Past blogs: CURRENT | APR 06 | MAR 06 | FEB 06

Sun, 2/26-Tue, 2/28 - Recording the Stuart Guest Band in Glendale, CA
Assisted Mark Linett in his home studio, Your Place or Mine, in Glendale, CA. We tracked four songs for the Stuart Guest Band for an upcoming album. Overdubs were completed on Monday and mixing completed on Tuesday. The session was produced by Elliot Easton of The Cars [NOTE: The New Cars are putting out a live album and begin touring in May]. The SGB is made up of Stuart Guest (lead vocals, guitars), Woody Smith (bass), Scott Goldman (drums), and Joey Meehan (guitars). Tracks completed are: "Heavy Heart", "Katie", "Chateauneuf du Pape", and "Magdalena". Look for the EP out soon and clips up on their MySpace page!

Technical notes: Tracked directly to Pro Tools and mixed through a Neve console. Used a mixture of Direct Boxes, SM57's on the amps, and PODs for guitars. Also used a Blue mic on the acoustic. Vocals were tracked through the Blue mic. Drums were mic'd with numerous mics, including Beyerdynamics (toms, room), D112 (kick), AKGC460 (hi-hat), and Royer SF24 (overhead stereo mic).

Wed, 2/22/06 - AOL Music presents Nada Surf with Rogue Wave and The King of France (produced by Network Live) at the Henry Fonda Theatre in Hollywood, CA
Similar to two weeks ago, this was a Nada Surf concert at the Henry Fonda Theatre in Hollywood. Apparently AOL is going to try and do about two of these a month down here in LA. It was produced by Network Live once again, which does an excellent job of capturing the concert in High Definition video and then streaming it online. This time, however, it was not a live broadcast which made the entire process a little bit easier!

I worked for Mark Linett (Your Place or Mine Location Recording), whom is based out of Glendale, CA. Phillip Broussard Jr was the assistant and me and Brian helped out with setup and teardown. This type of work is an all-day type of event and it is hurry up/wait sometimes. Got there early, about 10 am and setup the venue with mics, feeds, cabling, console, etc. We ran the exact same setup as last time -- splitter box from monitors via ISO out and MADI snake cable to the mic pre's --> direct to DA-78 DAT --> Genex 9048 hard disc --> Mackie Digital XBus console. Mark's mix was then returned to tape on two channels as well.

I believe it is in post production and will be put up online soon, in which I will post it.

You also can watch 2/8/06 performance by Hawthorne Heights on Yahoo Music

Wed, 2/8/06 - AOL Music presents Hawthorne Heights, Atreyu, and Anberlin (produced by Network Live) at the El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles, CA
Well, this was my first official gig in LA and I had a great time. I had the opportunity to work with two fantastic engineers and persons -- Mark Linett and Phillip Broussard Jr -- both of which engineered the upcoming Red Hot Chili Peppers album. Mark has also engineered the last 8 or so Brian Wilson (Beach Boys) albums. Needless to say, it was awesome to chat with and learn from them.

We got to the El Rey at 10 am and it was breakneck work of setting up for most of the day, especially getting correct levels and such during soundchecks during the early afternoon. We rigged a makeshift AC unit in our small room in the back of the venue to keep the gear from overheating and crashing! Some of the gear we used: Mackie Digital XBus console to Genex 9048 hard disc recorder and Tascam DA78HR DAT tapes. Mark monitored with Mackie HR824 monitors. We used several racks of OSA mic pre's.

This event was a "live" (slightly delayed broadcast) internet feed on aol.com produced by a company called Network Live, which began operations last fall. XM Radio also is an affiliate but was not feeding the signal live last night. Due to the live and internet aspect there were a couple glitches with the satellite feed on aol's end of things which delayed the show for a few minutes. NL shot the entire concert with at least six HD cameras, which were downsampled for the internet. The audio you hear online is the mix that Mark did from the Mackie console.

You can view Hawthorne Heights' show on demand here:

I will attempt to keep a journal/blog of as many gigs as I can