The Official Blog Of THE ELMS.

TGAM SESSIONS - DAY 9

Today was supposed to be a Bass Guitar Marathon, but after scoping the passes, we realized that a lot of Nate's scratch tracks were keepers.  We signed-off on 4 of 6.  He re-cut 2.

"The Wildest Heart" is a bit of a departure for our band, so of course, my parts are a bit of a departure for me, too.  Dialed-in a sound, played the whole thing through, punched a few points, and listened back.  Loved the way that I played it, but hated the sound.  Didn't have enough X Factor.  Gave the sound a little more juice by turning up the level on the Keeley Compressor a few notches.  Replayed it and really liked what we ended up with. 

The guitar on the other side was even stranger territory for me.  I was worried that the part was a little too "musicbox-y," but upon hearing it back in the track in tandem with the other guitar, it worked.  Owen and Nate seemed really into it, so I sorta relented on it, and it ended up growing on me eventually.

Didn't want to waste much time by going out for dinner, so we had Jimmy John's delivered to the studio.  After eating our sammiches, Owen cut lead vocal and BGVs for TWH.  The really nice Neumann u67 that we wanted to use was crapping out on us, so Owen sang into one of the overheard drum mics instead - they rigged it up so Owen could hold it.  Fantastic vocal performance. 

A few of our friends from APA in town came out to hang.  Good to see them, and they promised to take us out for AYCE sushi sometime soon for lunch. 

Finished the night by cutting the guitar solo.  I used a reverse delay for it.  Pretty trippy.

As you may have noticed from Day 8's blog, we nixed "The Wanderer" from The Progress Board.  A few weeks ago, "The Wanderer" was my favorite song of the new bunch, but I was alone in that.  However, since "Long Gone" has risen to the top as my new favorite, and since we're budgeting our Time & Money, I was happy to do a little politicking:  send "The Wanderer" home in exchange for granting "Long Gone" immunity.  You never know how things will turn out when everything goes to mix, but for the moment, everybody thinks "Long Gone" is a shoo-in for the album.  I've got my fingers crossed.

Anyhow... big-ups to those who noticed it (The Wanderer) was gone.  You're observant for sure. 

Many thanks to Kristin from Ipsento Coffeehouse in Chicago.  She sent us some coffee beans that we are looking forward to tearing into tomorrow.  The only thing keeping us alive the past few days has been coffee, so you're a lifesaver, Kristin.

Gonna finish some laundry and go to bed.  G'night, y'all. Zzzzzzzz....

-- Thom

Feel the passion. Mmmmmmm.

TGAM SESSIONS - DAY 8

I'm not going to tell you what Nate called me just before he snapped this. A face-altering comment, for sure.

We're tired.  We're bleary-eyed.  We're running on coffee.  Still having fun.  But today, I ain't got much to say.  Chris rocked it yesterday - 4 songs in 7 hours.  Efficiency.  And Nate was able to knock out two songs on bass before we left.  Here's what we accomplished:

-Lily (DRUMS)
-Thunderhead (DRUMS)
-The West Of Town (DRUMS)
-She Never Let Me Down (DRUMS)
-Strut (BASS)
-Thunderhead (BASS)

Our friend B.J. from Warner Chappell Publishing brought us a nice little gift - a twelvester of Corona (Nate chopped-up a lime.)  Went well with the Baja Fresh that we had for dinner.  For better or worse, last night was a chance for me to blow-off-a-little-steam.  If Owen and I ever decide to put out a flamenco-style latin record, we've already got a lead on our first song as of last night.  I think I remember it being called "En el Pueblo", which, unbeknownst to us at the time, translates roughly to "In This Town..."  Seem familiar?  Kinda creepy?

Apologies to the Chris Thomas Fanclub for sloughing on the job and not getting any pics of him while he was here.  We meant to, and it just never happened.  Will fix that when he's back on Monday. 

Got some of Nate though.  Enjoy.

-- Thom

More Brent Milligan console amusements.

Producer Extraordinaire, Brent Milligan.

Killin' it on bass while representin' our Indiana Hoosiers.

Scoping the track.

Listening back high above the Forest of Knobs.

