The seasons have changed since we spent time on a cold January weekend in the basement of an old chapel working the in's and out's of live recording. The good graces of a couple close friends got us there. Matthew and Grant traveled down for the weekend to Hope College.
We loaded in all our gear into a room just recently used for a foreign language class. It took the good part of an hour. Drums where set up in the corner behind a shield and some carpeted panels. Matthew set his bass cab up in the tall hallway leading down the middle of the chapel basement. We pushed it around until we found the right place and set up a big mic in front of it.
My amp was in a room across the hall where I had been taught by Professor Kent Van Til about Christian Ethics.
All of the mics traveled into an adjacent studio room housing the mixing board and computer and some huge pair of underwear that was floating around for whatever reason.
We spent all afternoon sound checking and all evening tracking the first three songs of the four we would end up recording. Andy and Ben only required coffee to work as the engineers for us, and they did an excellent job, producing a good sound, directing us gently, patiently and carefully, and knowing what to do when things got tricky.
Perhaps the sweetest moment of the recording process for me came late on the first night when we recorded Two Weeks In. We decided to change the lighting in the room before we started the song, and Andy brought in some stage lights and shined them on the wall. The room became much more cozy. We set up the accordion for Grant right across the room from me. The process of recording that song was decidedly much sweeter and relaxed than the others, and once having it tracked, the mix really brought itself up out of the recording. It was a good end to a long day.
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