Executive Producer? Your mom? Yes!
Well kids everything is getting really exciting! I just got sent most of the final designs for the CD, and it got me super stoked. It is getting more official and I just want to hurl all over someone I love for it. This means sometime in the next week or so I’ll be ready have the CD’s made!
Another development that has happened in the past month is I have decided to take on an executive producer. Jared Sidwell is the man, and he will be forking over the dough to have the CD’s made.
Jared Sidwell - Looking like a bad mother at a party
We came to a cool agreement, which is not something that would normally fly with a big label. Jared pays to have the CD’s made, and I give his son guitar lessons for a year. I have been teaching his son already now for awhile and he rocks. It is fun to have Sid onboard! Look out for all kinds of news, because chank baste face it is coming!!!
Progress Shmogress: Rushing Art
“You can’t rush art -” is what I keep hearing in my head over and over again – The quote comes from Toy Story 2. Why I keep hearing it is a two fold booty: 1st booty fold – My first album when all is said and done is going to take a year longer than I wanted it to and the quote helps me feel a little better about it. Plus I know when I am finished I will be 99% happy with the final product, which is much better than sending music into the world that blows. 2nd booty fold – I recently saw the Toy Story 3D double feature with my wife for a date. Now that we have those out of the way on to the good news!! ….
All mixing and mastering is finished!! Anyone that has been working on something for a long time, whether art, a business, making babies, or whatever it is – will know what it is like to experience a positive end result/effect of the work. It was an exciting day! Now all the details of the album art need to be put together and I need to round up the funds to make all the CD’s and we are in business! After that look out for a release party! I plan on renting out a cool venue and having free food and stuff. Rock on amigos!
Shout Out and Album Progress
I would now like to shout out to everyone related to Billy Bob Thornton. This shout out has now concluded. Thank you. Now go home, dress up like Cindy Lauper, and cry your self to sleep. 
The album is rocking along – I am getting close to setting an official release party chank day. Aside from a few other little things that need to be recorded I’m now moving forward with the design of the CD which is fun. Andy Bean finished his painting of my man mug… that sounds weird.. and a friend and coworker of mine Josh Derosa is helping me with the design of the CD. With his design and a bunch of other art from friends the CD will make you all warm and tingly before you even listen to it. Rock on amigos!! P.S. if you’re asking “why the Billy BT shout?” – then let me tell you.. why not?
Gospel Choirs, stuff taking too long, and a picture to display my overall confusion
Goodnight chank basters it’s the of end April already! So much for having my first album done by January! Maybe I wasn’t being very realistic about how long the project would take due to the number of songs I am doing and everything I want to do with them. Plus I guess real rockers stick it to the man and quit their day jobs for the glory of rock, but I guess I am just not to that level rock face yet.
There is one song that I think my friends, and people who have heard me play around in local venues are sick of – so I want make it sound very different on the album. I have played around with a number of different ideas and the winning idea is to have a gospel choir sing in parts of the song. Believe it or not it is a little difficult finding a good gospel choir in Utah. After several months of contacting different people I was reminded that a friend of mine Ammon Kamai used to sing in a choir. Well hallelujah – he was still in it! The Divine Heritage Choir has agreed to sing on my album. So far the choir has heard the song, and with a little direction from me the section leaders are making parts for the song. Hopefully in the next few weeks I can get into the studio with them. Then I will be ready to mix these tunes and send them screaming into the world to bust many a gut and burst a million spleens.
Going the Extra Mile
Things are rocking along you little kitten wedges! I have 19.75 hours of studio time left before I have to start forking over more money (which may or may not happen depending on how long mixing takes). All of the main vocal parts are recorded, and I only have a few more harmonies left. Most of the music work left will be done at home – 12 more bass lines to record and a couple little guitar parts that will be fine from home. This post is dedicated to the musician that goes an extra mile like the picture of Wayne below. We were recording a song called Be My Own and there is a shift between the chill part of the song into mind blowing rock. The shift requires a classic guitar maneuver of dragging the pick across the frets creating a scratching noise. This man got down on his knees for optimal rock power leverage to drag the pick across the strings; like a lion dragging its last kill across the jungle floor. Give it up to Wayne for going the extra rock mile.
