Welcome back everyone, as some of you may know my band Chest Rockwell just put out our 2nd album (Chest Rockwell Vs The World) about 2 weeks ago. We had a nice little release show for it over at The Great Escape records and comics shop and it's been selling pretty well. Recently it was suggested to me that it would be a good idea to write a blog about what went into the making of the album so that's pretty much what I'm about to do now.

We started writing for the album way back in November of 2005 and continued to do so until we recorded July 28th - 30th 2006. Nashville based producer Jon Craig, who also happens to be a long time friend of ours, came up to Bowling Green and brought his equipment to make it all happen. The whole recording process went down in the basement of my aunt's old house that we used to practice in. We carpeted the walls, ceiling, and even the stairs to help deaden the echo down there. We ended up having to do one instrument at a time due to space down there because multiple instruments would have had a lot of bleed over into eachother's microphones so it took a little longer that way but it gave us the opportunity to really listen to what everyone was playing separately from the whole song.

The night before we started Jon Craig, Seth (guitarist), and myself went into the basement and set up all the mics and got all of the heavy equipment down the stairs. The idea was to come in the next day and start rolling as soon as possible.

The first day (Friday July 28th) I showed up 30 minutes late but was still the first one there if that tells you anything about a musician's sense of time. Anyways, our drummer Nick put on new drum heads that day (which I do not recommend doing on the day of the recording) and we got ready to lay down his tracks. We wanted the entire album to flow together like one big piece so we recorded the whole thing as 1 track and then went in and split them up later so that notes and and symbol hits would hang over from one track to the next without any pause between the tracks. This also meant having to record the album in order that the songs were to go so that's precisely what we did. We left a big space in the beginning for the intro track (What Atrocities are These?) and then had Nick lay down drums on the 2nd (La Fin Absolue du Monde) and 3rd (Inconsistencies in Inanimate Objects) songs while I played my guitar along into a D.I. box so he had another instrument to play along with that wouldn't pick up in his microphones. The 4th (Warm Towels for E) song is an instrumental without drums so we stopped there for the day with Nick. Next I did all of my guitar overdubs, followed by Stewie's bass and some keyboards, then Seth's guitar. Then I did the acoustic guitar for the 4th song followed by Stewie's keyboard and Seth's guitar. We called it a day.

On day 2 (Saturday July 29th) we listened back on what we'd done the day
before and then did the drums on song 5 (On the Edge of Intensity). I did my guitar, followed by Stewie's bass, and then Seth's guitar. The 6th song (Mayhems Leap of Faith) is pretty much just a jam and not really structured out so we attempted to record all of the instruments at once but after several attempts the sound was just way below the quality of the other songs due to the enormous amount of bleed over. So we just decided to have Nick go at it and then the rest of us would just try and feel it out. I played bass on that song and decided to do some funny things to the tuning mid-song so that it would be impossible to play the whole song out live the way it's recorded. I don't know why I did it, just thought it was funny. Next was Seth's guitar and then Stewie's keyboard. We took a break and decided it was time for some vocals when we got back. I did the vocals to tracks 2 and 3 and we called it a day. Seth, Jon, and I stayed late that night and we ended up adding these massive keyboard parts to track 2. It sucks because it was something new that's never been on the song and we don't have enough members to play it live but it's really great on the album.

Day 3 (Sunday July 30th) was our final day and we still had a lot to get done. Drums were laid on the last 2 songs (Leeloo Dallas and Multi-pass) and Nick was officially done with his parts. I did guitar, followed by Stewie's bass and keyboard, and Seth's guitar. Now it was time for vocals on tracks 5, 7, and 8. I got track 5 done but my throat started to bother me so I knew the rest would be tough. Finally that night I finished up the last bit of it. The last lines of the last song are belting out some higher stuff for me and my voice actually cracked the first time I tried it. For whatever reason all the guys thought that it added emotion and "we really felt it" and blah blah and actually talked me into leaving it in the song. When you listen back to it I think that they're right about it but I still can't believe I left something like that in there. We ended up adding a lot more keyboards onto the last 2 songs and then we went really crazy on the end of the last song. We had 13 different guitar tracks (acoustic, 12 string acoustic, electric, effects, etc...) all playing somewhat different things, keyboards, random percussion, and even recorded us breaking some bottles into a trash can and it all made it into the final mix. This really added to the whole album being 1 big piece because it feels like the end of the album is this huge climax where the volume actually goes up and all of this craziness happens. We packed everything that night and Jon Craig left with the recording to do the mixing down in Nashville.

Jon got married in August and had a lot of work to do so we didn't get a final mix until December. I think the 11th mix he sent us was the one that we finally decided to go with. He got the mastering done and some additional mastering by Euphonic Mastering and with that all of the music part of the album was done. Sometime in the fall my friend and artistic genius Matt Simone did the artwork and layout of the album. He's done the artwork for all Chest Rockwell releases and will hopefully continue to do so. His work is something to behold. I mailed the original art up to my brother in Washington D.C. and he laid it all out on the computer and fitted it to the Disc Makers templates. After that, it was off to the press and 3 weeks of waiting. We got them in, played the release show on March 2nd, and now we're here with this blog.

Hopefully this wasn't completely boring and didn't come off as egotistical
to write a blog like this about my band's album. But maybe anyone out there
that hasn't recorded an album before learned something about what goes into
the process of it and how long it sometimes takes. The band did our part of
it and 7 months later we finally got it back. Thanks for reading and next time I'll have up my interview with local music legend KY Prophet. Until next time...

Josh