sit in my underground bedroom with me for months and mix. The rumor goes that the first U.S.E. record was recorded in that exact bedroom in West Queen Anne.

What was the hardest thing about doing the album yourself?
The biggest challenge was how much time it took. I retook vocals so many times. And bass. And guitar. Convincing people who are playing the instruments I don't to come sit with me in my bedroom for hours and let me engineer their drums or whatever. Also, when you record yourself, you know that it's free to keep working on a song. So sometimes, it can lead to working on a song for years. I think "Biggest Loves" went through about forty-three different versions. It's still not perfect though. And it shouldn't be.

Why did you decide to do it yourselves?
Money. I don't think we'll ever pay for studio time. We recorded one time at Bear Creek in Woodinville, not for the Quiet Ones but for a different project. That was the closest I've ever been to selling all my records to pay for a studio, but in the end I realized I can record an album for basically free. I'd rather do an album on a mini-cassette recorder than pay for a studio. If anything was ever good enough for Robert Pollard, it's more than good enough for us.

When you all set out to record the album, what type of album were you going for? Did you have anything specific in mind?
We never have a concept for our albums. We record on a song-by-song basis. After a couple years of doing that, ideally we realize we have a coherent album on our hands. It usually hits me in the shower. I'll be lathering up or something and a bell will go off and I'll say to myself, "Oh shit, those songs go together real good." And then there's the album. I guess I wanted this album to be really eclectic and it ended up being so.

What kind of 4 track do you use? And I love the word lather. Thank you.
I think it's a Yamaha. It belongs to Double D (brother Dave). He recorded all of Valerie on it and when I heard it I begged him to put it on the album. But there was a lot of tape hiss. So we decided to re-track it using the 4 track as much as possible. Even if it's just running the audio through the machine into Pro Tools I like it better. Must be the preamps or something. When I say we used 4 track, I mean it was a very mixed media thing. Eric from Blitzen Trapper told me that all of "Wild Mountain Nation" was recorded on the same exact machine and I kind of challenged myself to use it more but to do a whole album on it requires a magic touch that I'll never have.

(John breaks down the recording of a song after the jump. He also talks about fighting one of his brothers, and the South.)

Picture: Kaija Cornett

San Francisco’s Pacific Heights is home to a theatre of sound called Audium. Listeners sit in darkness, surrounded by 169 speakers, and their ears are made to see. The show is of sound only. Noises spiral in all directions. Tones bounce multi-dimensionally. Sound is sculpted they say. Audium is a one of a kind room built in and operated since 1975 specifically for listening. With a National Endowment for the Arts, Audium was given life. It’s a building inside a building with a floating floor and a suspended ceiling. Speakers are spread throughout - dangling, buried underneath, and embedded in the walls. The show features found sound meets conducted instruments meets Philip Glass. Recorded offerings are mixed live. The “tape operator” (conductor) fades and melds the sonic movement from a one of a kind soundboard. Blank space takes on the images of hearing.

Eighty year-old Audium creator Stan Shaff greets listeners at the door himself. He’s kindly, soft spoken, and austere as he leads those waiting to a foyer, then through a tunnel, and into the main performance space. Seats are taken, lights go out, Shaff disappears to his conducting booth, and the program begins. An hour-long live performance, called simply Audium 9:

Waves hitting a shore rise in stereo from the center. A gruff seagull’s cry splits diagonally four ways and travels outward toward the corners of the room. There, the quadra-gulls become a little girl’s voice talking about her name and the colors pink and orange. Inverted trumpet notes sprout from smaller speakers and shoot back and forth from wall to wall and ceiling to floor. Raindrops begin to land in pockets. It all morphs and meshes. Violins undulate diagonally. Then the sound of a plane taking off is birthed from subwoofers below the floor. It washes the other sounds out from bottom to top and wipes away. Then a heavy wooden door slams sixteen times in a spiral back to center, and a guitar strums the note E minor 7. There is echo and buzz. Footsteps in boots march the periphery of the room. The buzz on the guitar is jittery and your mind pictures a flickering neon vacancy sign on top of a run down hotel. Sanguine clothesline underwear there wafts in the breeze. In the seventh floor room below, a small girl with orange from Cheetos smeared across her face is learning how to write her name for the first time. Violins fold out again left to right like origami herons over white noise drone. It is starting to rain. A hush - the sound. A million soft snares. A million soft snare drums rolling, playing the theory of thunder to the smell of wet streets below. Rolling the ions. Embroidery of the storm.

Stan Shaff spoke:

What made you actually bring Audium into existence?
Shaff: Insanity and a need to see sound? I’ve always been motivated by music and sounds. And by memories and the imagery they evoke. Audium is a combination of those two things for me. Some people paint. I do this. I like the suggestive qualities some sounds seem to have, be them natural or electronic. I think sounds touch certain levels of our inner lives, layers that exist beneath the visual world. I’m interested in sound as object, sound as environment, and sound as an event.

So you’re way into Judas Priest then?
No. Not very much.

You know Judas Priest right? “You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’”? That song?
I recall that song yes. But I myself am not a Judas Priest fan.

What do you want your listeners to take away from an Audium show?
I’d say whatever memory of image their mind brings up. Or a sensation. Or maybe they go home and dream.

Can you talk about your soundboard?
It’s a series of faders and knobs basically. I control direction, speed, and intensity on multiple planes. It changes from show to show. I am interactive with the crowd even though I can’t see them. I feel the energy in the room. Sometimes people breathe heavy or fidget a lot in their chair, I pick up on all that.

I looked at your booth during the performance and couldn’t see any light at all. I thought for sure I’d see some light in there.
No, I don’t need light anymore. I know the board pretty well after using it for thirty years. It’s all by feel. The performance is much more vivid in the dark. I can take everyone in the room and put them inside the same mind. The speakers see out.

Are you an analog only man?
Everything I do with Audium is analog. But really, I don’t hear a difference anymore. I’m interested in sound period, whether it's made electronically or if it’s played by acoustic means, it’s all just the same to me. What really matters is how it shapes. Hit your hand against a poll, does it sound good? Then I’ll use it. When I began thinking conceptually of Audium in the late 1950's, obviously technology was more limited. Believe me, I’d love to have been able to play with a Pro Tools or Ableton program back then. I'm a trumpet player by trade. So is my son. The trumpet sounds you hear in Audium 9 are him. I'll probably hand this off to him when I retire. I'm not going to do it forever.

Can I be your groupie?
I don’t know, can you? I’m not sure I’ve ever had one of those.

Photos by Vicente Montelongo , PingMag .