Here goes from what I remember about the production of Schizosonic.
We started recording basic tracks shortly after midnight on Saturday, June 5th, 2004. Shawn, Gary, Will, and I had just played an acoustic set in Spearfish for a live radio theater broadcast. We began by laying the rhythm tracks for "Drowning", while Shawn played along on acoustic guitar and sang a scratch vocal. I think we put that song away in maybe two takes. We then proceeded to blast through "Can't Lie", "The Ride", "Diamond", and "This Love" in the same fashion. After a couple hours sleep, we tracked "Without Light" by around noon on Saturday. The basic tracks were laid with only a couple punch ins and no overdubs at all. A pretty old-school way of doing things, no doubt, but it did capture a "live" sounding vibe to the performances. For the rhythm tracks, Gary was playing through a mic'd up Fender Bassman that was in Chambers' bedroom. Drums were recorded live with no overdubs. We used an RE-20 on the kick, 57 on snare, MD421's on the toms and I think Willy's Nuemann's were used for overheads--pretty simple stuff. Willy's keys were recorded direct into the console. Just a few days prior to recording, Shawn had shown us the framework of a new song he'd been working on--"Talked About Love". I don't think we had even played it out live before, but we all liked it so much, we decided to lay down a rough track for it just for fun, and it wound up making it onto the final CD.
Saturday afternoon was spent tracking acoustic guitar. Two mic's were used--one on the soundhole, and on one the neck. Shawn cruised through the acoustic parts pretty much in one take. I think we tracked the organ parts on Saturday evening. Will was a machine--watching him run the Leslie with his toes--I won't forget that image. Shawn and Gary were scheduled to play a duo gig at Cheers that night, but Willy and I dropped in for a bit as well and did an "ASO-lite" set. I remember we played "Talked About Love" and people really seemed to dig it.
I managed a couple hours sleep on Saturday night and got up early Sunday morning and started doing some digital editing. I also threw together a preliminary mockup of the DVD case artwork. The idea with this record was to bundle the DVD we'd produced earlier in the Spring with a CD--something we hadn't seen anybody do before. Also, it actually turned out to be a little cheaper to package everything in a DVD box instead of the typical CD jewel case.
Sunday was spent laying down most of the vocals. This time around I really wanted to make sure the vocals got most of the attention of the record. Sure, I'd have loved to have gone back and overdubbed drum parts and the like, but we really needed to make sure this record would have the strongest vocal performances of any ASO product. By about midnight Sunday night, we had gotten all the lead vocals cut. By the end of the night, Shawn and I had really pushed each other and, he was finding some range and power in his voice that had never made it to a recording before. Take a listen to the end choruses on "The Ride" and you'll see what I mean. I remember the look in his eyes when he hit the line "I've been wondering why you're gone"--he just looked possessed. It was great seeing him really reach for a part. We ended the night by going back and retracking the lead vocal on "Without Light" and Shawn just blew Gary and me away. By that point, I was really starting to get my legs under me at running the console, which freed Will up from not having to do all the tracking and editing. Monday was spent re-tracking vocals and doing some cleanup work. We also laid down the track for "Hound", complete with the metallic sound effects (steel bar hitting the weight machine in the exercise room), and paper-cutter-guillotine-effect (see if you can hear it!)
I went back to Hot Springs Monday evening, June 7th, but would make the drive back every night the next week. Shawn and I wound up retracking most of the lead vocals at least one or two more times, because he kept reaching and singing the parts better each time. We laid the background vocals during the evenings of this week and begin doing some preliminary mixdown. We were able to cut a rough mix CD after just about each night's session. These rough mixes became really valuable. First, they kept me awake as I was driving home each night at about 3 am, but second, it really allowed me to study the parts and the mixes so I knew exactly what would need to be done for the next day. The following week was spent doing more editing, cleaning up the tracks, etc. We brought Greg McDonald in to lay some of the lead guitar parts, since Chambers was out of town at a drama camp. We spent three nights with Greg, and it was really fun to work with him. He's a phenomenal player, and he really molded his style to fit the vision that we had for some of the songs. We wound up laying lots of guitar tracks--some of which made the final mix, some didn't, but the nice thing is there were lots of parts to pick and choose from. "Without Light" and "Talked About Love" for example, both have a lot of layering of guitar sounds.
After a whole bunch more editing, we were finally ready for the final mixdown. The whole goal of this project was to have product in hand to sell for our show at the Heritage Festival on July 1st. We spent the next several evenings mixing and mastering. I think we went through about 5 total iterations until we settled on the final mix. The next day or two were spent duplicating CD's, printing artwork, and assembling the packages. We did it! We took the stage on July 1st at the Heritage Festival--the first night of a 4 night, 3 state tour, and we had our brand new CD/DVD Schizosonic in hand.
All together, the project was done--start to finish in 27 days, which is pretty remarkable. There are a whole list of things I wish we could go back and do differently or better, but that's the problem with art--at some point you have to say it's done.