Amnesty (1999) | studio journal
Hanzsek Audio (Seattle, WA)
Summer 1999

TUESDAY, JUNE 29, 1999: When Matt came to me with the lyrics (and the annoyingly addictive melody line) to "Party on the Prairie" (aka, "Buck Teeth"), I really thought he was kidding. I mean, I thought it was just his usual personal jab at me, making fun of the fact that YES, I do record Little House on the Prairie every single freakin' day and I watch it when I get home from work. The show, which Matt lovingly refers to as "Little Outhouse," is a childhood favorite, which can still give me a good, cleansing cry at the end of each day. Call it therapy, call it a little strange, call it really strange -- it's what I do. Anyway, as for the lyrics (and that annoyingly addictive melody line), I really thought he was just picking on me. I mean, he wasn't serious was he? I ask you, is it any wonder so many mistake us for brother and sister rather than husband and wife? Well, after about five days of hearing him sing the song around the house -- his favorite little trick for getting me to like something that initially made me laugh or cringe (this song made me do both)-I relented. "Okay fine! I will consider it. You have my permission to introduce the song to the band." End of story I thought. They're never gonna go for this. Think again.

So before I know it, we are back in the studio (weren't we just here?) and recording not only that song but also about 14 others. Truly, I lost count. After three days in the "cave," I am still trying desperately to remove the smell of Hanzsek from my nose hairs. I just canNOT seem to shake that smell! Even the food we brought home from the studio tastes like Hanzsek -- serious gag reflex. Aside from that, I think we all have good feelings about our current project. Dave is back and with that, the band has regained some (if not more) of that ol' chemistry that seemed at one point forever lost. Mmmmmm… chemistry. Mmmmmm… Dave. So basics are down and most of the guitar.

The only disappointing part of the weekend for me was that I was only able to lay down 4 vocal tracks. I am used to working much faster than that but have decided that I will take a little more time this project and not feel as rushed. I want to give the vocals everything they deserve this time around. BUT, being my anal-retentive, obsessive/compulsive self, I now feel behind… but I have company. Jay wasn't able to lay as many tracks as he would have liked either, so at least I'm not alone. When I took off Sunday evening around 9:30pm, he was still in the control room hashing through bass lines, a song at a time. He looked pretty beat, and I felt really sad for him. That night, I had a dream that he was sitting on my front porch, just looking all forlorn and saying that he'd wished he was able to get more done at the studio this weekend. I plunked down beside him and said, "meeeee tooooooo!!" I'm a whiner, even in my dreams!

The dream ended there, but we still have two more weekends ahead in the studio. More vocal tracks, more background vocals, more bass, a little more guitar, some piano, tambourine, percussion, more mildew smell… the list is miles long. And ultimately we will have to decide to axe a few of our ideas in the absence of endless funds. It always comes down to that, doesn't it? The money. Cashola, mula... Never enough of the stuff, and what we have goes fast, so whadayudo? Punt. Excuse me a moment -- I have to go scrub my nose hairs for the SEVENTEETH TIME!!

- Mary Beth

MONDAY, JUNE 28, 1999: The first thing you need to know about Hanzsek Audio is that it stinks. It's perhaps Seattle's best bargain of a studio, and it comes complete with the town's most efficient engineer, Mr. Scott Ross. But it stinks. Kind of like that old pair of gym shorts in the corner of the locker room that's been there since the beginning of the school year -- it has the power to ward off vampires, evil gym instructors, even. But mustiness becomes Hanzsek, which, from the outside looks more like a bunker or a bomb shelter than a recording studio. There are no windows -- save for one in the office (blinds closed) and one in the bathroom that gazes lovingly at an auto repair shop. You're in Ballard, a block away from the bridge. But you could be in Blaine. Or Belgrade. So when you step outside for a breath of fresh air after spending eight or nine hours fiddling with knobs and kicking your amp 'cause it sucks, you can't help but squint. You feel like you've just emerged from the cave for the first time, wondering where you put your club. "Ugh."

The Whole Bolivian Army has recorded its last two albums at Hanzsek. And now we're back for another go around, working on No. 3. Despite the stink, despite the florescent bathroom light that has strobed on and off (mostly off) since we recorded a demo there in 1997, we're back. We want to get it right. Even if that's an impossible quest.

When Dave left Saturday after recording his drum tracks, he handed me a little wadded up piece of paper. It was his click track sheet -- a list of the songs and the meters we had worked out for each during pre-production. It was also physical evidence. Proof of a little studio irony. You have to prepare. You have to plan. And then you have to be willing to chuck everything. Tempos, guitar sounds, melody lines -- everything has the potential to go sour once you're under the microscope that is the studio. You spend years learning to play live, learning the laws of physics, and then the studio turns everything upside down.

By now, the band has a pretty solid working relationship with Scott in the studio. We know what works, what doesn't. We know where to spend our energy and what's worth serious discussion. But we've thrown a little wrench into our idyllic world: Claude Flowers. Claude is a music writer whose review of our last album impressed us. "He gets us," Dave said after reading Claude's review of Spinner. So we invited him a couple months ago to practice, where he listened to our songs and threw out ideas. We used some suggestions. Shook off others. The studio, though, has proved a more challenging testing ground. We've invited Claude into our private, intense world, where a shrinking budget and time constraints are the least of the pressures we feel. And the experience has been illuminating. While Claude has been a veritable fountain of ideas (this journal being one of them), what I've found is that this band already knows exactly what it wants. And we're even learning how to get it, though, in my case, it sometimes takes a Marshall in the face.

