Today I wanna talk about my songwriting process, inspired by asking John Faye about how he writes songs, which was surprisingly different! We were on a trip to see the Marvelous 3 in NYC last night, who were incredible; Butch Walker is a man that does what I do on stage but better.
There are always important exceptions, but I usually start writing a song by fumbling around on an acoustic guitar while singing gibberish. At some point, something clicks and I discover something compelling about what I'm playing and that's where I start developing a song around it. The goal is to make an acoustic demo that represents the "core" of what the song is: melody, chords and rhythm with an overall structure. Sometimes I'll have lyrics, most of the time I don't. Maybe I'll have a fun line for a chorus or something.
I'll work on a song until I don't have any ideas on what to do with it next. Then I have a strategy that has served me well: I record a take of the full song as it is with my phone, and then I will start working on an older unfinished song. Then I will bounce between the two until I'm out of ideas.
I am almost never working on just one song at a time. Being able to take a break from the song and come back to it later gives me a valuable perspective, kind of like when re-reading something you've written after taking a long break from it can help with revising the text.
Eventually I have an acoustic demo that is as complete as a solo acoustic version of this song could be. I know I'm near the end when I have a verse, a chorus and a bridge that don't feel like filler (the VCVCBC song form). Sometimes I just get stuck with what feels like an unfinished song with only a verse and a chorus, sometimes that can feel like enough (the AABA song form). I know I'm in a great spot when I naturally write a song that feels complete and doesn't seem to fit into either of those forms.
If the song should be a solo acoustic piece there is no more work to do. Most of the time I feel like a song needs drums at least so that means hitting up my drummer, Hourglass, and playing thru the song together. This is typically my first time playing the song with an electric guitar and distortion (or, rarely, other effects, if they are super important to the composition of the song, like a pitch-shift). I try to find a balance between the drum beat I imagine in my head and what Hourglass comes up with since I don't want to get in the way of any cool ideas he might have. The goal is to have an "Hourglass demo", a recording of us playing the whole song together.
Meanwhile, I'm usually struggling to write lyrics. I can write lyrics that I'm happy with, but I write songs much faster than I write lyrics and that often causes a bottleneck. I would say I spent about twice as much time trying to write the lyrics for Eighteen than I did the music.
After I get a good Hourglass demo, I'll take a day, listen to it and start refining it further for the next time we play it together. This is where some of the magic happens, when I come up with ideas that I wouldn't have come up with just playing these songs on my own. We might cycle thru playing the song together a few times before I take it to the full band.
Usually, with Lauren, I will fully tab out what I play and what I think she'd be playing. Sometimes she comes up with her own parts but usually she's playing what I've written. Matt understands that his duty as bass player is to reinforce the pre-existing rhythm and root notes (thank god) but he will add his own improvements and flourishes to the song. Sometimes he asks to know what chords are being played but he can usually figure it out by ear quickly. He will also add vocal harmonies and we'll decide together what works.
All these tweaks rarely change that fundamental core of the song from the original acoustic demo. It's more about making parts sound more dynamic and to work best with a full-band arrangement. Sometimes this process can turn a song that I don't think is that great to something amazing, sometimes it can do the opposite.
Eventaully we track these songs at CART. We'll track the songs with three or four of us live to a click, but the guitars are almost always just scratch takes. Bass is DI (taken after Matt's pedalboard) and that will get re-amped later.
Then I proceed to go insane at the studio with overdubs until I think the song has enough tracks and is the best version it could be. Hopefully I've figured out lyrics by now and track vocals. Recording in the studio can lead to the song divorcing itself from how we might play it live as we add effects or extra instruments that we wouldn't necessarily be able to do onstage. So long as nothing affects that acoustic core, it's good to me.
Eventually tracking ends and somebody mixes it. We'll go thru a few different mixes, maybe track some more until we get to a final mix. Then, it gets mastered (so far always with Cory from Altered Ear who has always been great) and it's off to the real world!
And that's how my songs are made!
Party With The Kids Who Wanna Party With You
It was fun talking about Gladie and why that music matters to me last time so I wanna do it again for another band.
I moved to Philly two and a half years ago (wow!) and the most important thing I took with me was the lived wisdom I gained from the perpetual car crash that was my life in my early 20s. I can't emphasize enough that I was a fucked-up broken kid that spiraled into a horrible breakdown when I was 25. I spent the next year rebuilding myself, though that's a story for a future post...
In retrospect, I should have moved to Philly sooner. There's no way I could have known that. My last few years in Austin were stagnant, in part because there was such a strong split between who I was at 24 and who I was at 27. I became anchored down to the prior version of myself to others. Moving to Philly meant a fresh start, and not in a "running away from my problems" way but as a real opportunity to shed my old self once and for all.
When I moved to Philly I was listening to the album Untenable by Bad Moves a lot. (Bad Moves, to me, is a quintessentially DC band so at the time I didn't know it was recorded in Philly!) Every track on that album is a banger. To oversimplify, the album exudes self-compassion against social hardship and I really jibed with it, especially with the inevitable anxiety I felt from starting my life over.
Scuffing our feet down alien streets
Search for the words and call back to me:
“No one here needs you to be anybody"
No one here needs you to be anybody
The song Party With The Kids Who Wanna Party With You has this lyric... it goes "Party with the kids who wanna party with you". That line became my mantra, looping around in my head as I navigated social situations and shaped my new identity. Sometimes I wouldn't gel with somebody and I didn't mind. Past me would desperately needed someone to like me and if they didn't, I had bad thoughts about myself. But if there was only one thing I was going to do right in Philly, it was that I was only going to party with people who wanted to party with me. Anyone who has had issues with people-pleasing knows how much energy you can waste on someone that doesn't matter just because they can make you feel like shit and dangle their acceptance just close enough for you to almost reach it.
Nowhere else have I more clearly put "party with the people who wanna party with you" into practice than when I put together Astro Alloy. Nobody got considered for the band if they didn't pass the Bad Moves vibe check. When considering people, I met up with each potential member twice, once to check musical compatibility and another time to see if we were going to hit it off as friends. I think the results are apparent to anyone who has seen us live: we've gotten feedback after shows that we seem to have a lot of fun together and enjoy each other's presence on stage, and they're right. You can thank Bad Moves for that.
Gladie
The door to our rehearsal space is covered in band stickers. I like to stare at them (as one does) and think big thoughts. Tonight I was thinking, "what is my favorite Philly band?" Not to take it too seriously. "Favorite" is fickle. But it's still fun to ask.
First, I need to shout-out the first local band I saw after moving to Philly that truly blew me away: Kulfi Girls. Musically, they combine punk, metal and prog with South Indian Carnatic music. The frontperson, Abi, plays a saraswati veena. The end result is something moving, exciting and (best of all) totally unique. I hope they get huge.
But what was my favorite Philly band before I moved here? Was it Dead Milkmen? Hall and Oates? (You can probably guess the answer.)
Gladie is a special band to me because their music fits my heart like a key in a keyhole. They even covered one of my favorite Weakerthans songs. I forgot how I discovered them but Don't Know What You're In Until You're Out was on repeat soon after it came out. Back then Philadelphia was an abstract concept that I was exploring, as ten years in Austin left me longing for a city with more public transportation and less gentrification.
Deciding to move to Philly was a grieving process. I loved Austin dearly and still do. A big life change can bring up big feelings and personal insecurity. The plan was to move to Philly and start a band at 32 years old. Who does that? Was there a rock band in Philly I admire, fronted by someone in their 30s with a level of success I could aspire to? (You can guess the answer.)
I've been unemployed for too long this year. At first it was exciting, then it wasn't. If you've been unemployed for longer than you wanted to be, you know that weird bleak feeling of empty desire. I was listening to Safe Sins while miserable, cold and alone so these lyrics really got to me.
will you use my body as a furnace?
I long to be of service
will you use my body as a furnace?
