Wow, A Real Studio!

The sessions for RAINCAN were a heady time for the Trio. We’d just signed to Gark Records, home to recent releases by the popular Gear Daddies, and personal heroes Trip Shakespeare––for whom we’d eventually have the honor of opening up for at First Avenue. It was also the Trio’s first experience with professional multitrack recording. Everything up to this point had been cut on consumer grade 4- or 8-track decks, almost entirely in rehearsal spaces. So we were excited to use the studio to its fullest and set ourselves free of the lo-fi constraints.

Ezra Gold was our producer, and I marvel at the clarity of the sound he captured. Like with all our collaborators, I remember running him ragged with indulgent techniques: cutting lead vocals out on the street as city busses drove by, mixing in double drumkits, recording the band live all in one room, micing guitar amps from inside the speaker cabinet, recording the tapping of my feet while playing electric guitar, recording mumbled vocal overdubs, and capturing the sound of zippers, footsteps, door slams, rocking chairs and generally pushing him for up to 14 hours per session. He abided all this, while recording to tape–not with the we’ll-fix-it-later digital recording studios we have now. We should’ve just named the record “Ezra, I’m Sorry”.