deadlines!!!

As the deadline looms over head we are starting to panic my friends. Gone are the days of Tim Hortins runs, playing Wii with Juices son and goofing around with Porter the studio dog. Time to get down to brass tacks. So, now we play with the dog as we record vocals, and we have hooked up Wii through the main recording console, and Tim Hortins is strickly a drive thru stop.

The mysterious Christopher Steele showed up to our surprise the other day. He is in full blown summer mode. No coat! sun roof down! He even told us he had washed his car before he drove out to the studio. I must remind our friends in warmer climates that it is still very much winter here. There may not be snow on the ground but it ain't warm. All this prompted me to tell him that I'm thinking about naming my first born Chris Steele MacNeil. To this he responded that he will name his son Cortez.

happy St. Paddys,
wade.

its a small world after all

So, we are back at home now. Which means warm beds, late night grilled cheese sandwiches and singing all day at Silo Studio. Silo is a great little home studio in the country outside Hamilton. We recorded Watch Out! here, we did all the vocals for Crisis here and it feels good to be back putting the finishing touches on this record. It's dark, small and comfortable and it's always been a great place to make music and be creative. Whether that is Dallas kicking a box full of bells and tambourines or yesterday when I was playing slide guitar with a lighter because we couldn't find the slide it seems something new is always happening.

Also, speaking about new things happening I came home to find out I have new neighbors. As I leered out my front window at the tattooed weirdoes sitting outside smoking and enjoying a cup of tea on their porch my first thought was, well there goes the neighborhood, but my second thought was that they looked strangely familiar. After a closer look I realized why they looked so familiar. It was the Bleeders! The very same Bleeders that we played with on our first trip to New Zealand. They are a great punk band from Auckland and I'm sure we will be playing some shows together very soon. So, welcome them to Canada and check them out!

www.myspace.com/thebleeders

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Guiness makes you strong,
wade.

"Vegans are the new Christians!"

Our final days at armory were beautiful. The tour of the molson brewery was fun and informative. We capped off our last day with a bbq on the roof top patio which left me longing for spring. Maximum respect to Rob and Dan and all the friendly folks at armory studios. It was a fantastic experience but we needed to get back to southern ontario before we were consumed by madness. and nothing personal to my bud dal but i had had just about enough of sharing a bed with him.

Now we are back in the fruit belt. we finished a song today and i tell ya it feels pretty good. 1 down 16 to go. juices studio is comfortable. it feels like home.

xo
g

steele working on his solo project

Vocals Have Begun!

This morning we started recording some vocals. And by we I mean that Dallas is locked in the live room and the rest of us are going on a tour of the Molson Beer Brewery. You may remember it in the background of our previous blog about Mount KILLehmunjuaro. Well, the good folks at Molson saw the video and wanted us to come by and take a swim in one of the vats! We will let you know how it goes.

love,
wade and the boys.

and the song would not go quietly into the night

Sometimes, a song takes form in a matter of seconds. One of us has a small idea, a simple riff or a vague idea for a beat and everything falls into place. Other times the complete opposite is true. We will pine over little details for hours only to decide at the end of the day that we hate everything we have worked so hard on. The song we finished today is one of those songs that would not die. The song that has come to be known as Emerald St. is the first song we wrote when we began jamming for Young Cardinals. It has completely changed from start to finish at at least five times. We thought the other day we had finally laid it to rest. But, at approximately 3:27 this afternoon Emerald St. came back from the dead when we realized everything was horribly out of tune. We spent the next 4 hours trying to line up the bass and guitars with very little success. We have started getting very weird being locked up in this studio constantly for the last week and a half and I think this has sent us over the edge. Miraculously, things started to fall into place. Although we were so concerned that the tuning might slip again that dallas used the same guitar for everything and refused to move from the one spot in the control room where his guitar didn't seem to slip out of key. But, its done and I think you are gonna like it.

wade.

THE END IS NEAR

The gang all had a nice little brunch today at the twisted fork. If you are ever in the vancouver area i would have to suggest you check it out. It's a great place to sit around and gab about black metal over bananas and french toast.

With drums, bass and most of the guitars completed, the days are flying by. We have now moved on to leads and overdubs. i think the vocals will have to be done in Hamilton, as our time in Vancouver is limited. as much as we would love to board up the doors and never leave this studio ever again, we would go broke pretty quickly. soon we will have to leave all the beauty of the Berrard bridge and Granville island behind. On a side note, since we got here i have had a mean hankering for an Asian pear and unfortunately the Granville public market can't accommodate my bizzaro, ozzy like, fruit requests.

until next time boys and girls...
xo
george
f
d
pettit