I need to be of service
As an ex-Catholic I can struggle with a complicated desire to be a part of something greater than myself. The institution that was supposed to provde me with that failed. Instead, Catholicism fostered a meaningless sense of guilt and rebeliousness in me. It took a long time to reclaim an authentic spirituality (shout-out to my man Dostoevsky) and value my own joy and vulnerability. I still struggle with community. I don't know how much Augusta, Gladie's frontperson, would relate to any of that, but she'll mention sin, faith, prayer but in a way that feels outside religion, in a context I can relate to. (Contast that to Sufjan, whom I love dearly but I have to kind of play along in my mind when he starts exalting the Lord.)
I am embarrassed to admit that I've seen Augusta around several times since moving here and I haven't been able to talk to her because it makes me too nervous. The first time I saw her was at a musician networking event no less and I spent hours introducing myself to other musicians and industry people and I had no problem talking to any of them. Then again, none of them wrote the lyrics to Soda.
I Keep Breaking My Guitar
I fixed my guitar today. I've had this thing for over a decade and it's my favorite guitar. Alas, I keep breaking it onstage. I've been thinking about "animal mode", which I alluded to in "We Are A Loud Band", which is the name I made up to refer to this primal state of mind that I get into on stage where I make decisions I wouldn't make otherwise.
I keep breaking my guitar because of animal mode. The irony is, I know I shouldn't do it, yet I get to the end of our set, get real excited, think "fuck it" and throw it or smash it and then regret doing it immediately after. (I have only dived at the drum kit into Hourglass' arms once so far). I am so glad that I am comfortable with soldering and guitar electronics because I replace the knobs/potentiometers and output jack every couple of months. These are components that typically never need replacing! This has also caused logistical issues on tour.
When I'm in animal mode I can scream the lyrics. I can't scream at home like I do on stage and I've tried because I really want to work on my technique!! For whatever reason, whether it be muscle memory or something else, I can only seem to scream onstage in the moment.
I get really nonverbal onstage, too. Not with singing obvz but like stage banter and saying anything more complicated than "thanks to the venue!" This is so weird because I have years of doing improv comedy on stage so you think the skills would transfer. Instead, I ramble, stutter and say things that don't make sense. Truly bizarre to know that I have literally trained to talk on stage with no preparation but this all goes out the window in animal mode. There was an interview with (the icon) Jack White and he said he didn't like talking between songs and has to force himself to do it. Well, I didn't get it then but I get it now!!
Loud rock & roll triggers animal mode. If I can't feel my guitar tone (similar to, but not the same as hearing it), I have a hard time enjoying myself cuz I can't get into that state of mind. That's most of the reason why loud stage volume is so important to me, much to the chagrin of sound engineers everywhere. The upside to all of this is that I have a deterministic, repeatable and actionable way to make my performances engaging. The best symptom of animal mode is that I can't phone it in.
I've Been Reading A Lot Of Comics Lately...
What better way to celebrate unemployment than by spending all my waking hours reading way too many comics? I've been a casual reader for a long time, sticking to one-offs or compilations, but lately I've taken it a step further and now I'm staying on top of current runs by buying single issues as they are released.
It is so fun to finish a comic and wait for that next issue to come out, like waiting for the next episode of a TV show. About once a month I commute to Brave New Worlds where I have a "pull list", which is a sort of informal subscription/preorder where they've already set aside each new comic for me to pick up. This routine feels rewarding and I love being a regular at a local business, getting to know the people working there and feeling a little less alone in the world!
Reading so many comics has given me the opportunity to explore my tastes, figuring out what I like and don't like. I'm way into the queer shit (because of course I am) so naturally I've felt at home with the X-Men, which I would describe as a media franchise just straight-passing enough not to alienate homophobes that don't understand subtext. The heart of X-Men is the agony of Scott Summers are mutants who don't fit in with the world and find community with each other. "Mutant" becomes a proxy for whatever alienates you from the mainstream, whether that be sexuality, race, neurodivergence, physical ability or whatever. In a series I loved called NYX (2024), the young gay black mutant and professor Prodigy talks about mutant oppression and mutant pride. Love it.
On the opposite end, I really really wanted to like Monstress but didn't. Monstress is an original story with incredible art, set in a unique matriarchal steampunk kaiju fantasy world. And lots of cats. What's not to love? Unfortunately, the series is just not for me because there is a lot of violence against children and I hate it. It kept happening (there's a narrative reason why) so I just stopped, even though I liked everything else. There was enough storytelling and worldbuilding that it didn't feel like a cheap attempt to be dark or edgy (a problem I've had with other comics), but at some point I have to ask myself if I want to keep reading something that I find really upsetting even if I don't think the series itself is bad.
