“Bad Friday” is a new song. I heard you guys have a new album in the works? Is that song going to be a part of it? What can we expect from that?

Not allowed to share that at this time, unfortunately. It’s a great question, but I can only tell you a few things about the new album. We’re still not quite sure when it’s going to be out. I’m going to say sometime in the first half of the year, and we’re done with the recording at this point. We started with I think sixteen tunes, six of which are new, ten of which we’ve played live at some point before and we’ve narrowed it down to thirteen now. My guess is probably ten will make the cut I would say. Ten seems like a good number, right? A few bonus tracks then. But yeah man, it’s turned out really great. I’ve actually been spending a lot of time listening to the tracks. We’re kind of in the mixing critique stage at this point. So, one thing I could do—I can’t give it to you—but I could let you listen to one of the new songs and you could describe it without saying its name. You can’t tell people what it is. How about that?

Sure. Are any there any other details you can share?

I’ll tell you a couple things about it. We did most of the tracking. Some of the songs are older songs. I think probably the oldest song is from 2003 or 2004, so we definitely went back and picked a couple that we haven’t put down on an album before because we felt like it mixed well with this group of songs. Just in general some of the new stuff, and also the newer things that we’ve been playing live that we wanted to put on the album. I think the only song we’ve really completely confirmed, that we’ve talked about with somebody, is “Puppet String.” That is definitely going to be one of featured tracks on the album. It’s on the record. It’s on the vinyl and the digital release.

But it’s been really cool. We started back in October 2012. We took a day up at Jake’s place and we kind of worked on some arrangements for some of the newer stuff that we hadn’t played live. We kind of let that sink in for a little bit and made a few changes. Then in May and June of last year, we went into IV Lab for two and a half weeks and just spent the days tracking and putting stuff down and it was so fun. Our method to get the drum tracks down first, so it’s about getting the arrangement right and then letting Kris figure out his parts and everyone playing live with Kris so that it really is a live band take. There’s something about the energy, about everyone playing in the room that brings out better performances than just saying, “Okay, here how it goes, you just play along.” W all do it together. It’s got to be like that, and then we will sometimes keep parts from that if they were good enough. Sometimes the bass will end up being used from that. Sometimes the keys will end up being used from that, but for the most part we’ll come back in and re-track stuff after we’ve kind of had some time to listen to it and get acquainted with it. So Manny will send us edits then.

For this particular one I went back into the studio with Manny Sanchez, our producer and engineer who has since moved to Culver City. I live in Venice so he lives five minutes away from me, so we got together. He also works with Patrick Stump—Fall Out Boy’s singer, songwriter, and guitar player—and we went up to Patrick’s one day and did some tracking and then we decided to have a huge keyboard day so we had the fun job of looking around Los Angeles and trying to find the right studio that had all the keyboards we wanted to use. Manny found this placed called Fonogenic and called them up and told them what we were trying to do. The guy answered the phone like, “Oh cool, you want to rent this studio?” So Manny’s like, “Yeah. Well Thursday or Friday will work I think. I think Thursday is gonna be better because Friday we have a gig that we’re playing, but what are you guys doing tonight?” He says, “Well we’re having this rehearsal and little jam session down here so if you guys want to come check it out and just see what’s here and hang a little bit and get used to the place.” So Manny says, “Cool man, let me talk to Joel.” And I didn’t have anything happening that night so I was like, “Cool, let’s do it, I’m up for an adventure.”

So we get down there and as we were walking in the door there’s some people walking out and I’m looking and it’s Minnie Driver. These guys, one of things they were rehearsing for was they are her backing band. Then I’m looking around and I’m like, “Dude this guy looks so familiar.” He’s like, “I’m Chris. I play in Blind Melon.” And I’m like, “We’ve played somewhere together” and then realized that, I think, it was 2008 and we played together at Summer Camp. They were on our stage and we all kind of met and said “What’s up.” So Brad and Chris from Blind Melon were in this band and then the keyboardist, whose studio this is, his name is Rami Jaffee. And I found out he was doing keyboards for Blind Melon, but before that he was the keyboardist for the Wallflowers. If you remember they were a big hit—“One Headlight,” there’s an awesome organ part on that. So this guy’s great, now he’s the keyboardist for the Foo Fighters and that’s his main gig. This is just his little playhouse to come and kind of mess around.

We end up checking out the studio. It’s awesome. They’ve got grand pianos, they’ve got Wurlizters, Fender Rhodes, organs and then he’s like, “Oh yeah dude, check this thing out, too. I’ve got this Mellotron from this guy who makes them in Sweden and I have two of them, but you’ve got to try it on something; figure out something for your new songs and put it on there.” I’m like, “I will definitely do that. I fucking love the Mellotron.” So, we went in there and we ended up hanging out. The drummer for this band was Dave Krusen, the original drummer for Pearl Jam. So it was this amazing band that was rehearsing and playing mostly covers for this party the next day and Rami’s like, “Dude, come on up here, you’ve got to play.” So I got to play with everybody for a few minutes and then just hang out and have some drinks. And then we’re like, “This place is cool; this is gonna be a great place to record.”

Manny and I showed up there at ten in the morning that Thursday and we stayed until one in the morning and we just crushed it. We did like 85 percent of the keyboards that day. It was just so awesome to be in that creative space and we got the Mellotron on three or four tunes, some places more subtle than others, but immediately Manny looked at me and he was like, “You have to get one of these now; these sounds are going to be on the album so you’re going to need it eventually so you should probably learn how to play it now and just get it.” And I’m like, “You are so right” and I could just see the crew like, “Goddammit, Joel you don’t need another keyboard.” Anyway, I had Rami put me in touch with the guy who made them and we exchanged a few emails and it just so happened that they distribute them from Stockholm and Los Angeles, so I was also able to get out of the sales tax because I had it shipped to Chicago to make it to the truck for tour. All the little things help. I first got it for our October tour but it’s such an amazing addition to the sound.

As far as our band goes, one thing I discovered when we changed drummers—to some extent even when Jake joined the band, and then to even a further extent when Kris took over for Mike. Kris is an incredibly rhythmic player and really there are all these crazy syncopations going and he’s doing really cool shit underneath, not just playing super spacious grooves all the time. I realized that I was going to kind of have to change how I play a little bit to incorporate more long tonal stuff. You know, focusing more on subtle things and creating textures and beds of sounds and harmonies to kind of set up the guitar players. That was one of the things that I kind of focused on more, so I got the Roland JP 8000 first which was my first kind of long toned synth. And then I got the Moog, which is really nice to for those singular notes. I had a Micro X for a little while so I could do some string stuff and then finally the Mellotron is like the complete package, this super eerie weird thing where it’s got great organ, flute, strings and voices. Do you want to see a picture of it? Do you know what it looks like?

They’re pretty big though, right?

Yeah, but this one isn’t. It’s really a very tolerable size. It’s a little bit wide. This is a digital version because those used to break all the time. So here’s like the little board here. One of the cool things is you have two different things of the same sounds and then you have a mixer that’s a knob here. You can pick two different sounds and then create a unique mix for whatever you’re doing. Then this little knob right here is a pitch bend that is so evil, and it goes down like an octave and probably up an octave, and it’s just so disorienting with stuff to really mess with that or make it just a little bit out of tune so it kind of creates a little bit of tension with the music. It’s got a little turn knob for brightness, an octave switch here and then the volume. So, there’s one shot of it with the blue light on and then here’s what it really looks like. It’s white.

Very cool.

So, I think it’s maybe two and a half or three octaves. It’s not super long but you’ve got the low and high octave switch. I think it’s really been a cool difference for the sonic palette; I’ve probably been playing it 10 or 15 percent of the time.

So we can expect to see it on the upcoming tour then?

Oh yeah. Oh yeah, for sure. So that’s kind of where the recordings are at and initially what Manny will do is pick the best versions and try to create what he calls final edits, meaning the mix isn’t necessarily right but you’re listening for the parts and seeing if you are cool with everything that’s in there or if you want him to go back and find something from a different take. So we have on all this stuff probably seven or eight takes of every part that we’ve played just so there’s a little bit if you want a different mood. Or we’ll play things a different way. You never know what you’re gonna need when you’re starting so it’s nice to have a few options you can go back to.

Right now we’re in the final mixing stage of it and I’ve got to say there’s some good variety. I feel like it’s a little bit hard, getting back to Anchor Drops’ heaviness, maybe even a little heavier. There are a couple songs on there that I think are at least the heavy vocal tunes that we’ve done. “Wizard Burial Ground” of course being one that definitely takes the cake as far as heavy tunes. Jake has a couple tunes that are just crushing and awesome and I can already envision just blowing people’s minds with this shit live. It’s gonna be so cool. And then we have a couple other tracks that I think are real fan live favorites that we’ve been trying to capture the last few times we’ve been in the studio. We have a few that we’ve tried but we’ve abandoned two or three times because we just didn’t feel like it had the right energy, It’s cool to be able to go back to a couple of them and feel like we finally got it.

Pages:« Previous Page