Magical Herbal Studio Tea Drinks
Last night after my last final I headed on in to Rosewood to keep cracking away at the vocals. I was a little worried because my voice was still a bit tight and scratchy from a recent cold. There was 3 songs for sure I knew I didn’t even want to try, but Guy Randall disappeared for awhile and brought me back magical drinks. It had like 4 or 5 bags of tea, with honey, brown sugar, lime, and holy motherless chank child yeah. It was thick, it was brown, it was strangely delicious, and it healed my voice. We recorded vocals for 6 songs in 3.5 hours, along with some other song clean up stuff. It was glorious! That means I only have one song left to sing main vocals on!
After some harmonies, bass lines, last minute additions, and mixing I will have 19 songs to go out and attack the world with! “I’m ready promotion… I’m ready promotion” – hope you know what thats from. 
=
Salsbury Pudding
It must have been around 8th grade a friend of mine (Cam) and I came up with the name of our band: Salsbury Pudding. The name stuck around longer than any other band name I’ve been associated with, mostly because for a long time it only represented a two man band – a guitarist/bassist/singer and a keyboardist/drummer/singer. However after several years passed the band increased with a couple more duders Wayne Powell (Guitar) and Devin Anderton (he ended up playing drums, viola, and the bass.. dang) It was really only a four man band for a few weeks, but for that short duration we wanted to see if we could compete in a local high school battle of the bands.
I wrote a song, and Wayne had some songs in the mix we learned as a band, then with a couple classic They Might Be Giants Covers we were ready. In the end we tied for 2nd place if I remember right, which we were cool with even though the prize was a piece of poop. After the intense battle for high school rock glory, Cam’s Dad was way cool and paid to have us go into the studio and record the songs we battled with. That was my first experience in the studio and it was a great one. So why all the reminiscing? Mostly because I just got a couple songs over to Salsbury Pudding’s old band member Devin Anderton to see if he could add some viola parts to this new project – and his response was pretty funny and it must be posted:
“Got the goods. Your stuff rocks my panties. I don’t own panties. I don’t know why I said that. I don’t know why I haven’t erased that, yet. I’ll tinker around, see what I get. With your songs, off course, not my imaginary panties. Enough with the panties, already.
Devin”
Enough said.
Singing and bass playing goats
Well… hello precious kittens. Finally after computer crashes, body crashes, and some mountain goat crashes probably somewhere – I am starting to make some progress towards these 19 tunes. I have now recorded two of the bass lines (17 more to go still seems a little daunting, but I have already written the lines for many of them) and later today after school punches me in the face I am headed back to Rosewood to start recording vocals. I can’t wait to get back, this time will be a bit different though – I am flying solo today. It will just be the sound engineer Guy and me, which on previous sessions my wife and friends were all there. It will probably be a good thing actually so I can focus just on the music and the meaning of the words I will be singing. In some cases the meaning doesn’t go much past “so good chank – this song needs some lyrics, what rhymes with in your face?” However most of the songs do have some kind of purpose, or at least tell a story I care about.
Also I have had hundreds of requests (hundreds meaning Clark) to hear some of the songs with new parts. A handful of friends and homies at work have been listening to the rough cuts, but as I get closer I want people to still be interested in the CD, so I probably wont be releasing these songs until they are mixed and ready to go. However I thought for kicks you may want listen to a little bass groove I recorded for practice.
http://www.musicwebtown.com/thewesly/230425
I have been working a lot on precision and speed with my right hand fingers on the bass. Before if there was a really fast groove I would have to play it with the pick (I am a guitar player by trade after all) but I haven’t picked up a guitar in months – only been playing my five string beast, so I am improving and getting faster, which is cool (in your face with the bass). In a way I think I will always be torn between the bass and the guitar. I would love to play bass in a rock/funk band on the side, that would be bloody fun. Ok kids wish me luck and some other things…, like a cool action figure or something.
