Nurse the Hate: Thoughts On The Studio

We are headed back into the studio to begin work on our 13^th full length record.  Or maybe it’s the 14^th.  I’m not really sure.  I don’t look in the rear-view mirror that often.  I prefer to keep the foot on the gas and move ahead to a new challenge instead of fixating on what I would have done differently on the mix of “Cosmic Cowboy” on “The Good Fight”.  We don’t have the luxury (or budget) to spend weeks at a time in a studio, trying different arrangements and tones.  Our recording process is an efficient machine.  Day one we lock in basic drum sounds and mess around with guitar sounds a bit.  Day two we will knock out 12 or so basic tracks, the full band playing it just we do live.  If we have the stuff down cold, we will finish that in about six hours.  Then we start to lay in overdubs like acoustics, stray solos, and whatever little ideas that have popped in our heads listening to playback 17 times.  On Day 3, I will attempt to get all 12 vocals finished.  Then we drive home and let John mix.  I think Guns N Roses spent a decade on Chinese Democracy.  We usually take 2 or 3 days.  

For all intents and purposes the album format is dead.  The Public has an attention span of 6.8 seconds.  I am surprised when someone listens to a full song, much less an entire album in one sitting.  Making matters more challenging, there is less personal investment in the groups people follow now.  The vast majority of people don’t buy music.  They gain access via streaming services to everything on the planet.  What do you listen to when you can literally listen to ANYTHING?  How does anyone find us?  How can they concentrate long enough on 12 songs when they could click their phone to see if there is an alternate live mix of a Radio Birdman B-side they could be listening to instead?  The brain gnaws at you…  What are you missing when you spend the three minutes on this song?  Keep clicking.  Keep moving.

If you are lucky, you can have a single song resonate with the listener.  Then perhaps that song will be added to some sort of “personal playlist” and accidentally shared with someone else who might ask “What is that?”.  God willing, if that person is a curious sort, they just might attempt to listen to more of what you have painstakingly made in a Detroit concrete bunker over three days with your musical brothers (and sister).  Meanwhile, we do our part and try to spread the gospel one gig at a time and invite others into our obscure little musical world.

The utter hopelessness of having anyone notice what you are saying used to weigh on me.  Each band is one shout in a world chorus all shouting to be heard in an indifferent sea of noise on the internet.  It’s almost impossible to find anything new because there is just too much shit to sort through.  Who has the patience?  Meanwhile, there has never been a better time to be a music lover as anything you can dream of is available somewhere.  You just have to persevere to find it, whatever “it” is.

The bottom line is that I don’t really have a choice.  The songs are coming.  Writing songs with the band is what I do.  It doesn’t matter if anyone ever finds them.  They are coming regardless of demand and only by recording them to they become tangible.  I have a passing dream that one of our songs might become an inspiration to a bunch of kids yet to come, like the songs The Cramps dug up from garage sales and record swaps.  Hell, The Cowslingers covered a song from the 1840s, so the idea isn’t THAT crazy.

Thanks to all of you that continue to support what we do.  I can’t tell you how impactful it is when you share that a particular song reached you in some way, or one of our albums is a good driving companion to you.  There aren’t many of us out here these days that like country and punk rock equally.  We are going to keep doing what we do as long as we can.  You just give us a good excuse to keep the train on the rails.

G. Miller 1.3.19