Day Trottin' Along

About 10 days ago, we were contacted by Daytrotter, a very unique music blog. Usually, bands passing through Illinois stop by their studio and do a quick, 4-song 2 hour recording session. The sound is live and loose, and they encourage bands to record new material, even some still in-process stuff. Sean of Daytrotter told us that were setting up shop at Miner St. Studios (Fishtown) in Philly for 2 days, and recording as many bands as possible; many Philly bands, including our friends Buried Beds, were represented, and bands travelled into town from NY and other places for the oppurtunity. Nick Krill, of Spinto Band, was the engineer.

We arrived yesterday, Thursday, at 3:30 to set up, and were told that we had between 4 and 6 to record. But at 3:30 another band was still playing, and they didn't end until 4:45. So we rushed up into the studio, a nice large room with vaulted ceilings and rich natural accoustics. We set up in a big circle, everyone in the same room ('WPO,' by contrast was recorded with each section of the band isolated, and it wasn't all recorded live), even the drums -me on some rattley Frankenstein kit and Jack on tapan - and Maura on violin. Nick wanted a natural room sound, so he didn't use many mics. We ended up adding a few for technical reasons, but anyhow.

We started recording around 5:30. Elliott had a gig at 6, so we only had his firepower for 30 minutes, and everyone else had to be out by 6:30, so we had essentially one hour to record 4 songs. That's incredibly rushed. But we're kind of used to that. We recorded 'WPO' in absolutely record time - 3 sessions, less than 12 hours total recording time. It's always nice to stop, fix mistakes, and experiment a few different ways with tunes - in a studio, everything is different - but then we've never known this luxury.

We started off with 'Ways Out,' a new tune of mine that's based on traditional gankino rhythm that's most popular in Macedonia (1-2-1--1-2-). Click here to watch/hear a gankino. It's become one of my favorite rhythms, and with 'Ways Out,' I wrote something that departs harmonically from tradition, but you can dance gankino along to it and it totally works. We also recorded my 'Minor Major Threat,' a punk rock kolo - the title is a tribute to Minor Threat, one of my favorite bands of all time, and it's also a reference to the scale the song is based on - the diminshed scale.

We also recorded 'Zhokul,' a Jewish song from Moldavia. I learned it by playing in the German Goldenshteyn band at the 2007 Montreal Jazz Fest. It's not the most interesting melody, but the accents in the melody make it groove, and awhile back I arranged it with a sa-sa beat, originally the Cuss Cuss riddim bass line, and some James Brown hits on the C section, and it's been a fun one for us to play for awhile now. And we wrapped the session with Saraiman, a classic Romanian song that Jack sings, which we've recently began playing with full brass band. Dawn played recorder actually in the studio, and we arranged it really quickly on the spot.

Kudos goes to Jim Parker, our new sousaphonic soul. I first met Jim in fall of 2007; we were both hired to play in the on-stage klezmer band for Frank London's musical, 'A Night in the Old Marketplace' (along with accordionist Lidia Kaminska and guitarist Skip Heller). He's a great player and a great guy. He did an amazing job sitting in with us at the January Tritone show and at sight-reading some difficult music yesterday. The Lord giveth, then taketh away, and then he giveth back with interest!

Lastly, is anyone going up to Goldenfest this weekend? If you like this music, it's absolutely the annual Balkan music bash you must check out! We played last year, but we're not playing this year, unfortunately - though I'll likely sit-in with Romashka. We hope to see you there!