 |
| Taking a break from recording "The Swab" 1998-Georgia Street Studios Left to Right: Bruce, Merlin, Brent, Mike Center: Taco Maker The link to the Zip file is after my long winded history lesson at the bottom of the post. |
Out of nowhere and in a stroke of luck/coincidence I saw a post by Dave Murphy on Facebook about how he was remastering this cd. A more accurate depiction would be "Mastering". Thanks also to Pete Butler for caring enough to get this to Dave.
Recorded mainly in '97-'98, "The Swab" was an album released alongside the implosion of Bacon Ray. We worked really hard on this record, but it was recorded in a rather arduous process as Georgia Street Studios was in the midst of falling apart, band members were going through troubling times and the end was nigh for the band. So we were unable to give a proper mix and mastering job to this album as opposed to "The Golden Master" which was a mammoth project that we spent a lot of time and effort putting together. We did this one mostly ourselves with some tracking and mixdown assistance from Tommy Hamilton and some guest spots on keys and sax from Afshin Beheshti. Because of these situations, some indifference to the end and my inexperience and tin ears for monitor mixes, it turned out kind of thin sounding and the levels from song to song were really all over the place. We ended up pressing maybe a few hundred cds on the cheap and doing a black and white cover.
Dave Murphy...we owe you big time. You have really done a great job remastering this.
Honestly, I have not listened to this record much past it's original date. I had to go back and relearn some stuff from it when Bacon Ray did a great reunion gig at the Down Under about 6 or 7 years ago (it's been that long!?) and at that time I was less than happy with how it sounded, but I thought the material was good.
What struck me was that this record was pretty dark in spots and I think the people that were into us thought of us as kind of a goofy bunch of dudes writing songs about Metal Magicians and Pantsmen. Stuff like that was still part of our overall approach, but something darker was brewing in this batch.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy it. Hard to believe this album is 12 years old! The link is below.
That is awesome! Thank you.
ReplyDeleteMy pleasure. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteThis is the ultimate mix. Afshin's keyboard tracks really pop on this mix. Merlin Mann's vocal tracks sound absolutely fantastic on this mix (which was lacking on the original release). Diane Court sounds awesome. My choice pick is the track Startled. Great harmonization, lead guitar, and lyrics.
ReplyDeleteMerlin's guitar solo in that song is about my favorite 6 string twanger thing he ever did. Tasty.
ReplyDeleteI just pinged Merlin on twitter, but maybe you might also know of someplace on the modern web to download Bacon Ray's work? I have (and love) Tomfoolery, and now The Swab (thanks!) and found a smattering of songs on Pandora (are you being compensated, I hope?) I don't know where I could find the rest, though. Hopefully they're not lost to the sands of time.
ReplyDeleteWhen The Swab came out I can across "Diane Court" on MP3.com and fell in love with Bacon Ray. I somehow managed to acquire a copy of the album that I no longer have (was it an MP3.com DAM CD?), I dunno, but a few weeks back I had Diane Court running through my head and I thought "I wanna listen to The Swab" and only then did I discover that it was nowhere to be found in my own collection of online. The Sads. So, I Googled and Googled and this morning I found this post! Woot! Hell yeah! Thanks for sharing it back out to the world.
ReplyDeleteSigned,
A guy from Minnesota who has been a Bacon Ray fan for 25 years. :)
24 years, but who's counting? I'm a little slow with the maths...
Delete