Thursday, August 19, 2010

Hey, I'm Matt, I play instruments for this project.


I'm not sure what takes more courage... driving 45 minutes north of Toronto to start a collaborative songwriting/recording project with some dude who thinks he can sing, even though he's never really sang before... or bumbling downstairs hungover on a Saturday morning and actually opening the door for a stranger standing on his porch, who thinks he can play guitar, even though he's never really played guitar before.

Nick and I were both drummers who were sick and tired of being just drummers. Being uninspired by the drums, I started strumming my dad's old acoustic six-string, and before I put that guitar down, chord progressions for a song called "Fool" were written. This was nearly 5 years ago... back when I thought D minor to A minor was a brilliant chord progession.

Around the same time, Nick started writing lyrics. No complete songs, just lyrical phrases here and there. No notebooks either. Just scraps of paper, napkins, postit notes. After a petty rivalry on Pearl Drummers Forum that led to countless conversations over the net via instant messaging, I decided I was fed up of having half-ideas for my songs, and I told Nick that he was fed up of having half-ideas for his songs. That night I informed Nick, "You and I are going to make an album together", to which he replied something to the effect of "Ya right."

I showed up at his doorstep anyways. The surprise on his face was priceless. However... pessimism set in when I saw the bags under Nick's eyes and the near-empty 60oz bottle of Bacardi beside his bass drum. But a few hours later, the groundwork for 4 of the tracks to be released on our upcoming album "Out & Out" would be written and demoed.

It's amazing how this project has evolved. Once we realized that we could write and demo 4 songs in one afternoon, and 3 more the following weekend, we set out to write and record an album as quickly as we could. Simple songs, simple instrumentation, simple production value, a simple release. There were several different versions of these songs with that attitude in mind, but then upon listening back to the recordings, we felt we weren't doing the songs justice, and our idea slowly morphed into a 4-year marathon of writing, re-writing, recording, sending demos and mixdowns back and forth, re-recording, re-re-recording... overall a constant battle that I wasn't sure we'd ever complete. But thankfully, through determination and dedication, now we're just anxious and excited to get it out there.

- INs

No comments:

Post a Comment