Owen "hendrix-ing" a Martin Triple Aught 18.

TGAM SESSIONS - DAY 7

Nate.

Me after a week of Anti-Shovenism.

G'morning.  How's everybody holding up?

The boy is back in town.  Chris knocked on our hotel room door at about 11PM, just as we finished watching the newest episode of Rock Of Love.  Owen and Nate are completely addicted to it - I found it painful to watch, but will probably also become addicted to it too for that very reason.  I'm really not as cultured as I could be because I don't watch much TV.

Rewind a bit.  Sunday night, all of us (minus Chris at this point) went to our favorite "home on the road" - Cracker Barrel - and then went to the movies.  I opted to chill at a Starbucks next door while Owen and Nate watched "The Wrestler" from 8-10.  This was a great plan and all until one of the baristas comes up to me a few minutes before 9PM and says, "Sir, I'm sorry, but we're going to be closing our store soon."  I know it was a Sunday night, but... 9PM?  Even our little store back in Seymour stayed open till 11 on Sunday nights. 

No big deal.  I sat on a bench inside of the mall for an hour and read a little more of my book.  Not as relaxing of an evening as I was envisioning, but that's alright.  Owen and Nate were very somber when I got back into Owen's Jeep.  Apparently "The Wrestler" is a heavy, heavy movie that I shouldn't have neglected.  I bet I'll love it when I finally see it. 

So yes... we're glad to have Chris back, and yesterday, we started things off by tracking a gritty little Diddley-ish tune called "Strut."  The title doesn't explain it all, but it definitely describes the feeling.  Lyrics are pretty relevant to the times.  We love this one, and think it'll be the album's opener.  Brent kept calling through the talkback mic for the song to be a little more "buck" than we were playing it.  I didn't know this, but "Buck" actually IS registered on urbandictionary.com.  So... we gave it more "buck."

After some gumbo from Mojo's for lunch, we took a stab at "The Wildest Heart."  Fought us a little in the beginning, so we goofed with it a bit.  Then after running one direction, started working our way back toward the original direction.  Sometimes you gotta deconstruct something to realize that 90% of it was just fine the way it was before.  How postmodern of us.

Next up was one that's been emerging as a favorite of mine for the last couple weeks:  "Long Road (The Good Guys)."  That one swings!  Didn't take us long to knock it out either.

Called "Strut" back up and added a floor tom part for Verse 1, which took surprisingly longer than we thought it would, but ended up being what we needed (which... is good.)

Nate, Owen, & Brent got sick of hearing me and Chris talk about how awesome Mojo's was from before, so they walked there when we broke for dinner, and Chris and I drove to Mellow Mushroom.  45 minutes later, we walk back out to Chris's Jeep and discover a ticket on his window, and a boot around the passenger side front tire.  $100.  Nice.  Not the end of the story... but we'll stop there.  Sometimes (though very rarely), I'm thankful for human nature.

Got back to the studio at 9PM, but we all burned an hour watching The Bachelor.  Bad confession?  Two admissions of watching crappy shows in one blog.

Shocked at the result.  Jason... you kinda looked like a douche.  But thanks for setting Melissa up for the next season of The Bachelorette.  We're all looking forward to seeing a lot more of her.

Three songs was our goal for the day, but with time leftover, why not shoot for a fourth?  We've got this little 50's soul tune called "Lily" that we thought we'd try out a small kit in a small room on, but it didn't happen.  Clocked-out for the night, and resolved to tackle "Lily" again some other time.

-- Thom

More buck, please.

More Brent Milligan artwork, please.

A few more check-marks, too.

SUNDAY PHOTO SUPERBLOG!

Looking a little more chipper after sleeping in.

"My hands open, and my eyes open.  I just keep hopin'... "

Welcome to the Sunday Photo Superblog.  You can also just as easily call this TGAM Sessions - Day 6, but since we only worked a half day yesterday, I knew that this one would require a little somethin' somethin' extra to supplement it.  If you're not happy, I'm not happy.

There are a ton of photos at the end of this blog.  That's what I'm sayin'.

