It had been a couple months of scheduling and busy weekends and such, then a snowstorm last week, but I arrived at the red barn where Solace were recording their next album at noon and was, unsurprisingly there before the band. They’ve been chipping away on this record since the end of August, and with […]

7:54PM: A little dinner (okay, a lot of dinner) later and spirits are up. Work is resumed on “Disillusioned Prophet” and universal opinion in the room — that is, mine, Justin‘s, Tommy‘s and Benny‘s — is that the song is kicking ass. I don’t imagine much if anything will be done when this song is […]

5:35PM: Work has begun on “Disillusioned Prophet,” and yes, that is as ominous as it sounds. The song is set to be the opener of A.D., and for the last two hours or so, Benny has been going track by track — that’s “track” as in the individual layers of instrumentation and vocals making up […]

2:48PM: We’ve been asked to leave the control room so Benny can concentrate. Reasonable. When putting together the semi-final version of “Down South Dog,” one of the several hundred of Jason‘s vocal tracks went missing, so there’s some work to be done there. The thing is, these songs were recorded in at least three separate […]

DAY TWO, 8:23AM: It’s early yet and so far I am the only one awake. I’ve been up for about an hour now and I can hear periodic snoring from the lounge where Justin is sleeping. My campsite was/is in the live room, next to a large translucent blue floor tom. The floor wasn’t all […]

This just happened where I am. I hope where you are it also kicks ass. Tommy and Justin are working out an acoustic part to a song not yet written. So far as I know, it doesn’t have a name.

10:37PM: Howls of laughter are coming from the lounge where dinner was just a bit ago. There’s a documentary on about Black comedians. We ordered the meal from some Italian place down the road on the recommendation from Benny or one of the other Mad Oak dudes. It came delivered by an old man, who […]

6:00PM: Got here about an hour and a half ago and found Solace guitarists Tommy Southard and Justin Daniels playing Asteroid in the lounge of Mad Oak Studios, which, if you’d think about it, is pretty much what you’d expect. The Mad Oak crew was hard at work mixing a song called “From Below.” Of […]