getting schooled

I've been practicing all week to head down to LA for another recording session this Sunday. I guess I've been posting about it consistently without a lot of explanation, but I've been meeting with several different producers, doing a few quick tracks with each to see how they feel. This is obviously the time-consuming approach, but I made the last album over the course of a year with a buddy of mine and we didn't allow it to be finished until the results were just what we wanted. I liked that. I had hoped that I would be able to jump in the studio and in just a couple weeks come out with something absolutely satisfying, but as always it takes a lot of time and patience to get what you want. I'm really excited about the basics I have so far though.

I was talking to a friend near the merch table at a bar show the other day and I noticed that one band had three albums for sale. I exclaimed to him what an impossible feat three albums feels like to me. The amount of energy and stress and thought that go into making an album, the long days in the studio, the cross-state and country traveling, the breakdowns, the manic hours of practicing, not to mention the months and years I spend on a single song, however serious or novelty, that may be left on the cutting room floor when all is said and done.

His band had spent three years on their album which is just getting released this spring, so he nodded along in sympathy.

There is another element here as well. I'm learning a lot about where I stand as a musician, and I'm gaining a ton of experience with long hours in the same rooms with guys that have done and seen a lot of shit. This is sort of like college for me, or if that last album and it's following cycle were college - which many people I've lamented to have related it, this is like grad school. And the consequences a lot more real.