Lazy days of summer? not for me.
posted on 17 Jul 2015 under category History
My summers never used to be lazy. Even as a kid, my friends and I would regularly spend every free day between the last day of school and the next first day of school riding and biking all over our neighborhood, sometimes completely without heed for the boundaries our moms and dads set. Sometimes our D&D would turn into our own version of LARPing, before we knew LARPing was a thing, when we would grab our swords made of broomhandles and shields of trash can lids and beat the shit out of each other.
In college, as I was working in between classes, I never took time off, and with the egregious number of major changes I made I had to take summer sessions to avoid being in college forever, so ‘summer’ was just the time when I was walking or biking to class, driving to work, and jamming with the band - but it was just hotter outside.
Then I graduated and got married, and musically I had struck out on my own. After a couple of years of writing songs and putting my studio together, I finally got to work with Rampage, and then Festering Sore, Death Beast, Gomorrah, and so on. By some strange fit of luck, it ended up being that Summer was also my musical busy season.
It’s weird, thinking about that. I’ve had a blog post I’ve been meaning to write for a while about the changing of seasons, and how the winter to spring shift coinciding with the Daylight Savings Time clock change always jarred me, but for some reason it got me into my most creative fits. I think the cold finally ending, along with a sudden slam from dim days to bright sunlight and sharp shadows, does something to jumpstart my brain. The rest of the world is recreating itself, and somehow that energy blends into me and comes out in what I write. I have a spreadsheet I made a long time ago about all of the songs I’ve written and when I did so, and many of them date from the months of March, April, and May for when I first came up with the ideas.
But for some reason, now in this hot summer I’m trying to survive and work on the next Death Beast album through, I remember the work. All of the nuts and bolts of hooking up the guitar amps and mixers, changing to fresh new strings, laying down scratch tracks and agonizing over trashing the good ones when doing final tracks - all of that stuff usually happened during the summer.
I cast my mind back to the Summer of 1998, my first Summer in our new house and the first location of Bloody Leg Studios. My wife had a weird work schedule which left me two nights a week alone at home, and so when I got home from work I went straight to the studio and started laying down the guitars. I had to sometimes use those hours for vocal takes, since I could record quietly if she were home, but she hated hearing me scream shit like “SATANIC DEATH!” while she was in the house. I’d dump tape mixes of the songs I was working on to cassette and then listen to them in my Walkman as I did my daily workout of riding my bike around the long loop of our neighborhood - once around was about 1.2 miles, so six laps would give me lots of time to hear what needed redoing, what needed remixing, and what I could live with. That was how the bulk of This End Up was recorded and mixed - even though it didn’t come out until October 31 that year, a lot of the recording work was done that summer - and Fall in Georgia is pretty much like Summer anyway, so the memories kinda blend together there.
Next Summer was even busier, as I used the same setup to try to reach farther and get more elaborate with the arrangements and recording, and Bellum Infinitum was the result. Again, I remember the sunny and hot room on the front of the house where the studio was set up. It faced south, and the neighborhood was newly built, so there were no trees to speak of - it was always bright and hot in that room. It’s strange to remember, but the chair I used was always sticky just from sitting and sweating in it. From 4 to 6 in the afternoon I’d have to tilt my monitor to avoid the glare from the windows - even with blinds on, it was always too bright for comfort. It was only about half of the album that got done that way, since the songs were more elaborate and the whole album was longer. I recorded all the way up through November, when it actually gets cold in Georgia, but when I think back on the recording process, again, I remember those hot summer days.
Summer of 2000 was even more busy as Festering Sore took over the studio, and again I can’t help but connect the writing and recording to those bright, hot days. I was carpooling to and from work at the time, and so while waiting I was writing songs in my head. I had lyric sheets, and the music was written from the lyrics mainly by me standing out on the hot street corner waiting for my ride, printed lyrics in my hand, with me just reading them over and over, trying to figure out a vocal cadence that was easy to sing, and then using that to suggest the rhythms for the riffs. I’d scribble arrangement notes with a pen when I figured things out, and then when I got home I’d program the drums or lay down some guitar or bass tracks. Mixing and listening was the same, but more so - since I was carpooling, the only time I had to listen to mixes was during my workouts or while doing yardwork. Nothing says ‘Summer’ to me as much as pulling up weeds or mowing the lawn while listening to “Evil Dead” or “Cellar of Horror”. I remember finishing the mix before our late-Summer vacation, so I test-listened in the car while driving to the beach and then mailing the master off for reviews and friends from the road.
Summer of 2001 was a fourth Summer in a row of busy work. By now I was trying my hand at running UHR as a small trade/sale label, and my brother-in-law was in a band, so he asked me to help them record some rehearsal demos, run sound for a few shows, and things like that. But, even then, I was busy with Rampage - I started working on the Doom Metal album in late spring, as the cold melted away, I’d finished the two tracks for the New World Blasphemy split early in that Summer, and then picked back up with the Doom, finishing it ultimately in the Fall (again, another hot Autumn that might as well be Summer Part II) as Monolith to an Abandoned Past. The new studio was cooler and darker, which was nice, but I was still mixing for my bike and for yardwork. I also remember going to a local cemetery to take pictures for the album cover - gloomy pictures, but taken on a bright, hot day.
I’ve had a few other busy summers since then, but nothing like that string from 1998 through 2001. The first Death Beast album was partially written and recorded in Summer of 2004, but because of the improved conditions, I think, I don’t remember it as well, or really connect it with Summer. This also isn’t helped by the fact that I ended up trashing most of those sessions (turning them to the demos that ended up on the demo compilation), with the final stuff being recorded that winter.
And so here I am now, Summer of 2015, a decade and a half after that magnificent run. There’s so much more going on in life that’s not related to music, but must be dealt with, that ends up leaving me scant little time to do any recording or writing, but for some reason I’m feeling that burn again. You can’t step outside without sweating, and you have to squint or you burn your retinas, and the grass always needs mowing and I keep needing to do another few minutes on the bike or treadmill to fight off the beer I had with dinner, but I still hum riffs in my head, or toss a line back and forth, trying to figure the rhythm from the syllables, and I think I still feel that vibe.
Time to get back to work.