Saturday morning we decided to sleep in a little, which was nice and extremely necessary.  Despite the fact that my body protested (I woke up automatically at 8AM), I forced it to go black again for another couple hours. 

A friend of ours gave us crap a few days ago for eating so much Asian food all of the time; wondered if we ate "real Man Food."  I think we proved ourselves yesterday afternoon and evening.  For starters, we had Cancun Mexican Restaurant in Belleview.  Love that place.  It's always a staple anytime we record in Nashville.

Starbucks is next door, and I'd abstained from having a Starbucks mocha for nearly two weeks.  I decided it was time.  As soon as I walk into the place, I spot a familiar character ordering at the register - my friend Matthew Paul Turner.  Was thankful to get to catch up with him a bit and hear about what all he's doing these days.  He was there finishing a new book.

Rolled-in to the studio by 3PM, and... remember when I mentioned in the last blog that we were sure that we hadn't yet struck gold on "The Faithful"?  We took another shot at it.  Thanks to a little inspiration from Stone Gossard, we found the guitar tracks' X Factor. 

One thing that I'm really thankful for is the benefit of time and experience.  In the past, I used to get a little bent out of shape when we encountered situations like this one, but I feel like I'm a little more capable these days of coming up with divers kinds of ideas on the spot, trying them out one-by-one to see what works.  Still not where I'd like to be in this regard, but it's gotten easier, and that certainly does me good. 

Then it was on to vocals - Owen smoked it.  Brent and Andrew had to leave, so Nate tried his hand at producing, and I tried my hand at engineering.  I need ProTools For Dummies, and I need it now.  Took me awhile to figure out how to navigate the waveform regions.  Owen was patient and still sang like a champ. 

Cancun was fantastic, but if we didn't remove all doubt of our manliness over lunch, we definitely got Overcompensatisexual with our choice for dinner:  Ted's Montana Grill.  Probably the best burger (bison) I've ever had.  Fantastiche.  (<--- Montanian for "Yep... pretty good.")

Owen and Nate grabbed Maggie Moo's for dessert afterwards next door - I figured I'd already treated myself enough with the mocha earlier.  Drove to our hotel, watched Gaither Vocal Band on TV (believe it or not), and finally went to bed at 4:30AM knowing that we were taking today off and could sleep as late as we wanted. 

The people in the next room over sounded like they were having a really good time for quite awhile (until about 5:30AM.)  These walls are thin.  Glad their bedposts didn't punch a hole through.

Enjoying the day off so far.  Nate and I had Subway for lunch.  Now Nate's out cycling for a few hours while Owen and I chill here in the room.  Tonight, I think we're grabbing Cracker Barrel for dinner (I'll most likely have the pinto beans w/ ham and cornbread and a loaded baked potato), then going to try and catch a showing of "The Wrestler."  Chris comes back down tonight, and we resume drumwork tomorrow morning bright and early. 

Oh... almost forgot.  Here is a rundown of the guitar/amp choices I've used in the last couple of days, scrapping the work we did on "The Faithful" Friday.

Unless God Appears First

1. Sheraton through Tonemaster + Marshall 4x12
2. Tele through AC30
3. Tele through Mesa +tremolo

The Faithful

1. Goldtop through Marshall
2. LP Deluxe through Tonemaster through Marshall 4x12
3. Brent's Goldtop through Fender Deluxe
(Need to re-cut the guitar solo.)

Now for the best part:  Photos Galore down below.  For all of the gunslingers in the house, here are pictures of every single amp we're using, sans a 30W Matchless head that Brent took home with him last night before I was able to snap a picture of it.  Still, there are many.  For the rest of you, if you're not interested, that's alright.  This is more like porn for musicians.

-- Thom

Fender Super Reverb.

This is a cool little 17W head built into a miniature Vox-looking chassis.  One volume knob - that's it.  Pretty wild sound when you plug it into a 4x12.

Here's the top view of the Moxon.

Fender Deluxe Reverb.  Cool sound.  We go to this one a lot it seems.

Fender Princeton.  A great small amp sound, obviously, but also cool plugged-in to a bigger cabinet.

I know this is a Mesa, but don't laugh.  This little Rocket 44 is really useful at times.  Not the typical Douche Rock sound that we're all accustomed to hearing from Mesa Boogie.

