Ghost Ghost got booked to play an event at South By South West Interactive in Austin, Texas. As the band isn’t getting paid enough to justify my traveling to every gig I stayed in Vermont. This however did not prevent me from appearing with the band at the show. Using 4 laptops (2 on each end) we used Skype to allow me to play with the band via the interwebs.
There was a lot of latency to deal with but as I was playing mostly ambient asynchronous loops and intermittent guitar outfreakage it wasn’t really an issue.
Spent the weekend in Sparta, New Jersey mixing the next Stone Document disc. At the helm at Homebrew Studio was Kevin Lacatena. Between him and Mike Roze they dialed up some amazing sounds (awesome drums). It is close to sounding like a record. Just mastering and arguing over song titles left to do.
Day off. Karl had other commitments so Kevin, Mike D. and I wandered around the city. Ended up at Dolores Park a veritable sea of humanity soaking up the sun. We were fairly easy to spot – three pasty-white guys in black t-shirts and the only people standing in the shade.
One of the highlights of the day was the bacon bloody marys at the 500 Club. And they had one of the best-stocked jukeboxes I’ve ever encountered. Replacements and Nick Cave? Awesome.
Rehearsed all day with the full line up (Karl, Kev, me, Mike DeBlois on drums and Michael Mahoney on synth) and the came the schlepp into the city. Checked in and then headed to the venue. We were met there by none other than Mr. Keith Watts (former drummer for Regional Science Fair as well as many other improvisational outings with me). Grabbed some food and then loaded in. Soundcheck was good although it was a bit tricky figuring out how we’d fit. Ended up with Karl and Kevlar in front of the stage, the rest of us behind them on the riser.
We hit at about 10 PM and was pleased to see a lot of faces I hadn’t seen in years – family, old college friends and ex-bandmates among them. Odd that I have to travel thousands of miles to get people to turn up at a show.
The set went well (but LOUD!). Felt good to rock again – this being the first show since drummer Tim’s departure. I think the crowd enjoyed it as well. HIJK was splendid as well.
Post show we all posed for this pic in front of Li Po lounge:
L to R: Kevlar, Mike D., Mike M., Karl, me, Dave Tsui, Karl Tupper and Trevor Wencl
Got off the plane from Vermont in San Francisco, grabbed my stuff, hopped on BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) to Oakland to rehearse with Ghost Ghost at HIJK‘s rehearsal space. Tired? Feh!
Friday, February 11th! Ghost Ghost makes its West Coast debut! We’ll be playing with our friends HIJK at Li Po lounge in Chinatown (916 Grant Street, San Francisco). We go on at 9 with HIJK following.
3/4s of Radio Underground did a special holiday show Sunday night at the Monkey House. The occasion (besides Boxing Day) was that Zak LaVigne was in town from the West Coast for the holidays and a show just seemed like the right thing to do. Luckily we had a rather large audience that agreed.
Zak opened the show with a handful of solo tunes on guitar, voice and harmonica. Very nice stuff. Next up was a variation of the Radio Underground with Arty, Chris and me plus Zak on drums and Mike Scott on sax and harmonica. It was pretty much a family reunion as Zak is Arty’s son and Mike is Arty’s cousin.
After a brief break the band returned minus Mike Scott but with John Tower Group co-frontman Mike Colbourn on guitar and vocals. The first time we had rocked together in a lo-o-o-o-ng time. And rock we did.
Spent a couple days in Brooklynn at Kevlar’s working with him and Karl on the forthcoming Ghost Ghost holiday singles. The original plan was to do a full album but that turned out to be a bit over-optimistic so 2 singles were decided on instead.
First song tackled was Kevin’s Please Stay for Christmas Eve. He already had Karl’s drums, some keys and vocals and it sounded unlike anything else Ghost Ghost had ever done. So, naturally the thing to do was to put me to work and push it further. Can you say “potential alienation of fanbase” ? Can you hear them pulling their hair and screaming “Tim leaves and you get this guy?!” There was a 30 second ambient intro so I decided to add a live loop to that. Pretty straightforward (and kinda monotonous) so we opened up a couple more tracks, kept the loop running and ran through the song again but this time through I kept changing distortion presets on the Line 6 M9 (the looper that day) on downbeats to weird things up. That part is to be mixed pretty low but hopefully you will still be able to hear it on headphones.
Then we got our hands on Karl and made him do a guitar solo on the outro (another long ambient passage). We coaxed a David Gilmourish solo out of him in a handful of takes and it was perfect for the song.
Then it was time to work on Karl’s song Christmas Comes Whenever You Come Home. Drums, acoustic guitar, vocals and bass (just a guide track I think) were already done and sounding good. This is a very catchy song and a pretty straightforward arrangement (a yin to Please Stay for Christmas Eve’s yang). My first whack at it was putting down a slide electric guitar solo. Then we did the hook at the beginning tracking my guitar a couple times in harmony.
One of the touchstones for the direction on this one was the Traveling Willburys so we then had to start piling on the vocals. My singing voice has been crap for a while now thanks to allergies and asthma but even I got put in front of the mic for the “crowd” vocals on the chorus. Hopefully mixed low on the final master.
This was some of the most fun I have had making music in a long time and it was really nice getting to hang with Kev, Karl, Margaret, Ellie and the visiting hero Mike Delbois (with whom I collaborated on another piece Christmas in the Shins – more details on that adventure later).
Postscript – I found this book on Margaret and Kevin’s bookshelf (M is an architect) and was highly amused by the title. King Crimson fans will get the reference. Ask one to explain it.
Okay, so the song was recorded before my official involvement with the band but Ghost Ghost just released a music video for Time is Gravity, directed by Tim Bartlett. Check it out:
