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Thurs Dec 6 DAY FOUR
hey, john here...its supposed to be Vinces turn, but hes busy making drum noises...we're rolling along quite well here...we cut the bass, drums and a bit of the guitars on a song called "Lee Lee" yesterday...this is a somewhat infamous song, i guess...a few people heard a very early demo of it awhile ago and got a good laugh...i wont give away the subject of the song, but i'm sure you can figure it out with a little thought...its become one of our favorites, if a bit tongue-in-cheek...we also spent awhile getting the right, BIG (Phat) drum sound for a song called "Emily"...after a few hours of getting nowhere, Vince changed some drum heads and tweaked the tunings and nailed it...we then let Nick out of the recliner to cut the bass track...not all of our new songs have a girls name as the title, by the way...there is a song called "Steve"...no, just kidding..."Steve" didnt make the cut...so, one of the best things about the studio is that there is a Starbucks around the corner...so every night about 6 PM, i go take a walk and get an espresso...good stuff! oh yes, i am very much looking forward to the "Lord of the Rings" on Dec 19...thats all for now!

john

DAY 3...NICK
HELLO ALL...NICK HERE...THIS IS MY ACCOUNT OF THE SECOND DAY OF RECORDING...

We finished up Great Divide drum tracks. We still have to go back and make sure the bass is a 'keeper'. We then moved on to Favorite Song and finished up the night with The Jones'. Everything is sounding awesome. We have great drum and bass sounds up on the board. Ron(producer) and Eric(engineer) are great to work with. For the downtime between the actual recording time the studio has a lot to keep you entertained. A large screen TV with surround sound, a pool table, an amazing coffee maker, and we're looking into starting up some wiffle-ball outside. Other than that, I am hard at work growing a beard, and today is my 'ninth' day of growth. You'll see it soon when we get the camera up and running. My day consistantly starts at noon and ends at 2:30AM. I still get up at 8AM excited to start a new day. Speak to you all soon.

DAY TWO
JEREMY HERE...THIS IS MY ACCOUNT OF THE FIRST DAY OF THE NEW ALBUM SESSIONS:

Arrived at noon. Spent a lot of time loading into the studio and getting set up. We got a lot of neat new and old gear here. It takes a long time to set up all of this stuff. You want to make sure all of your sounds are great for an album. Most of the time was spent getting good drum sounds. When you record an album, the main thing you need to get quick and in one take is the drums. Everything else can be fixed pretty easily. There are guitar amps stacked two and three high in here as well. I'm surrounded by keyboards. It's kind of like Toys 'r' Us for musicians. We didn't get started recording until about 10PM or so. The 1st song we worked on is Great Divide. Sounds very fat. Added different ending riffs. Finally finished getting what we needed around 1:30AM. Tomorrow we listen back and see if it's any good. Asleep 2:30AM.

DAY ONE!
ok...December 3, 2001...we begin tracking the second ninedays album today...we've spent the last 6 months writing and "test driving" some new songs live...we've narrowed the song list from 35 to 15 and out of those we'll pick the ones that best make sense as a complete ALBUM...yes, i still call them "albums"...so, we'll be posting a daily journal here keeping you updated on whatever happens here in the studio...we will also be posting some snapshots of us hard at "work" as soon as we figure out how to work the digital camera! so, check it out and if you have any great ideas for an album title, let us know...here we go...

john