Owen's AC30 with the chassis removed from the cabinet.  The speakers were rattling one of the tube springs, and it was showing up in the track, so we remedied it by doing this.

Matchless Thunderman.  This is a unique amp of Brent's, that, while meant to be a bass amp, actually sounds great for guitars.  At first, I wasn't really all that into it, but it's growing on me.

Fender Tonemaster.  Killer amp as long as you use the "A" channel and crank it up.  Sounds great through its matching 2x12 cabinet, but even more fabulous through the Marshall 4x12.  I will never get rid of this amp.  Her and I are in it for the long haul.

1973 Marshall Super Lead 100 w/ modified master volume knob.  I saved this one for last because if any amp in this room typifies what I think I sound like, it's this one.  Her and I are in it for the even longer haul.  Call me polyamorous if you will.  This has been getting a majority of the action because it works so well.  I've also got a '74 JMP 100W head that has been my main amp live for years, but this one does better in the studio because of the master volume knob.  Sometimes, when you're recording, while a dimed gainstage is alright, too much post-volume is not.  I love this amp.  Got it 7 years ago for $500.

Here are some of Nate's amps:

A '76 Orange guitar head that works really well for bass.  Nate's '78 SVT in the middle.  Brent's '69 SVT on the bottom. 

Ampeg B15 "Portaflex."

Pictures of various guitars and basses:

My ginormous, intimidating pedalboard.

Think we got enough snares?

We're gettin' there.

TGAM SESSIONS - DAY 5

Sorry.  I couldn't even keep my eyes open.

Day 5 of recording was good.  We started it out by cutting an acoustic guitar on "Long Gone."  It added a layer of class to the verses that the song maybe didn't necessarily need, but definitely benefitted from having.  I used one of Brent's acoustics - a guitar made by Rushing.  Never heard of them before, but it's a great-sounding instrument, for sure.  Would like to try and track down one of them for myself someday.

Our friend KP from The Band Perry stopped-in and hung out for a bit.  I think an hour in she was regretting the fact that she was surrounded by a bunch of boyz.  Maybe not.  Good to have her around.  Her band just recorded a few songs a few weeks ago in the same studio that we're in now (Warner Studios.)  We'll update you whenever that's released so you can check them out, too.

KP's favorite song of ours is "Unless God Appears First", and coincidentally, that's the one we decided to work on after finishing "Long Gone."  Got some wicked guitar tones on UGAF.  Plus, the drums on that one are completely nuts.  So much action around the drum sounds.  Certain tempos elicit a certain sound from the drums - since UGAF is a slower meat 'n' potatoes song, it allows the drums to breathe in a way that they otherwise might not if we were using the same setup for a faster song. 

After guitars, we left the same song up so Owen could take a crack at the vocals.  Something we've never done before - but that I think we'll do from here on out because it worked so well - was have Owen sing into a handheld mic.  Some of you audiophiles are going to have a fit when you read this, but he sang his vocal into a Shure SM57, and it sounded boss!  After Brent assuring us that this wouldn't be a problem come mix time, we forged on with the 57.  The fact that Owen felt a little more freed up was palpable to all of us listening to his performance in the control room.  Kid was belting it out.  Webstream viewers heard/felt it I'm sure, and the rest of you will find out for yourselves soon enough.

Went to Ken's Sushi for dinner break, and then called-up "The Faithful" for guitar tracks.  This is a song we've had in the stockpile for about 3 years now, but it sorta found new life during rehearsals when we sped it up about 15-20 BPM.  Instead of being a midtempo blue-collar anthem, now it's more of a blue-collar fight song.  We tried several, several things to try and make this song happen, but it fought us the entire time.  In the past, maybe it would've been a little discouraging to us to have to wrestle a song down to the ground like this, but I think we're all so intensely focused on making the best rock album of the decade that there's no time to think anything except "No, we're calling the shots here.  You're going to fall in line whether you like it or not."  What we got wasn't bad, but we left the studio that night feeling like it wasn't 100%, so we called it a night and resolved to pick up where we left off first thing in the morning.