It's tricky to find a balance between grim and fun that works for me. A lot of fantasy is "good guy world police power fantasy" which is soo overplayed and not something I've been able to relate to ever since I was old enough to realize cops are part of the problem. Even worse if it's lone-wolf alpha-male bullshit. With the same-name-but-otherwise-unrelated NYX (2008), written by the same person who did Monstress, I thought they nailed it. You have a homeless teen named Kiden, hunted by the police for having mutant powers, yet still finding the time to enjoy dumpster-diving for a gift to give to her friend for his birthday. I find a situation like that a lot more compelling than, say, crashing a jet into a volcano before it explodes or whatever.
So what does this say about me? Maybe that I find the world needlessly dark and cruel and I have no faith in social structures to do the right thing. But individual people, the people I care about, they need to care and love each other, otherwise what's the point?
"Drop the Hair Care Routine!"
I wear the same outfit every day like a cartoon character. I call it "cartoon mode". It is efficient and I want to be memorable when I meet new people! I derived my look by mashing together The Ramones, The White Stripes and My Chemical Romance.
Here's how to dress like a member of Astro Alloy:
Muji Women's Jersey Crew Neck Long Sleeve Striped T-Shirt, Black Stripe
Levi's Black Trucker Jacket, Black (cut the Levi's tag off)
Levi's Men's 511 Skinny Fit Jeans, Black
Converse Chuck Taylor All Star Cavnas High-Top Shoes, Red
Kind Socks Homecoming Tide Socks
Uniqlo Cotton Boxer Brief, Black
Congratulations, you now know what kind of underwear I wear.
I might wear a black hoodie under the jacket if it's colder, or a big winter coat over everything if it's really cold. In the summer, I still wear the long sleeves and a jacket because I am committed! Philly never really gets that hot to me. And I like having the extra pockets 😊
The bright, crayola-red hair completes the look. I want it to look like Gerard Way's hair during their Killjoys era. Most of the time I get compared to Kurt Cobain, but sometimes someone will pick up that I'm really going for Gerard!
So how do I keep the hair so red? Here's my secrets:
Wash my hair once a week in cold water with fancy "Color Extend Magnetics Shampoo".
I use a scalp brush every day to try to minimize the need for shampoo-ing.
If I need it, I have conditioner with the same red hair dye available.
Every three months, I go to Talking Headz Salon for a touch-up. Going this frequently means I've only had to get the big bleaching job done once and we can get away with just using a lightener on my roots, which helps avoid frying the hair off my head.
All of this hair maintenance is not cheap or easy, but I do it because I think looking cool and feeling confident is part of the job! I get a lot of compliments from strangers (so don't let anyone tell you Philly isn't nice).
Austin, 2014
The day after I graduated Eckerd College in 2013 I moved to Austin, TX, having never been to Texas before. Austin, as many people will tell you, is either a magical or formerly magical place.
I was alone, in pitch black except for my bike light. I was on my chunky hybrid Kona bike I got from Ozone Bikes months earlier, humming down the warm trail off the Colorado River, on my way to Flipnotics Coffee for a show. Across the river, at Auditorium Shores, I could hear Foster the People playing a free gig. "Pumped Up Kicks" came from the trees on my commute. The city and my life as an adult were still new. It was a rare moment of that feeling of magic.
I want to keep exploring and growing and having novel experiences. When I reflect on who I was then, I miss the optimism I had about the world more than anything else. I was excited about who I might become and I have to fight to not lose that part of me.
Early on, Matt gave Astro Alloy some killer advice: we should keep playing the same set, over and over and over again. I was always a fan of bands that mix up their setlists, but he was right. We've played 36 shows now (wow) and the setlist has barely changed. It's kind of a joke at this point that we always play "Breaking Up With a Friend" second and "No Face" third.
