OK! I'm in New Orleans with the SugarHill/Essential Sound crew at Tape Op!!!!!!! So far I have met Fletcher from Mercenary Audio, George Dakking, Larry Crane (editor of Tape Op), and Hillary (online publisher of Tape Op), and several engineers from Boston, New York, LA, and Virginia. Here's a couple of pictures.

This is Larry Crane (and me)



... AND check out Hillary's hair do. HARD CORE!





More to come!!!

theNOLAlove,
Dan

I'm getting ready to go to New Orleans for the 3rd annual Tape Op Conference. This is a conference sponsored by Tape Op Magazine, the COOLEST recording industry mag on the planet (#3 in circulation, too!). The magazine is free, and you can sign up online. You can check out their site by clicking on my cool new bloggroll link at the end of this post. From time to time I'm going to add links to sites of interest, as well as add links to band sites.

Off to the Big Easy

Here's Tony.

That's Mister Doctor Endieveri to you.

Master designer.

We finished mixing Sound Breaking Ground and I'm really happy. The songs stood up under scrutiny while we mixed. I'm going to post an unmastered version of 'This Is Hell' on the Sound Board sometime today. Here's the Band looking quite cool:




I'm going to try to do some more songs with SBG. I still need to play some piano, right guys?

I'm going to do some editing of The Googe mix of 'After All' today. All in all, it's nice to have a day OUT of a mix session.

theeditlove,

Dan

Steve got started on the SBG mix for 'This is Hell' early this morning. He was already good to go in Studio A because he had spent the previous three days mixing Prognosis (produced by Stephen MacDonald and engineered by our own Tim Wehrle). Steve got us HOOKED up crazy fast, so we got to spend time on creative mix massaging rather than stressing general presentation issues. The results were heard booming through the Heights as I drove home.

Highlight moments for the band resulted in the following Kudo's:

Channing for his 'hair trigger' rhythm-foul detection....
Chris for his presence (we've missed him)
Dave for his hard charging attitude, and
Michael for never hesitating to share his relentless self.

Now a funny thing happened last night. I was at Rudyards as mentioned in my log yesterday. The shows were very good, but just as I was leaving, I met Shawn Pander who is in town for a couple of days after completing a tour. I had to split, but I really wanted to get together and talk, so I got his number from him & was to call him this afternoon. Now, the last time I heard from Shawn, he had re-recorded and remixed a record I had done for him which is always a bit of an awkward situation, so I was I really looking forward to sitting down and talking and reestablishing the love, so to speak. Well, I popped out the phone to call him this afternoon, and there's no number, like, anywhere in the phone. Crap. I must have had a Freudian Finger Slip over the 'delete button'. The message he's likely to get from my not calling as promised is only going to make things worse! Shit!

I figured out that I could look him up on the net & I did get his manager's number and email & I placed the appropriate communiques there. Shawn, if you read this, drop me an email so we can connect.

Sarah Sharp and Moses Guest were on the bill at Rudz and Sarah rocked harder than I have ever heard her on an order of magnitude! Rick Thompson, from Moses Guest, sat in on her set playing keys and it drove the band, and her, to really crank it out. Moses Guest played some new material which I liked a lot, and they gave me one of their new DVDs which is awesome! Check out www.mosesguest.com.

Time to grab some family time (& some ZZZZ's) so I can be frosty for tomorrow.

So we're mixing Sound Breaking Ground tomorrow. I've been working all this week on doing small parts and vocal edits (especially on MRod,.... what a chore!).

Steve and I have our plan of attack and I have most of my parts done. Since I can indiscriminatlely post pictures, here is what my day looked like.
(Note the dual caffine delivery methods).




We're going to mix without John Griffin's big guns, but Steve assures me it will be alright. John! You have spoiled the sh*t out of me!

Logan listened to me record all day in the office, and she has been nice enough not to bitch about it once. I did hear her walking around cursing a few times, but then Josh-the-Intern showed up and she was able to take all that out on him. Lucky me. (Actually, lucky Josh, HA).

Tonight I'm going out to dinner with an old friend, Tim MacDonald. After dinner, we are going to go over to Rudyards to see Sarah Sharp and Moses Guest.

The fact that I am writing now is really awesome, because it means I'm ready for tomorrow (no! really!).

mixylove,
Dan


OH YEAH, Here's a picture of Channing and MRod of Sound Breaking Ground pretending to look at porno while I'm trying to work!!!

I can't believe I can post pictures in my weblog! This is the coolest. OK, here goes:



This is the whole gang in the studio. I generally hate studio pictures, and this is no exception. (I'm the good looking one)


Here's Brian, the bassist. In this pic you can see he is also the band historian -- all decked out with his camcorder and all.


My favorite! Denise in her "I'm all pregnant, but still foxy" pose!! Step back!!


This is Bobby the drummer. We have scads of pictures of him playing the drums, but for my money, this one says it all. Cool, pensive, and ready.


Just a quick picture to prove I'm aging somewhat gracefully. Steve is looking all young and un-burned out on the right, while I look, .... well,... more MATURE on the left.

More pictures to come in this forum.

thefullcolorlove,
Dan

We celebrated my daughter's 14th birthday last night. Christi came up with the COOLEST idea for a party. We hired Joe Ann's favorite local band, Next Best Thing, to play a private show. We rented a local party room (no clean up!!!), decorated it like a club with lights & a stage, and Christi even printed tickets to send in the invitations! Party time arrived, and it was a total success!! The band, btw, is very very good. John Griffin is producing their second CD at the moment. I've heard that they have scored some cool endorsements and are planning a multistate tour in their new RV. Way to get busy, NBT!

Check them out at www.nbtpunkrock.com

After the show, some of our parent-buds and their kids came to chill at Casa Workman. We started listening to Wilco, but the topic of conversation turned towards what I was working on at the time (everyone noticed how burned out I looked, so they knew my story would have some drama). I started telling them about The Googe and the 'rockestral' vibe we had created, so I slotted the mix of "After All" (posted on the Sound Board). Everyone agreed is the schiznit. This is pretty cool bcs we had just been rocking VERY hard for two sets of punkrokpowerpop at the show. So; Way to Go Googe!

We just finished mixing the Googe and I'm really impressed with the results. I'm going to post one of the mixes even though it is not yet mastered--check out the Sound Board. The song is "After All" and the results are transcendent. The Googe were one of the coolest bunch of people to work with. They trusted the process (read: Steve, Kevin, and myself), and yet never checked out of the game. Denise, Brian, Matt, and Bobby pushed themselves and us at every point. I'm really proud of our work.