I’ve been looking forward to this project for a while. I met brothers, Austin and Alex Ward, (along with Hawley Shoffner) at a Betta Promotions BBQ last summer. A few months later, I managed to catch the brothers’ band at Quenchers. The show was some kind of ass-kicking, fast-tempo’d, super-tight, perfect-harmony-singing, mutant cross between Queens of the Stone Age and Muse.
A year and half passed before we finally put some dates on the schedule. They sent me the demos a month or two beforehand, and we met in person to discuss production approach and arrangement tweaks. When we got into the studio, the budget was tight so we were forced to work quickly, which kept everyone awake and on their toes. They were extremely well-rehearsed and prepared for the sessions so there was very little time spent re-recording or punching in. In only three short days in the studio, we knocked out drums for 5 songs, as well as guitars, bass and vox for most of them.
The main goal with the drums was to capture the rawness and energy of the band. I used a technique that I first tried with the Vaudevilles; I placed two mics in front of the drum kit-one would be used as a general front of kit mic, and the other, would run through a reamp box and then into one of several different distortion pedals, or an overdriven minimoog. By fading between these at the mix stage, I can move from lowest energy (close mics only), to moderate energy (using only the front of kit mic), to highest energy (using the distorted mic). We also used different combinations of kick, toms and cymbals for each tune, ranging from a modern Gretsch kit to a vintage Ludwig, and from bright modern cymbals to extremely dark vintage Zildjians.
Stay tuned for the Noise FM album release in Sept ’13. In the meantime, check out some of their past music here:
