Here’s a little riff I came up with last week.  Yes, I’m referring to it as “Steady Rollin’ Riff in E” — you should hear some of the stupid working titles I’ve got kicking around.

Having recently replaced all the drum heads on the kit in my home studio (the famous Kuki Kooks’ old drum set), I used this new song idea to test them out.  The room is really small, and I don’t have a ton of experience recording drums, so it was an experiment in trying to get decent drum sounds (and performances) from a subpar room and a subpar drummer (me).  The result: well, the drum sounds aren’t so great, but in the end, I just compressed the hell out of them and went with it.  It’s just a little song idea demo anyway.  I like the riff and the bass part, though, so I’m happy with the overall result.  Enjoy!

– Eric

At that point I was doing all of my own recordings at home on a Fostex R8 reel-to-reel 8-track, but the sheer number of tracks we needed to realize this song called for some creative manipulation.  Bouncing tracks several times to other tracks on one reel can lead to a lot of sonic degradation, so we recorded the eight basic tracks (kick, snare, two overheads, bass (mic & di), and two rhythm guitars) onto one reel of tape, mixed that down to DAT, and then dumped the stereo mix back to a fresh reel of tape, leaving six open tracks on which to finish the song.  Not the craziest thing ever done in an analog studio by any stretch, but it was the first time I had used that technique.  Of course we were then committed to those rhythm tracks once we began overdubbing the two tracks of vocals, additional guitars, Rhodes, mellotron strings, backwards percussion…

Overjoyed at having completed another long psych epic, we proudly submitted it to WXYC for consideration.  A few weeks passed before I was contacted by someone from the station.  The verdict was that it was just too long to be included on the compilation, but that they really liked it and were sorry.  Oh well…My Dear Ella was used to being underdogs who always tried to go over the top, so we weren’t surprised at that outcome.  Maybe expecting such a long song to appear on a 50-minute compilation was just greedy.  So it joined dozens of songs that eventually ended up collecting dust and not being released at all when My Dear Ella called it quits in 2006.

I want to especially thank MDE’s drummer Jeff DeWitte for this track – we worked really hard together on it.  Jeff also co-wrote the lyrics (the ones we didn’t rip off from some book we found in our practice space) and made many of the mixing decisions on it (check out the unusual and extravagant — and awesome!) use of reverb on the kick drum.  And mixing the 8-track tape down to DAT through a Mackie 16-channel board in real time is a unique performance in and of itself.  No digital automation, no recall, and tons of music packed onto eight tracks.  I remember Jeff and I crouched over the board, all hands on the faders and knobs, eyes on our extensive mixing notes, making many frustrating passes of that tape before getting it right. So it has to be nostalgia that makes me think mixing like that was fun…right?

So here it is, Xerox Missive.

Just a few of the things that I’ll remember:

• Our friend and ex-guitarist Chris Gray surprising us with a visit from Denver just for the show. He’s probably the only one that would have been more bummed than I had the show been canceled. After trekking over icy country roads in my van packed with all our gear, who swings open the front door of the 506 but Chris Gray! Unbelievable!
• Our friends Allison and Benito driving in from Boone just for the show. The snow turned an otherwise two and a half hour drive into a five hour one for them, but they made it!
• Our drummer Matt being stuck at his house in the country and having to call a friend with a four-wheel drive truck just to transport him and his drums to the show.  The next day Matt told me about a harrowing cab ride home at the end of the night.
• Watching Chris’s face as I blatantly ripped off each of the guitar solos that he wrote and recorded on the new album.
• Having all four members of Death of the Sun in the house.
• Having part of the LP order shipped UPS three-day just so I had some vinyl for the show. They look so good!  Thanks again to Scott Nurkin for the album cover painting, Mike Triplett for the photo, and Dave Laney for the layout and design.
• Reviving two old My Dear Ella song snippets just for the fun of it: a quiet version of Running Down and the She’s So Heavy homage of The Biggest Secret Yet.
• Having Kuki Kooks at the show with his band Devries. Kuki played drums on most of the songs on the album, and we’re lucky to have had Devries in town from NYC to open the show.  Kooks also treated us to his old joke of busting into the drum intro of Running Down – I miss that, K-bends!
• Unfortunately, Transportation had to cancel due to the snow – Stevie was stuck at his house.  But I was prepared to sit in on guitar on Stormbringer in case Robbie and Benny were there! Sadly (fortunately?), I wasn’t given the opportunity. Ha — next time!
• The list goes on and on.  And of course I’ll remember each and every one of you braving the snow storm to come support us – that meant a lot!

If you haven’t seen it already, John Harrison took this video of Mirror at the show – thanks again, John!

And I want to thank The Independent and The Daily Tar Heel for the great coverage of our debut album and the release party.  In case you missed it…

The Indy – thanks to Bryan Reed & Grayson Currin:

Feature: http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid:409283
Review: http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid:409287
Side-bar: http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid:409289

The Daily Tar Heel – thanks to Jordan Lawrence & Linnie Greene:

Feature: http://www.dailytarheel.com/content/front-man-band-minor-stars-turns-job-loss-musical-opportunity
Review: http://www.dailytarheel.com/content/minor-stars-rock-hard-uncertain-times
Local Song of the Week: http://www.dailytarheel.com/dive/local-song-week-numbers-dont-lie

Stay tuned for a new vault posting next week.

Thanks!