Small Home Studio
My new 5 string Bass
Dead Man, not even walking
I know a puppy picture is not very rock and roll, but this illustrates the situation for the past while. I have been chunking, hurling, ralphing, spuing, puking, and throwing vomits like no other, aside form other body lameness. In the course of about 3 weeks I lost 20 pounds, and as you can see looked like a corpse – even to the point that our dog was trying to make me feel better.
So needless to say not too much progress has been made towards the music. However after several long e-mail chains with my buds who helped me record the music, we picked the order and selection of songs that will go on the first CD – which kicks trash mommies. The goal is still to have the CD ready to go by early next year so I need to get rocking the bass lines and record the vocals, and mix it, and go to the bathroom, and hopefully see AC/DC somewhere in the mix.
Trickle on some piano for me Steven
Well well children… It has been exactly a month since little Mr muffin face Wesly wrote about having some Bass lines to record. Fine, here is an update on that, then afterwards we can get on to saucier piano topics. After looking at how many prepaid hours of studio time I had left I decided to record the bass lines at home since I have the equipment needed to do it and make it sound professional. This will give me the flexibility to test around and have an occasional mess up with out it costing me studio time and money. Plus Guy recommended it, and when someone who has been in the music business for 30+ years recommends something we have been listening… so far anyway. If he tells me to get tripped out on some drugs for inspiration on a song I would rethink that one, but I highly doubt advice of such a nature. He is like Yoda, Mr Miagi, and Jerry Garcia wrapped up in one dude with a studio. He has given me some great advice on life and careers, ect. Now on to the mommies:
This last Thursday Cam, Wayne and I went into the studio again, which concluded the sessions needed for adding additional instruments. Cameron laid on some serious piano and accordion parts that in a couple occasions almost made me start bashing my head into the wall because they were so cool. Wayne also added a couple other rad guitar parts as well. It is such an amazing experience playing and writing music with other musicians. It is really cool to see the songs take on a new life as parts are added. All these dudes are way talented and I just wanted to say again how fun this is been and how much I appreciate the help guys. Gotta thank my job again too for being so chill and flexible too.
We spaced taking pictures on Thursday, so this was best one I had of everybody from our old band Redd Spectre. Back: Wayne, Me and Cam. Front: Ryan and Brad.
Redd Spectre
So now with 32 hours left I need to get into Rosewood and record the vocals, add in the bass lines, and do the final mixing and I am on my way to having some real professionally recorded songs in the bag. I just puked in my mouth I am so excited. The goal is to have a CD ready to sell and get out there by January; even though CD sales are dropping every year, musicians have to have the physical product to be considered serious. And I am chank basting serious little kitty makers, I mean serious.
Lions and Tigers and Bass Lines oh my.
Close to 4 years ago a group of buds and I (Cam, Wayne, Ryan) figured out that we all played something and figured we should be in a band. With two guitarists a keyboardist and a drummer we were missing the bloody bass player. I have always had a love for playing the bass, I first started picking it up in High School playing Ben Folds Five songs. Even though I loved it, we had too many songs that sounded cooler with two guitars. So we went on a hunt for a bass player. I think we must have tried on and off for a year. The first official addition was Andy Bean. Who at the time was playing the bass, but now appears to be a very talented artist -
Andy Bean Self Portrait - Awesome
But for whatever reason we didn’t really give the man a chance. Just one of those weird things. Eventually we ended up going with an old buddy of mine, Brad Elmer – we met out in Mexico. He was originally a tuba player, but he tweaked it up and was pretty rockin. After many many months of playing and after the following band names:
Salsbury Pudding, Canta Maleus, Spend a Penny, According to People, Good Company, The Standard, Beth (this one stuck for about 2 months) and finally Redd Spectre, we ultimately broke up. Some of the coolest names no one ever really considered – like “I used to be the head of pediatrics but now I’m a kitten.” And many others. I’ll have to ask the other guys to post their favorite weird names we came up with in the comments.