Drove back to where we're staying - Owen and Nate practiced their nightly religion of eating Captain Crunch while watching Rock of Love, but I hit the bed and conked out immediately. 

-- Thom

Owen at the console sussing out guitar ideas for "The Faithful."

Andrew manning ProTools.  He felt more comfortable yesterday after deciding to wear his "engineer shirt."

A few more check-marks on the board than the previous day.

TGAM SESSIONS - DAY 4

No, those aren't suspected terrorists.  That's Nate and myself.  I cracked a little wry smile for you.  And I'm sure it goes without saying, but Nate is a good-lookin' young man.

We cut more guitars yesterday.  And we even ended up cutting some vocals!  Owen's sense of pitch and control amazes me.  I can't sing to save my life, so I don't get it.  I can't imagine a scenario where I would ever need to sing to save my life, but if there is, I really hope it never comes down to that.

If you follow my twitter, you're probably aware that "Long Gone" is a personal favorite of mine.  I can't explain it, but there's something about that one that really makes me feel somethin'.  Given this, it was really important to me that I get this one right.  We tackled it last night after dinner at the Mellow Mushroom, and I really like what we got. 

Earlier in the day, we did the guitars for "The Little Ways", which is a tune so heavy that I nearly slit my wrist the first time Owen played it for all of us.  Thankfully, I'm still here, and though the song is simple and didn't require much, we got somethin' good there, too. 

Here's the guitar/amp rundown for yesterday:

The Little Ways

1. LP Deluxe through Tonemaster through Marshall 4x12
2. Martin 000-18

Long Gone

1. LP Deluxe through Marshall SL100
2. LP Deluxe through Matchless Thunderman (bass amp)
3. LP Deluxe through Tonemaster through Marshall 4x12 +slapback (SOLO - 1st half)
4. LP Deluxe through AC30 (solo - 2nd half)

If you weren't in the chat room last night after I finished guitars, you missed a magical moment.  In warming up for the lead vocal on "Long Gone," Owen started getting all Prince on us, and we were howling in the control room.  Then later, the idea didn't seem as crazy (sung less tongue-in-cheek, of course), and we layered it with the lower octave vocal and ended up with solid gold.  Still, if you weren't there for his initial Prince / Aaron Neville channeling, your life is not as rich as the rest of us. 

More guitars, vocals, and aux perc to be cut today, I'm sure.  And Owen and Nate are conspiring to get a B3 player in here soon.  Can't wait for that!

Alright.  That'll do it for this one.  Thanks for reading, everybody.

-- Thom

This is Andrew, our second engineer.  Smart guy, hard-working guy, good guy, and makes a fantastic cup of coffee guy.  Sorta resembles Layne Staley, no?

Me tracking from afar.

Me tracking a bit closer.

As close as you can get to me tracking without your eyes getting wet.

PROGRESS.

TGAM SESSIONS - DAY 3

Nacial Hair.

This might itch a girl's face.

Day #3 is in the books. 

This one was particularly more involved for me, because we started playing some guitars today.  Nate is super efficient, and it really takes him no time at all to finish his tracks.  Nate... we still had another couple of days budgeted for you, buddy.  Stop showing-up the rest of us. 

I think Nathan really loves the tones he's getting.  He's using his fingers mostly, which seems to warm things up - provide a little more low-end.

Not only is Brent Milligan super-talented, but, I remarked to Owen and Nathan on the drive home last night that I think he's gotten even better about capturing good guitar sounds.  He brought along a couple of mic pre's from his own studio to help out, and I really like 'em.  API "Channelers" or "Lunch Boxes" or whatever you want to call them.  Also, two single-space rack preamps, but I can't remember what they are.  Anyhow, these guitars sound good!