IDK if this makes sense, but after rehearsing it over and over again, after all these shows, eventually it has come to feel like we're playing one continuous set, with each song going into the next, rather than feeling like we're playing seven different songs in some order. The first three ("Stupid Stutter", "Breaking Up With A Friend" and "No Face") are played without stopping, so it feels like one long song. We're reeeeally tight, we don't muck around on stage between songs, and we don't even spend any time looking at a setlist since we already can "feel" what song is next.
At some point, we're going to have to change the setlist to incorporate new music, and I'm dreading it a bit because I think what we've got is nearly perfect! So, I booked some time at a studio (CART, of course) and we've got a recording of us playing the "classic" setlist together live, and man it sounds so great. It felt important to have this historical record, not just of the songs live, but with the energy, chemistry and synchronicity that makes playing it feel uniquely special to us.
By the end of this month (assuming all goes to plan) we'll have 32 songs tracked for Astro Alloy Album #2. (I count Eighteen and (Still) Eighteen as one big album in my mind, by the way). For posterity, here's the list:
airholes
armageddon
arrow of time
bones
charade parade
chrysanthemum
complicated
discarded mannequin
dogma
dragon breath
ego death
exoskeleton
forbidden waters
frange
goose girl
i don't need you
leech
mermaid
mitochondria
no choice
renaisance
satisfaction
spider
stepfather
still crazy
translucent wings
turn
vines
virtue
want / need / take
werewolf
worms + worm waltz
Song names are subject to change!
It both seems like a lot but also not enough. I'm drowning in songs. There's ten more ready to track after this with plenty more after those, too. I have at least another 24 completed songs that I've shelved for now, and I worry I'll never get to them once Astro Alloy Album #3 gets going.
So are we going to cut like 24+ songs and release a 12-song album? Maybe, if that's what makes the most sense. But what I don't want is one big blob of songs just for the sake of getting it all out there. Some curation needs to happen. Eighteen + (Still) Eighteen have two unreleased songs because I didn't want either album to be too long.
Ohh and before I forget, we've got an EP coming out sooner than later!
Porchfest 2025
Porchfest this year almost got rained out, but thanks to Laura (of Laura and the Storm fame), we had a tent set up that helped protect us from what ended up being a pretty mild shower.
For the first time ever, Astro Alloy played as a three-piece: Lauren on bass while Matt was at a wedding. The crowd was great and the show went well but I hated that it was only three of us and I never want to do that again!
It was also this year's WXPN 24-hour Songwritiing Challenge. We did it last year and it was fun but omg I had absolutely no time this year as I was too busy running sound for six bands. So the event came and went without a song by Astro. Hopefully next year there won't be a scheduling conflict, cuz I want to do it with all four of us!
Pictured above is me eating an ear of corn my friend gave me, which everybody thought was really funny 😤
There we went again... ATX + NOLA 2025
Another crazy tour! Maybe someday we'll go on a proper TOUR tour where we travel for weeks at a time, but for now it's a big deal just to take a week off from our day jobs (day jobs? rock'n'roll doesn't pay the bills??) and play five shows in five days.
There is a group of people who came to every show. And they're so cool and nice?? Astro Alloy has been lucky enough to have fans early on, and it's next-level to see people love and support the band in-person.
I've rarely heard other musicians talk about this, but so much of making this band work is relying on other people. Booking shows, borrowing gear, sleeping over, just showing up. I have to fight my desire to do everything alone, to not depend on anyone else, because the band wouldn't be able to work otherwise.
In other news, I hit a wall. My own physical limitations. I had a dream/delusion that I would just put in 110% for each show and recover well enough to push thru for the next one. In practice, this worked for a week and then I died. I fucked around and found out that over-exertion leads to health problems and I was knocked out for a whole week with a respiratory infection. (I have still never gotten COVID!) If I were to do it all again (as I plan to) I need to incorporate diet and exercise, or else I will perish.
Here we go again... ATX + NOLA 2025
We'll be playing four shows in Austin (I think??) and I'm excited for all of them. Then we're hauling our shit all the way to New Orleans. We're blowing all our money on this trip, but you only live once, RIGHT? Maybe we can go viral on Spotify and they can start paying us ⅓¢ per stream instead of our current rate of 0¢. Fuck Spotify and everything that our tech overlords are doing to turn our lives into sleek, efficient meaninglessness. See you in real life.
