beautiful, funny, sad & true

Tonight was the second set of recording sessions for Sarah Castro’s new band. This is the same group that I recorded the drums and electric bass parts for a month ago. Tonight was the night for electric guitars, keyboards, and a little bit of experimental weirdness.

Or so I thought.

I got home from work and had just finished loading guitars, amps, effect pedals, bag of tricks, the xylophone, and a couple of little keyboards into the car, when I got a call from Sarah. “Hey, don’t bring any instruments. There’s been sort of a change of plans. We may have to start from scratch.”

“Uhhhhhhhh. . .okay. Is there something wrong with the drums that we already did?”

“No, it’s just that–well, I don’t really know to explain it. Sean can tell you. Just come on over, and he can tell you all about it. We might be redoing drums tonight, maybe.”

So I unloaded all my stuff from the car, and I started to feel really anxious, so I called her back. “Hey, I feel like I’ve just been thrown a huge curve ball here, and I’m feeling really confused. What’s going on? What’s the new plan? Do you really need me tonight or not?”

“Yeah, just come on over, and we’ll get you some food–Do you like ahi tuna? (YES.)–and we can tell you all about it once you’re here.” I grabbed my little bag of drum sticks, just to be safe, and headed out the door. I’ll go pretty much anywhere for ahi tuna.

By this time, I was feeling really confused, and hungry, and tired from loading a carful of instruments twice. I made a mistake with the directions on the way to the studio, and almost got hit by another car while I was turning around in a parking lot, but finally arrived at a very nice studio, located next door to the Wonder Ballroom. It was full of guitars, amps, effect pedals, electric pianos and organs, and a beautiful Allegra drum set (with surprisingly crappy cymbals! WTF?? Wish I’d brought mine…) all mic’ed up and ready to go.

Turns out that the engineer is actually a pretty well-known musician and engineer, who worked on the Shins’ newest CD, among many other things. He told me his thoughts about what we had to work with, and what we seemed to be trying to achieve, so Sarah decided to go with his suggestions. I did too, after they all got me up to speed, so we started to record some drum tracks.

We did two songs tonight. The first one has a very sparse and deceptively simple drum part, almost like a ‘looping’ pattern. After a few false starts and technical mishaps, it took about three or four tries to get a good, usable take. The second song calls for a very ‘tribal’ drum part, with big toms and dark cymbal crashes for the entire first half of the song. The second half is where I switch to regular drum sticks, and pretty much just rawk out as hard as possible. Total blast, and it took just three takes to nail it. The end of the third take had a particularly good feel to it. After the cymbals faded out, in my headphones I could hear Sarah and GuitaristJimmy in the control room, laughing and clapping at the same time. “Todd B—–, everybody!” They ran into the drum room, saying, “Oh, man, that was IT. That was the one!”

The thing about playing drums is that the more I do it, the more I want to do it. I keep thinking about creating opportunities so that I’ll be able to do it more often. I keep thinking about what I need to do to my drum kit to achieve the sound that matches what I hear in my head. I keep thinking about what kind of band matches my playing style, and would give me the opportunity to play at my best. It’s really exciting to think about that.

So now it’s looking like tomorrow is the day for keyboards and experimental weirdness. There will be guitars and amps there already, so I’m bringing the xylophone, the Omnichord, the Casio SK-1, the toy piano, the amp that’s the size of a pack of cigarettes, and the cello. I have no idea what we’ll end up using; maybe all of those things, maybe none of them.

I can’t wait for you to be able to hear some of this stuff.

Man, yesterday was rough.

Work was the usual; boring and stressful, and I pretty much sleepwalked through the entire day. Got home to find an e-mail inviting me to listen to some early mixes of some songs that I played on a month or so ago. I listened, to find that half of the stuff I’d played had been either deleted completely or otherwise pretty well buried in the mix.

I decided to watch a movie to try and cheer up, but that didn’t help. I realized that I’d left my phone in my bag, and when I went to get it, there was a message from my dad. He asked me to please return his call, because they’re leaving the country on Friday, and he wanted to check in with me before they go. As tuned out as I felt, I figured it was the perfect time. I laid on my bed in the dark, only half-listening to his braggadocio and stories. We ‘talked’ for about twenty minutes, and then he had ‘stuff to do, and I’m sure you do too’, so I told him that I hope they have a great trip, and that was about it. I came away from the conversation feeling even worse.

I went in and dinked around online for a while longer, but my heart wasn’t in it, so I decided to go to bed early, and read or something. Even that didn’t work. I couldn’t focus on the book at all, so I put it down, shut the light off and laid there, on the verge of tears.

When I fell asleep, I had a dream that involved MostRecentExGirlfriend, in which she invited me to a party with a bunch of her friends. You’d think that would be a fun dream, but things didn’t exactly go as we planned, and we ended up either arguing or trying to avoid each other the entire time. It was a very sad and frustrating dream.

I feel worse this morning than I did yesterday, but I have my fingers crossed nonetheless. If you’ve been trying to get in touch with me lately, I apologize. I’ve been feeling very strange for about two or three weeks now. I’ve been avoiding phone calls, for the most part, and wanting to be alone a lot more, to a degree that is unusual even for me. This last weekend was great, though, and the dinner/movie/conversation with Joan last night was great also. I’m sure this weirdness will pass, but I haven’t felt this listless in years.

It’s below freezing today, but it’s supposed to be sunny and nice again, so I think I’ll bundle up and walk to work, which is a great way to wake up, and it always makes me feel good. I walked yesterday too.

I hope this listlessness passes soon; this is not my idea of living.

Just had to share that I had the best drum recording session ever yesterday. It was for a new project that Sarah is doing before she moves to Austin. We spent hours placing the microphones, and tuning all of the drums well–sweating all the details–and it really made a huge difference. When everything sounds great, you tend to play great, and I felt confident and able to contribute some drum tracks that are interesting and appropriate to the songs. I can’t wait to be able to share the fruits of our labor with you.

I can, however, share a picture.

Today’s session is going to be the bass tracks, and possibly some keyboard tracks too.

Between hanging out and playing with BT and his band last weekend, and hanging out with Maddy, Heather and Jeff–and certainly not to forget Kelly, her dad, Nancy, and Joan–at my gig last night, it’s been quite the week for reconnecting with old friends.

Went to see the movie “Walk Hard” with my friend John a couple of nights ago. We both loved it, but I think we would both say that it’s not for the faint of heart. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s sort of a send-up of a lot of rockumentaries like “Walk the Line.” The main character is based primarily on Johnny Cash, but there are plenty of other allusions too, like Brian Wilson, Ray Charles, and many others.

Tonight I have a cello gig down in Salem, and this whole weekend will be spent playing drums and electric bass for a new recording project that I’m working on.

I have to confess that the wind has been out of my sails this week where blogging is concerned. You can always tell when I post things like videos instead of writing actual entries. Not only have I been super busy this week, but I spent the afternoon and evening of Christmas Eve in an online argument–see the comments at the bottom of this entry, if you care to–and that’s why I’ve been a bit more scarce than usual.

After tonight, I have no gigs until after the New Year, which I’m very happy about. Glad to have the opportunity to just be with friends or go out instead of having to be somewhere and play.

Hopefully your week and holidays are going well!

Today is the one-year anniversary of BFS&T. Actually, to be more accurate, it’s the one-year anniversary of this incarnation of it, because I’ve had a MySpace blog of the same name for two and a half years longer than that. I still use it for a few things, but this one has definitely taken over and become the main one.

Lots has happened in the last year. I learned how to take much better pictures, for one thing. This year’s ‘best pictures of the year’ entry will be quite a step up from last year’s.

This year’s musical accomplishments have been a step up, too. The Young Immortals–whose CD I produced and played on–have had a song picked up by WorldFamousCoffeeCompany, and radio play all over the country. There are even some radio stations in France and Ireland who love and play TYI. There are teenage girls who make videos of themselves singing TYI songs and posting them on WebSiteThat’sLikeTV. This past spring, summer and fall, I made enough money at music-related endeavors that I could have quite easily lived without my day job. Too bad about the whole winter season, though. There’s always a huge drop-off then, and I’m still trying to figure out how to make things happen in that time.

Cello-ness has been steadily improving as well. This year has seen the cello become one of the primary instruments I’ve been called to play, both live and on various recordings. That has caused a certain amount of anxiety for me, since some of my friends are among the best cellists in this town, but I’m also not stupid enough to turn down great opportunities that come my way, either. If it’s something I can play, I play it, and I appreciate every gradual step up.

Romantic relationships continue to be a bit troublesome for me. The one this past year was one of the ones that really changed both of our lives, though, so I suppose I shouldn’t complain too much. As one of my friends likes to say, “You’re just making room for the one that’s the right one.”

Overall, I’d say that things are going really well. Goals? Yes, I have a few. Keep improving myself as a person and as a musician, take more ‘chances’ in my life, TRAVEL MORE, reach out more and be a better friend, take my music career to the next level (and figure out what I want that next level to be), and also to take better care of myself.

Oh yes. . .and of course, to keep blogging steadily. I expect you to help keep me accountable in these endeavors.

Here’s to the next year!