I'm having fun interacting with people in the stream channel chatroom whenever possible.  There are two main questions that seem to arise the most frequently.  The first is, "What guitars and amps are you using?"  So, for all of you guitar geeks out there (and I count myself one), I'm going to do my best to document each guitar/amp combo of each track and report everyday.  So far, here's what we got:

Dog Days

-Tele through Fender Tonemaster
-Tele through Princeton
-LP Deluxe through AC30
-LP Deluxe through Marshall Super Lead 100 +bossdd5slapback delay (SOLO)

County Fair

-Les Paul Goldtop through SL100
-Tele through AC30
-Goldtop through AC30 (SOLO)
-Goldtop through Fender Deluxe (SOLO - DOUBLED)
-Strat through Super Reverb +tremolo(amp)+springreverb(amp)+keelycompressor (INTROS, TURNAROUNDS)

Have I mentioned before that I really love "County Fair"? 

Both songs sound fantastic.  We left the studio yesterday really satisfied with the work.

The next question we get a lot in the chatroom is something along the lines of, "We really appreciate you guys letting us into your world a bit.  Is there anything we can do for you guys in return?"  And to that I say, first off, that it really is no problem to let you guys be a part of this process.  We thought it'd be interesting.  We wanted to do it.  So... we're doin' it.  And you merely popping in periodically and showing interest is thanks enough. 

But if you still really want to do something, I'd say just help us spread the word a little about the streaming and the upcoming record.  Tell your circle and beyond about it virally via blogs, bulletins, twitter, posting on forums, what have you, etc.  The way we take in information now is so different, and the fact that we trust the people that we get it from now is such a huge part of it.  Agree?  Disagree?

I saw some people in the chatroom brainstorming, organizing, kicking around ideas and refining them yesterday.  If you've got any ideas you want to share with other like-minded people, feel free to leave them here in the comments section. 

Alright.  Gonna go clean up now and prepare to start Day #4.  Thanks for reading.  I leave you with Owen's favorite recurring phrase this week:

"It ain't a hobby."

-- Thom

We had exquisite Mediterranean for dinner - a place called Greek Islands, not far from the "Statues of Naked People" on Demonbreun.  (Dih-MON-bree-uhn, not "Demon Brown.")

Progress Report Day #3.

TGAM SESSIONS - DAY 2

Nate got the idea a few weeks ago that we should not shave while we're in the studio (shaving the neck is allowed).  I told him I was in on it.  But what'll actually happen is, his will grow out nicely, and I'll probably grow just enough to have a beard similar to your grandma's.  Regardless, I'm committed.  Every day, we'll start these blogs with a photographic progress report.  Here's the first:

Nate's visage on Day 2.

My face on Day 2.

Our second day of recording has come and gone.  Here's a recap:

-Nate cycled ahead of Owen, Chris, and I.  15 mile ride.

-Clark (studio manager) and Caleb (intern) set us up with a much better audio source.  Several in the chatroom commented that it sounds quite a bit better.  How about you?

-We started the day tracking "Unless God Appears First", a band favorite.  I think we've all been thinking for the longest time that this one would end up as a slower but tougher rump-shaker.  Brent wanted to explore the idea of speeding it up, making it a bit more of a snotty, youth rebellion song - and we could see his point - but ultimately, the song's destiny was to slow way down and make people shake their hips, so we reverted back to the initial idea.  However, never a bad idea to indulge your producer. 

-Tackled "The Faithful" next.  We've had that song for a few years, but it found new life in our pre-production rehearsals by speeding it WAY up.  Less of a midtempo blue-collar anthem now; more of a blue-collar fight song.

-Chris had to split and go back to Louisville for a few days, and we wanted to knock out one more, so we chose "County Fair."  Sure enough.  Got our pass on the second take.  I think it's safe to say that the band members unanimously adore this one. 

-Broke for dinner.  Calypso Cafe in Berry Hill.  No Keith Urban sighting this time.

-Nate cut bass tracks for "UGAF" and "The Faithful" after dinner, we called it a night, loaded up, and got out of Dodge. 

-The people hanging out in the chatroom are interesting characters.  They're already developing their own stock of inside jokes, new blendwords, subplots, schemes, conspiracies, etc.  One of them is a little Elvis paper cutout hanging out on the ProTools Waveform Monitor.  His name was Fader Elvis, but everybody in the chatroom decided his name should be "Flat Steve" instead.  So, Flat Steve it is.

If you haven't yet, you gotta stop in and meet some of those people.

Link HERE.

I'm all shook up, baby.

And that's a wrap. 