Baseball City
Did you know? Back in the earliest era of Astro Alloy it was just me and Josh. We recorded an album we called "Baseball City". Unfortunately, it was too experimental so we decided to scrap it and I eventually wrote Eighteen instead. It took a few days and tracked everything to tape live. Lots of weird experimental stuff.
It was called "Baseball City" cuz I used to go to Boardwalk and Baseball as a kid with my parents.
CART Studios 4: Jirachi Wish Maker
Lauren, Mattias and I moved an upright piano from one space to another in the studio so we could record it with a distant room mic. The three of us sat at the bench together to play a six-octave chord. We reversed the track and added a delay effect. The results were perfect, one of the coolest things I've ever done. Maybe this sounds cool, maybe you had to be there.
There is a tension on this album I'm not sure how to resolve. I think of myself as a balance of someone who is a silly fun clown and someone who feels a lot of feelings and just wants to be weird and sad and loved for being weird and sad. Songs that embrace the former are more liked and our live shows emphasize that "clown" side of me. But there's the other side that writes less-popular songs, less immediately fun, but they are just as important to me. What do I do with them? I asked Lauren and she said "who cares what people think, you should do you," and she's probably right.
We'll be in and out of the studio this year recording the big follow-up to Eighteen/Still Eighteen! Eric aka Jersey Wall dropped by and took lots of cool pics :) I should probably make like a photo gallery type thing for the website. Or even an Astro Alloy app. That would be cool!!
It's hard to fit in a full-time job and do everything that the success of Astro Alloy demands of me. I don't really have time for anything else. 8 hours at work, then 4 hours in the studio... it's not a bad way to live. I just want to stop making content for Instagram, please.
We Are A Loud Band
I've gone to enough concerts to make up my mind: amp sims and click tracks are death for any band trying to convey the energy of rock & roll for their live show. This "no volume on stage" trend for rock & roll is a big "no" for me. Maybe if I was in an eight-piece jazz fusion band I'd feel differently, but I'm not so I don't!
There is a flow state, a primal trance I put myself in when pushing a Big Muff into a 50w tube amp, and it doesn't happen when I'm only pushing 15w or less (unless we are in a tiny, echo-y basement, then 15w it is!) This is not a choice, this is not incidental, this is a non-negotiable aspect of the performance needed for the show to work.
We haul a giant two-ton 4x10 bass cab everywhere. Why? Because it sounds better. The dinky light-weight combo amps don't cut it. 1x15 cabs are okay, but I'm not on putting up with being alive on this earth so my band can be "okay".
Heaven forbid someone says my needs are impractical. Truly nothing is more impractical than a rock band. If we wanted to be practical, we'd break up, throw our instruments away and go be accountants.
Okay one more note: hearing damage is a real thing. We bring special foam earplugs meant for live music to share with the audience (although I keep forgetting to mention we have them on stage!) We each wear hearing protection when practicing and performing. If you wonder, "why wear earplugs? why not just turn down?" then you don't get it!
We went on our first multi-city tour! We played NYC, Boston and Philly three days in a row. It felt similar to our "tour" at SXSW this year but with less partying and more driving. Despite being only three days, it was a pretty insane experience. There are few things I've experienced in my life as thrilling as going on tour. It was like riding a roller coaster for three days straight.
Here are some fun highlights:
Getting into a fight with the sound guy in NYC over stage volume
Backing up a rental van into a trash can
Running out of beds/sofas at our AirBnB so Matt slept on a camping pad in a closet only to find an extra bed in the morning
Doing a choose-your-own adventure novel that included crying 1000 tears to save a unicorn (we failed to cry enough and the unicorn died)
Searching for dinner at 1am in Lowell, MA; stumbling into a Columbian dance party instead
Hourglass' "birthday cake" french toast (I am sorry, you had to be there)
In conclusion, I am grateful that Matt, Hourglass and Lauren are all wonderful people that made living on top of each other for 72 hours easy. Plus we sounded great! By the third show at PhilaMOCA we were so in sync with each other. I also totally blew out my voice and need to figure out how to stop doing that, HA
Sophomore Album - (Still) Eighteen
"part two" for that album about the liminal space between adult and teenager.
