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SHAYS REBELLION
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CHANT, NEW EVOLUTION "Filled with harmonies, catchy choruses and well-written songs...they're in a league of their own" - Zero Magazine
New Evolution has plenty of attitude, nuance and atmosphere...Melodies fashioned by the trio...do grow on you." - Progression "New Evolution is classic power trio stuff - guitar driven, hooky and capable of whisper-to-a-scream intensity." - New Times, San Luis Obispo This album was going to be picked up in 1996 by a major label but some stupid shenanigans got the contracts torn up. I thought I'd hit a home run the first time out! So instead, I picked this up for Shays Rebellion two years later. This was the band's first full-length release after the popular "green" tape. It was 24-track analog. It had some crazy ideas - like on some songs we miked the guitar amp through a piano with the pedals taped down, which gave some bottom ring to Beaux Davis' telecaster/matchless setup. On the bridge of New Evolution there are four guitar parts in all going off at once, kind of like an exploding supernova, which was pretty cool. By contast, Castaway Pilgrim, was pretty much the three of them on one take. The only overdubs are the vocal and a couple harmonics in the guitar solo. It's just one guitar! The effects were just part of Beaux's sound. The challenge was mixing in the right amount of feedback with his clean signal.
It's like bringing a Cape Cod version of Woodstock into your own home - without all the mud....From the spaced out psychedelia of Bionaut to the pounding punk of Philth Shack to the poetry of Kristin Knowles, the CD covers a range seldom seen at local nightclubs.....the results are impressive."-Bill O'Neill, Cape Cod Times
This compilation has done a great job - Randy Browning, Northeast Performer "The best way I can describe it is a bunch of hungry musicians, striving to be heard, coming at you every three minutes or so" - Producer Mike Iacuessa, quoted somewhere.
This is the compilation I put together which later led to the video on cable access TV which was honored as the most entertaining program in Massachusetts in 1998. Generation Man by Otto is pretty much just Aaron Spade and a drummer. You can hear he had recorded all these great layers but by the time he mixed it, I think he was too close to it and the tape he gave me was just a wash so I went to this studio he had in a shed next to his house and we twiddled dials on some kind of homemade compressor and it came out great. Aaron was also playing with Philth Shack, their revolving bass player at that time. I know some of the younger punks on the Cape grew up idolizing them. Everyone could play and Tom Fettig could spew lyrics as fast as anyone. Hopefully I was able to capture some of that franticness with Long Night at the Y. Ghoul Squad was another band that I recorded the same day at Prophet Sound in Stoughton, Mass. Their song, The Saw is Family, got a lot of local airplay.
86, 86
We recorded this on 8-track 1/2-inch analog in
Gary's art studio next to his house over parts of 10 days and then I mixed it at Shays Rebellion East,
which was basically the house I was living in. We did six songs. It was in the middle of August and you can hear the summer heat in the music. Later, when I got
set up out west, I heard some heavy hitters were looking to form a local supergroup but didn't have a singer
or songwriter and I was going to trade
them studio time at the Hyde Street room in exchange for backing up Gary and see
what happened but then Gary had disappeared. No one knew where he was for a
while, not even his wife. He has a lot of
good songs but Child is my favorite. He harmonized three vocal takes which I
moved around in the mix. When I first heard Michael Franti, his voice reminded
my of Gary but Gary's got better range. He also had a solid drummer who was
actually into Black Sabbath which gave a heavy attitude to the music.
OTIS CREEP, OTIS CREEP
Brock Thomas and I recorded most of this at my house over one winter on an
8-track 1/2-inch Tascam. He and drummer Benny Albro were completely
different personalities but they were a force together
musically. Brock
was one of those guys who could do six takes and every one would be dead-on the
same although we couldn't layer too much because of the track limitations. It was the second band I'd recorded Benny with and,
for the second time, he impressed. His kick drumming on this is
phenomenal, especially for a guy who doesn't normally play metal. They cop a little Sabbath
on Borrowed Time
but it is one good example.
In 2002, the Shays Rebellion label opened a recording studio in California. It was
originally located in Fremont but moved to the D room at Hyde Street Studios
in San Francisco. I worked with a lot of good bands but the clips
that I can get my hands on now to share include Hot Pants Road from
the funk bank, The Shreep,
which I producer/engineered for Tower Records. They were big in Japan
(honestly!). Also a punk band called Tres
Pistolas which I included two full-length tracks from, the more commercial Oxygen
with the static guitar/radio sounds
and the Reservation Song, which was more like their other stuff.
On both we did a lot with the guitars but I remember mixing in one scratchy mic to keep it punk. You can also hear the spit in the back of his
throat on his vocals through the C-12 mic. And maybe the best one track
guitar sound I've ever gotten, Power of the Beast, a song by Jackie Kaye
with her late boyfriend Jason on the six string
CHANT, A PLACE WHERE PEOPLE GO TO DREAM
"Once in a while you come across an album that displays intriguing warmth...one of the best sleeper albums of 2003" - Splendid Magazine
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"A swashbuckling trio with a mean romantic
streak" - BAM
CAPE COD UNDERGROUND EXPERIENCE
Usually there is a certain amount of
nervousness when we record, and it went really well. It just came together, and
it seemed as if it took no time at all."
-Tom Fettig, Philth Shack lead singer, quoted in The Cape
Codder
I worked with this band in Massachusetts
in a producer role. They had a good regional following.
I've been told The Misfits also liked them and wrote them a letter back after
hearing this. They rehearsed in front of a live audience all the time, mostly
high school kids who hung out at their place, which made them develop quickly.
In 
GARY ARNOLD, SOUL HOUSE 
They were going
for the old Metallica sound, but with more low end, and I remember the group decision to
record and mix the drums dry was met
with some second thoughts afterward but in retrospect it has stood up and stands
out against that tired processed metal sound of the day. I had insisted on at least recording in a very live room, which we
did in this house on Route 28 in Orleans where people were squatting. I'd been
in there and remembered the great room sound in one
of the bedrooms.
...It
was Brock's first time singing in the studio and I recall he sang better when he was angry so getting a
good take came down
to getting just the right amount of beers in him...The greatest thing sonically about this EP, however, turned out to be the low end. It really blows you out if you have
a subwoofer, but unfortunately will probably be lost on the Mp3. 
I used to call this the greatest album never recorded and then when we finally
recorded it, its rise was stunted after bass player Tom Harris was killed in a motorcycle accident. It is a shame since they had so many great songs, the 
We mixed
the album in just a day and a half, pretty much the minimum time logistically
that could take for nine songs of 24 tracks. Making it more daunting, we must
have had a dozen instruments on every tune, ranging from didgeridoo to acoustic
bass
to harmonica to organ to piano - everything but horns - although not all the
instruments survived on every song. Alex had no band at the time, it being a
solo project off money from a funk album we did earlier in the year. So, in lieu, he brought in some top-level
session people like Scott Foster, who was giving Kirk Hammett jazz guitar
lessons at that time, and vocal coach Jesse Foster. I
remember Beaux Davis of Chant came in and played washboard and triangle on