-- Thom

TGAM SESSIONS - DAY 1

After 2 years spent writing well over 100+ songs for a new album, we're finally ready to record it.  "The Great American Midrange" is being built brick-by-brick.

We loaded into Warner Bros. Studios on Music Row in Nashville, TN on Sunday night.  Owen and Chris left from Seymour a little earlier to pick up some things from our producer's house (Brent Milligan), and then Nate and I followed in the van a few hours later to meet them at the rendezvous point.  We did not head them off at the pass, however.

Got set up, split the studio by 10PM (like we'd hoped), made a stop at Walgreen's (for the essentials - water, cereal, and granola bars), and got to bed.

Do you often set your alarm for a certain time, but your body's internal clock insists that you wake up earlier than you were expecting?  Probably not.  Well, mine does.  And it woke me up about 45 minutes before I'd planned, which was alright.  Got the first shower of the morning, everybody else got up and around, and then we loaded into Owen's jeep to head back to Warner.  Playlist on the way there included Arctic Monkeys, Carrie Underwood, Dwight Yoakam, and Against Me. 

Upon arriving, we immediately started tackling the webstream, got a few issues sussed-out, and then started broacasting.  Thanks to everyone who stopped-in to check it out.  Some of you hung out in the chat room there damn near the entire day.  We're going to try and dialogue with you in there when we can.  ChrisDThomas, Nathan-B, and ThomDaugherty are our registered names.  I'll find out if Owen's registered his name yet or not on ustream.com. 

UPDATE:  Owen is OwenMThomas.

If you don't know what I'm talking about yet, go to TheElms.net today sometime after 11AM Central, click the embedded player on the home page, and you'll be able to "stalk" us online as we record the album.

We're going to work something out with the audio, too.  It's currently up, but we think it could sound a little better.  The webcam/microphones we've been using don't seem to be very big fans of low-end frequencies.  There's talk of setting up a better mic, running it through an EQ and compressor, and using that as the audio source.  We'll see.  Bear with us and we'll get 'er figured out.

Brent showed up shortly thereafter, I picked up lunch from Jimmy John's (unbeknownst to me before it was too late, they deliver), and we started rolling tape on what is possibly my favorite song of the new batch - "Long Gone."  Chris knocked that one out in no time, and most of Nate's bass part was pretty spot-on (plus, Nate was really happy with the particular bass tone we had dialed-in), so we invested a little more time into the bass track. 

Also finished drums and bass for a fast, freight-train gospel-y number called "Dog Days."

Dinner break at Qdoba, back to the studio to watch Extras (Ricky Gervais) on DVD while Brent finished up dinner with his family, and then it was on to "The Little Ways."  Last one fought us a bit, but we ended up with something cool in the end. 

That one is kinda mellow, so before somber could turn into somnambulant, we packed-up personal effects and drove home.  I went to bed immediately, so I can't really tell you what else happened after that.  I'm guessing nobody else stayed up too late after putting in a 14+ hour day.

Alright... you want pics, you got 'em.  Tons of them below w/ captions.  Need to find an iPhone app to help with low-lighting photos.  My buddy Luke told me about one a few weeks ago, but couldn't remember the name.  Any suggestions?  Some of the pics (the better-looking ones) came from Nate's Blackberry which has a flash.

Thanks again for watching the webcast.  We're all starting to get up and around here, so we'll be back at the studio soon and resume work. 

See you soon!

-- Thom


Chris's Drum World.

Chris setting up the webstream.

Mo' drums.

Nate's "Tower of Power."

What Nate refers to as "Thom's Lair."  That Tele belongs to The Southpaw, obviously.

New environment-friendly policy at Warner Bros. Studios.  And that's alright.  We're happy to do our part.

Here is The Infamous Whiteboard that some of us were talking about in the chatroom yesterday.  Chris has given Owen no shortage of hell about buying it.  But as you can see, Owen had big plans for this thing, and he subcontracted Nathan to help him see his vision realized:

Nathan rules.

And here it is - a way for us to visualize our progress.  Nathan put a nice black border around the edges of the board, so the photo-team here at http://theelms.typepad.com/thom approves.