New Album, no sleep. 2:39am 11.30.08

I spent most of yesterday in bed with my acoustic working on new music. I recorded 3 or 4 ideas for new songs, not sure if any of them will work out. I'm really want the songs on the album to have some sort of progression, so most what i have been doing is focusing on songs that can fill in the holes. We have another pre-production practice tomorrow night and I'll see what the other guys think of the songs. Lee also said he had a reggae song he is working on, but he may have another tech rehearsal tomorrow for a production of "You're A Good Man Charlie Brown" at YPC, which I am sound designing. It opens next week.

11am this morning I was deep in a dream, band practice, lee wasn't there, I was about start playing a new song when..."misirlou" started playing. That's my ring for the director of the show. Asking if I was coming in today and if I knew where lee was. "Yes, I'm coming in, no I don't know where lee is. see you soon" click. I got dressed, through some cables and 2 cans of mountain dew in my back pack and hopped on my bike and headed over there. My car is still smashed in from the last show at the Triple Rock so I try not to use it as much as possible. I felt like I was going crazy at the theatre. I kept having flashes to my dreams the night before then I would come out of it, feeling slightly nauseous and I would completely forget what I was doing. I realized that it was now almost 4pm and all I had all day was a can of pop. Calling it a day, I headed home to make myself a tofurkey sandwich.

Then sat with my guitar until about 10pm. Nothing. Then off to eat dinner and watch scrubs with Dezee. I did, however, find another possible artist for the album. I sent him an e-mail for a quote, well see.

I also read today that a Wal-Mart employee in New York was trampled to death by hordes of shoppers on Black Friday. I think Dan said it best in his article, "the tragic death of Jimmy Damour is at least in part the product of the current political economy of world capitalism, in which U.S. consumer spending has been the lifeblood of the entire world economy."

"Yet it is also a product of the value system created by capitalism. The capitalist system encourages values such as greed, selfishness, and competition. Corporations are forced to compete against one another in an endless quest to maximize profits for their shareholders, or else face bankruptcy. This forces them to slash wages and benefits, lay off workers, speed up work, squeeze their suppliers, and ignore the environmental impacts of production. It forces nations, representing the interests of these corporations, into wars for oil and to secure markets for their goods."

New Album Journal

I decided to start a blog to keep track of the making of 2 Tone Runts new album. Mostly so I can learn from the experience, and look back at what I liked and didn't like. I've tried keeping journals before. They never really lasted. Mostly filled with lyrics and poetry, hopefully this will be better.

We had our first meeting last week with our engineer, Andrew. He's really cool and we've known him for awhile. He works for Radio K and is in local punk band The Supersmashers. He's got a lot of great ideas for the album. We're trying to figure out which studio to use to record. Our practice space is a fully functional digital studio, but it's small and cramped and the acoustics are far from perfect. Andrew is building his own studio which he has designed to have great drum acoustics. It should be ready to go by the first of the year. We may use both studios. I hoping to help him build the studio. I could learn a lot.

We will be starting pre-production this week! Picking out the songs we want and setting tempos and laying down rough recordings. We need to finish that before Tony goes back to Michigan for the holidays. I feel pretty confident about the songs we have picked out, they've done really well live, but it's the new songs I'm worried about. It's extremely important to me to have an album that can be listened to all the way through, no filler. I hate albums where I have to skip from song to song to find the ones I actully like.

As far as releasing the album goes, we talked to Andrew about releasing it on vinyl and download card initially and then releasing it on cd. There's a guy in Minneapolis who presses red vinyl, not that it's important, but it would be awesome. We're also trying to figure out how much money we can spend on this album. I would like to do everything for less then $1500. But who knows? I definitely don't want money to get in the way of quality. This album should be something that can be listened to in 5, 10 years and still be enjoyed, not saying to myself "oh, we were so young and stupid." The EP, which was recorded by an engeneering class for free, doesn't reflect how we sound at all. I'm dissapointed in how that turned out. I may end up producing the album, but Tom, the bassist of Umbrella Bed, has offered. He definitely is an extraordinary bassist, but the last Umbrella Bed album, which he produced, was stuck in the past. It was very reverby and didn't sound raw and organic like the 2 Tone Runts sound live. I want to capture that on the album.

We're trying to find an artist for the cover. Tony has a friend that might do it. I saw some of her work and I wasn't terribly impressed, but well give her a try. With such a political album, the cover should reflect that. I'm planing on learning screen prining over the holidays with my friend Dezee, it would we a lot of fun to screen print the cover on. Combining radical politics with art is necessary to help fuel the movement. We still don't have a title for the album. I'm going to keep brainstorming.