Where to Listen
The album is exclusively available on Bandcamp. It will be on streaming September 7th.
Astro Alloy on the Radio (WXPN)
I cannot believe this happened. Astro Alloy got played on the radio. I've dreamed about this, but never thought it would actually happen?
Thank you to WXPN and John Vettese. You can check out the 7.30.2024 broadcast here. "Please Go To Therapy" is the third song played and John even has nice things to say about the band 😊.
Headroom Studios
I want Astro Alloy to sound like a real, living band. Not something meticulously pieced together by someone alone on a laptop. (Not that I think there's anything wrong with that... there's plenty of room in this world for both!)
I have a chronic need to not repeat myself. I don't want to use the same mics, record in the same space and I absolutely do not want to follow best practices. I want to break all the rules and do the things you're not supposed to do and find out what happens.
This, on the surface, probably sounds exciting. And it is. But in practice, this means we have to work a lot harder to make these ideas work. That means suffering the consequences of my decisions. I hope, when this project is over, that people can tell that there's something different about us, that the extra work mattered.
We booked Headroom Studios for a weekend. We recorded a four-minute instrumental live on tape without a click track, playing it over and over and over again until we got it right. We were all in the same room with our instruments. There were acoustic panels everywhere because I wanted to hear each instrument in the room itself rather than thru a headphone mix. It was thrilling to nail a take as a full band, to lock in and sync up with each other to get the performance right.
Thank you to Mark Watter from Headroom that had the wisdom and grit to pull all this off and to Richie DeVon (from Lástima) for their assistance.
CART Studios II: Electric Boogaloo
Back at CART! Lauren & I recorded guitars for an EP that'll come out some time later. We've got vocals to track next. (We do have an album coming out in a few weeks, this is another separate thing!)
We got to do something cool in the studio with Matias: rather than piece together each guitar track individually, Lauren & I played our parts live together at the same time and positioned the microphones to let both our amps bleed into each other. This should give a full, live sound that we couldn't have achieved otherwise. Very few overdubs. Pretty much the opposite of what I did when tracking guitars by myself in the Eighteen days.
We were supposed to play a show that same evening but Matt got the 'rona. The first show we had to drop! Ah well!
Back to the Studio
Hourglass & I spent this afternoon at CART Studios to record drums for some new songs. We've worked with Matias before and he's great. Drums are notoriously difficult to get right in the studio so I don't take for granted that the session was easy and fun. Credit to the skill of both of them.
For one of the weirder songs (which Hourglass describes as "three different genres") he set up his kit with two different snares and switched between them. Then we added some extra percussion after.
I have big ideas for this project but I don't know what the end result will be. I hope it will be something cool. For now, things are sounding great!
West Philly Porchfest
Thank you for our biggest show yet! We had no idea if anyone would show up, and by the end of our set there were over 100 people, enough to block the street. It was hot enough in direct sunlight to start melting the power cable to Lauren's pedals (?!) and wow at one point I thought I was gonna pass out because I didn't drink enough water (!!). So, lots to learn from this one.
Special thanks to Flower Clvb, the beautiful flower shop that hosted us and, more importantly, dealt with the noise complaints because we were just too punk rock. Rock'n'Roll!
We Got Merch!
Look at this awesome merch Lauren made! DIY patches, earrings and free stickers! More to come. No online store, if you wanna buy you gotta come to one of our shows ;)
WXPN 24-Hour Song Challenge
Philly's local public radio station, WXPN, did their first-ever "24-Hour Song Challenge" where musicians were given 24 hours to write and perform an original song with a given prompt. This year's prompt was "summertime". We wrote a song called Winter Mood, which you can check out on YouTube or click the pic above. Check out the other 400+(!!) submissions here!
Guitar Tabs
omg! you can view guitar tabs for the entire Eighteen album right here on astroalloy.com! clicky da link
Apologies to anyone who has no idea what we're talking about.
Debut Album - Eighteen
An album about the liminal space between adult and teenager.