So now a couple years later I am going to be laying down the bass lines for the 19 songs we just recorded. And I tell ya what – I wrote the love sauced songs and I am having to work my tail off to come off with bass lines I will be happy with. I bought my friends 5 string bass off of him for the project, and it is blowing my mind. The low B is pretty much my mommy now. Sorry old Mom, still love you though.
My wifes Barbie in the corner seems to ruin the Bass-Blowing-My-Mindness. But I am representing in my Doba shirt at least.
3 days and 20 hours later
Well after 3 days and 20 hours of studio time we wrapped up (we think anyway) all of the main drum and guitar parts for 19 songs. It was a great experience, and it only makes me more excited and antsy to get back in there to recored the bass lines, additional guitar and piano overdubs, and vocals.
Me, Ryan, Guy, Wayne
Wow. I looked baked in that photo. Too many mind blowing drum fills and guitar solos the past few days I think.
Over the course of 3 days Wayne must have downed 13-15 cans of Mountain Dew (no wonder his solos wailed!) and we all had our fair share of nutrigrain bars, donuts, yoo-hoos, chips, trail mix, and rice crispy treats. What lead to this decision of grindage? I believe all the rock and folk lords of old lead me to the correct selection as I walked down the aisles at Costco. So there ya go future bands, that is the one and only list list of fuels if you want to melt faces in the studio. Don’t forget some Cherry Pepsi for the drummer. Dang skippy.
Rosewood Recording Company Sessions
Finally after years of dreaming about recording my music it is happening. I am sure other musicians have had the same experience – summer after summer would pass by and every time I would never accomplish the goals I had set for myself with my music.
Going to the studio to record a good number of songs seemed impossible because of the cost. So slowly with a group of friends we started acquiring equipment to try and take care of business our selves. We tried a few times to record and it would just never happen. We would spend hours just trying to get everything set up only to have the computer freeze up, or by the time the drums were mic-ed and ready we would only have an hour left to record before everyone had to bolt.
With nothing really to show for all the practice with the band we had at that time, and not a lot of shows I came to the conclusion that if I was serious about getting my music heard and having it sound good I would have to go to the studio. However much the studio was going to cost I had to make it happen if I was serious about it.
So this summer I went on the hunt like a wolf dog rocker looking for a horses booty. I started thinking of ways to get money, and doing research on where to record. I made a huge investor presentation and I think I made it fairly compelling and rewarding for interested parties to invest in music. I showed it to several people and had a good response, enough that I could have had the money from investors alone. But after weighing out the pros and cons I ended up saving some money and taking out a loan. I am very glad I put together the presentation though, it helped me realize how serious about my music I really am.
I think I must have researched every studio in Utah that had information available via the internet. In the end I decided to go with Rosewood Recording Company.
They have been in the business for 30 years, and have recorded many of the local communities favorite albums. Also after carefully listening to the different studios demos, I was very impressed with Rosewood. I asked a couple of my great friends to join me for the project, and we started two days ago! Guy Randal, studio owner, engineer, and musician has been amazing to work with. We were all blown away the first time we went back in the booth to listen to what we recorded. It has not even been mixed yet and we felt it made us sound better than we could even play it.
We had a six hour long session from 12-6 on Tuesday, and we got the drums and guitars down for 7 songs, which I was very pleased with. This is an ambitious project – I want to record 17-20 songs, so getting through them is important. We have another six hour block tomorrow and an all day session on Friday. I am so excited I probably need to go to the bathroom…, yep. I can’t imagine what it would be like to record music for a living, well yes I can – it would freaking rock. Someday maybe!
I know this is so early on but I just want to thank everybody for making this possible! Guy Randall for being so awesome, and having a great place to record – to my amazing job for letting me take time off, for my sweet supportive wife, and for the guys who make my music come together and become a better piece of art:
Ryan Flores – Drum set, percussion
Cameron Kendell – Piano, accordion, shaker
Devin Wayne Powell – Guitar
More coming.
In the words of Jeremy Hanks from the wall at the Bonnaroo Music Festival:
“Till there Was Rock, You Only Had God.”