On Saturday, after 45 agonizing minutes of trying to get a fat distortion sound from my little Fender Deluxe amp, I ceded to Scott's long-held battle cry: "Let's go get the Marshall." We hopped in my little Toyota, drove the 20 blocks to Fremont's Louder Music, rented a Marshall half stack, shoved the head into the trunk and the cabinet into the back seat, and returned to Hanzsek with the beefiest tonemaker known to humankind. The Marshall had no volume control, just tone. But Martin Klem, a friend of Jay's and an engineer in his own right, braved the main room to check the cabinet's sound. He returned with some impressive information. "It's so loud it's wiggling the guitar cable," he said. "It's trying to push sound through the jack."

- Matt

TUESDAY, AUGUST 10, 1999: Ahhh, Hanszek Audio. Much has been written in these pages about the concrete bunker with the stench that requires the Holy Romanum Ritual from a team of priests (with medical personnel on standby) to remove from your clothes and hair, so I'll leave that one out.

It was a great recording session for me back in late June, quite smooth and relaxing, mostly stress-free and yet with a festive air to it, with all the guests. Thanks for coming goes out to my honey De Ann (who documented it for me on camcorder), Martin the L.A. engineer, Gabriel the all around cool young fellow, and Claude, who pointed me in the right direction of unabashed cymbal bashing on the "Ah Ah Ah" song. I missed a lot of the Kiters and Mr. Perry's tracking sessions due to my meteoric rise from the slums of the Lower Magnolia/Burlington Northern Railways District to a dead psychiatrist's office in the U-District. In short, I moved.

I was able to come down on July 23rd, my (oh dear) 33rd birthday, to drink beer all day, offer ridiculous drummer advice on new guitar parts to "Wake Up", and play dual guitar w/Matt on his Les Paul with a drumstick, the guitar body resting on a stool, and Mr. Phat himself lying down on the floor underneath, manipulating the neck with his supple fingers. That's a recording session for the books. Brings new meaning to the title of "rhythm guitarist." Why was I there on my birthday? Because it was a Friday, I was out of work, and I have few out-of-work friends. They were all at the studio.

Mixdown was this past weekend, Aug 6, 7, 8. I tried my hardest to avoid the studio completely and let the songwriter and the engineer mix the record, but I finally broke down and accepted an invitation for a photo shoot/band meeting on Sunday. And while there I tried my hardest not to argue for "more drums! more cymbals!" but I failed miserably. So if some of the drums are up too high in the mix for listeners, that would be my fault. Overall, the record sounds fine, and screw the mix anyway -- the SONGS are the only truly important thing on any record. These songs are to my ears the best we've ever done, and among the best Matt and MB have ever written, which was why I jumped at the chance to rejoin the band last spring. Happy listening to our fans when it comes out -- I think you're going to really dig this one.

- Dave

TUESDAY, AUGUST 10, 1999: I don't listen to radio much. And my CD collection is pretty small. When I was in college, I would hit the record store about once every month or so, picking up the latest Smiths album or the new Peter Murphy. I think that was the last time I bought anything that could be considered "hip." (Some might argue that Peter's still wicked cool.)

Regardless, I've been in a cave since.

We emerged from Hanzsek Audio last Sunday night. Ears fried. Concentration burned up. Opened the door to an especially muggy Ballard night.

All weekend, we watched Scott Ross hunched over the mixing board, making the songs sound better than when I had first dreamed them up in my head. I swelled with pride. "That sounds fat," I said. "Fat with a PH."

But as soon as I left, the doubts began to emerge.

It's the same after every album: will anybody care? More importantly, do we suck? Do we play cheese?

The crisis came to a head this morning when I was surfing the FM dial while running errands in my car. I listened to about six or seven songs. And I didn't get it. I thought some of it was OK. But mostly I didn't get it. It left me feeling empty. And I was surprised how much technology has invaded rock music. Even Cheryl Crow, someone shamelessly wed to the 70's and this decade's nifty retro refit, loads her songs with drum loops, samples, stuff I can't comprehend.

I started to feel old. And extremely uncool.

And then I remembered: I've ALWAYS been uncool. Whew! What a load off my mind. When everybody was listening to the Boss, I was cranking Iron Maiden. When everyone graduated to Depeche Mode and started wearing trench coats and bringing their skateboards to school ("skateboards are for little kids," I thought), I went back to AC/DC. When rock took a nasty, glamorous turn, I rotated to Devo. (What the heck!) Even when I went through "hip" music phases, I was always a few months (or years) late discovering what the rest of the music world had already digested. I didn't latch on to U2 until they released the "War" album, long after my savvy friends said they weren't cool anymore. I dug Kate Bush when a girl introduced me to her while I was a freshman in college. "The Hounds of Love" album. Still one of the best. But long after Kate's core fans had discovered her.

I still listen to U2. I still think "War" is one of the most passionate albums ever written (next to "Unforgettable Fire"). And I just listened to Ms. Bush the other day. I dig "The Morning Fog."

To me it's all about the way the music makes me feel, and that's where I'm stuck.

The Whole Bolivian Army started playing live when grunge was reaching its zenith in Seattle. What a horrible time to be a pop band. We were just trying to write songs we could still care about in 10 years. But we lacked flannel. Then came alternative and then ska and then electronica and then swing. And what now? I guess we're back to RAWK for the moment.

TWBA has never been cool. Never been cutting edge. Never been the flavor of the month. Never known the trends, much less followed them. Hopelessly isolated in our own little world of what moves us.

Heck, I still think Sabbath's "The Mob Rules" rocks utterly beyond belief. And when I hear "Bad" by U2, I still get that longing in the pit of my stomach -- a feeling somewhere between nostalgia and déjà vu. A feeling that everything that ever happened in my life led me to this moment right HERE, and nothing has ever been or ever will be this important again. And everything just keeps unfolding into the same limitless horizon I felt when I was 16.

I never want to lose that feeling.

- Matt