Showing posts with label black. Show all posts
Showing posts with label black. Show all posts

Monday, 30 January 2012

Return of the Mack

Greetings, I'd like to take this opportunity to formally announce my return as drummer of the Little Black Dress. After missing two shows due to a brief expedition through the jungles of south america, collecting field data on the indigenous populations of northern Brazil, I return to my natural calling as timekeeper for Dan, Bri, Kyle and Dame. Upon my return, I experienced no sense of gradual rehabilitation back into the non-stop lbd grind as I was thrown immediately into the trenches on what I have been referring to as the Little Black Dress' very first TOUR!!!!! We travelled across the vast landscapes of south western Ontario on what was an exhausting journey of self-discovery, pushing the limits of human achievement and demanding of ourselves physically what few people have ever dared.

The tour, consisting of three dates kicked off in Cambridge, Ontario at Bar 515. Being what it is, our tour van, that is, Dan's Jimmy could not withhold the required gear, forcing us to strap Kyle's incredibly delicate and expensive keyboard to the roof of the car. After some savvy engineering and an emergency test conducted by myself, the band concluded that the keyboard would be fine on the roof, and at worst, fly off while on the highway harming those cars behind us, leaving us without a scratch. All ran smoothly until we were victimized by a noise so insufferable we could hardly bear it. Similar to that noise created by Jim Carey in "Dumb and Dumber", the one he refers to as "the most annoying sound in the world", the wind between the keyboard and the car produced a relentless screech that followed us from city to city, driving us slowly insane.

Luckily we made it to Cambridge and played a hell of a show. And man did it feel good to be back together again. We were accompanied by fellow bands Brendan Distefano, Slow Motion Victory and Breaching Vista. On the way home, eager to distract ourselves from the sound of a yeti dying slowly (the keyboard on top of the car) Bri had the brilliant idea to download a riddle app on his phone. We spent the rest of the ride home, as well as all forthcoming car rides honing our riddle skills, and what fun it was. After a day of recovery, with what energy we had, we piled back into Dan's truck and travelled to Oshawa. At this point, being scrunched in the back of Dan's truck with two other grown men had become natural as we learned to embrace the warmth each other provided, which further deepened the affection and brotherhood generated by being band mates. In Oshawa we took the stage at E.P. Taylor's, a venue graced the night before by none other than The Sheepdogs. Another great show.


Day 3: After a brief scare in which the car began sliding on an icy road, immune to its breaking system, towards a large pole but was stopped by the curb just in time to avoid denting the front of Dan's car, we made it to the highway, going at a safe 20km/h and headed towards gig number 3. We capped off the tour in Canada's steel town, Hamilton, at the Cork Town Pub.
Big thanks to the guys from Track Avenue for being the wind beneath our wings.

 - Sweet Lew

Friday, 27 January 2012

Busiest Week Of My Life.

Woah! 

What a roller-coaster week for me! I'll lay it out for y'all sequentially. Lets begin with an abrupt Monday morning. I awoke from a hollow cylinder of rest and jumped into my mom's van so she could transport me back to the big city. (To provide backstory, I had spent an entire week in Bowmanville protecting my family from the toils and troubles of emotional decoupling. The End.)  

I went into work for a 12-9 shift, which I had been debating following through with for a few days. I gritted the trenches, got'r done and hopped into the truck with Dan at 9:05pm. We headed straight to Helm's Deep (ASA Studios)... Well, first we spent a couple bucks on some Little Caesar's before hitting the grind. 

I started laying down all the backing vocals. I had to really open up my throat for some of them; being in a headphone cave forced me to hear every aspect of my voice that needs work. 
In my opinion, one of the best kept secrets to a great album is opening the mind to vocal possibilities regarding placement of the abstract vocal pads. (I.E: "ouuhs" and "aaahhhs.")

Dan kept a naked ear on the happenings so we could bounce ideas off each other. He also did a tonne of tweeting and instagram-ing during my takes. We became very serious, and finished our work.

To my delight, Dan Flannel suggested we stay at the cottage after we had finished. The Sadowski cottage: It's an essential part of any young man or woman's personal development in this big game of life. 
I ended up watching American Beauty. The film blew my mind, why did I put this off for so long? I would have never guessed the military dude was gay the entire time!
The night expired into morning, and we managed to consume about 4-5 hours worth of sleep between 6-11am.

Work resumed. Johnny and I meddled with various synth sounds and organ pads, found the right tone, and went to town. We also opened up some of the original files from the classic LBD EP and added some keys into those tracks as well.
I started to fade around 2am on Wednesday morning as we drove back to the city. I was NOT looking forward to going back to work. 9-6 on a Wednesday morning isn't very amusing after 15 hours of tracking. Nevertheless, it feels good to cap off the recording process with a spirited effort. 

I'm so geared up for this album to drop. It has so much integrity and colour to it. It is musicianship at its finest.

I realize its now 4am on friday morning. We just got back from playing in Cambridge with Breaking Vista and Brendan Distefano. It wasn't too bad for an out of town show. We also have Oshawa and Hamilton in the next couple of days...LOUD NOISES!



Yup. Bedtime for this young soul. We spent one hour too many in the truck on the way home trying to solve riddles on Brian's blackberry app. 

Night Kids. Stay Classy

- Hohmann