Eric & Minor Stars

Now and then I think of leaving
Now and then it feels relieving
To have some kind of hope that things will change

Another drop in the bucket
Another chance to say fuck it
I’ll learn to waste my time some other way

Where all these dreams can slowly fall away
I know soon it will be my time to pay

Chin up, chin up, my darling
I’d rather be an average starling
Than some kind of lonely holy fake

Who tells me that the sky is falling
Who tells me to follow my calling
There’s only so much a man can take

I’ll fix myself a nice big dinner
Tell myself that I’m a winner
And take something to help dull the ache

And all these dreams can slowly fall away
My number’s up, now it’s my turn to pay

Thanks, Vault!

– Eric, 12/7/09

Our goal is to add a new Vault post every week. In addition to offering up cool content, the Vault is meant to keep us focused and dedicated to writing and recording music regularly, and to loosen up the stranglehold that I’ve (Eric) always had on material I haven’t considered to be in its “final” form. I’m dropping all that. It’s never gonna be in its final form, or it already is and I don’t know it yet. But it really doesn’t matter, and now it’ll be in the Vault for all to hear.

CLICK HERE FOR THE FIRST VAULT POSTING: INTRO MUSIC!!
Rhodes + Big Muff = fun!

– Eric
P.S. Yeah, we know Jack White also recently launched a subscription service called the vault.  I promise we didn’t rip him off.  Bob’s been talking about doing something like this for years, and we even decided to call it “the vault” well before Jack White’s was announced.  So I figure we can both use the idea.  Come on, it’s only rock and roll!

Even though I love writing and playing music and I know in my bones that it’s what I’m “supposed” to be doing, doubts frequently creep in.  The subtle or not-so-subtle pressures to get a better job making more money, to find a “real” career, to “grow up” – whatever the pressures are, they’re real and can make you seriously question yourself and what you’re doing.  But rather than giving in to the doubts or squashing them way down, I put them into this song.  And now it’s always a reminder to me to keep digging for the gold, to not give up on the dream.

Maybe it’s a simplistic way of looking at it, but as long as I continue to get so much out of playing music, I’m gonna keep doing it.  There are enough people working jobs that they hate at companies and corporations that they don’t care about.  But music is something else entirely.  So what if for now I have to keep my day job in order to pay the bills – it’s worth it for the freedom I feel belting out a song that means something to me in a dark, dirty club to ten people, two of which might be paying attention.  Maybe numbers don’t lie, but they don’t tell the whole truth either.

– Eric

p.s. Thanks so much to everyone for listening in with us this month — it’s been fun!  The Death of the Sun in the Silver Sea will be released in January 2010.  Enjoy Numbers Don’t Lie, and if you’re around Carrboro on Friday night (12/4), come celebrate Reservoir’s 5th Anniversary with Death Came Down the Mountain, Curtains of Night, Minor Stars, and Orphan (9:30pm).

– Eric

Week three of the Minor Stars Online Listening Party starts now, and we’re proud to present Mirror, the first part of our psych epic Mirror/Black Lake. It’s the four-minute “poppier” section of this nine-and-a-half minute beast. (Black Lake will follow next Monday.)

Originally written toward the end of the My Dear Ella years, it was revamped and recorded by Minor Stars for The Death of the Sun in the Silver Sea. But I want to thank and credit the former members of MDE that originally helped bring Mirror/Black Lake to life: Chris Gray, Jeff Dewitte, Lance Westerlund (of Bull City), and Amanda Brooks (of Violet Vector & The Lovely Lovelies).  Chris and I spent many months writing and working out all the parts, and Chris’s amazing guitar work is all over this final version.

The picture in this post is taken from Fates Warning’s second album, The Spectre Within, and depicts the “four golden mirrors” that are referenced in their song The Apparition (awesome tune, by the way).  Although there’s no thematic connection between our Mirror and this song, I just thought it was a funny and cool parallel and gave me a chance to talk about a band that I once worshipped.

So enjoy Mirror and tune in next week for the murkier, sludgier, guitarmony-laden back half of this psych epic, Black Lake. And then maybe dust off an old album that you used to love and crank it!

– Eric

Non-Existent Interviewer: Dead Weight is a pretty cool song.  So what’s it all about?

Eric: Thanks, yeah, we like that one a lot. You ever reach a point in your life when something you care deeply about just isn’t working anymore?  You know deep down that it’s not working and you know you have to let it die and move on.  But you’re really scared, because it’s all you really know, or all you think you have.  You don’t want to move on, you don’t want to let it go.

Non-Existent Interviewer: You mean like a relationship?

Eric: Yeah, it could be that, or maybe something…like a band…

Non-Existent Interviewer: Oh come on, the song is you whining about a band breaking up?

Eric: Well, no, not whining.  Just trying to find the courage to make a big change.  To break away from something that feels so comfortable, but that you suspect might just be a rut that you need to get out of.  But you know that means scrapping everything and starting from scratch again, and that’s scary.

Non-Existent Interviewer: Yeah, if you’re a wuss.

Eric: Did you invite me here just to insult me?

Non-Existent Interviewer: No, sorry, go on.

Eric: So Dead Weight is about listening to that voice inside of you that you know is right and finding the courage to follow its advice.

Non-Existent Interviewer: How’d that turn out for you?

Eric: Actually, great!  This album is the result of me following that voice.  Once you take that leap and you feel that freedom, you wonder what the fuss was all about.  The stress is gone and you see the situation in a whole new light.  You realize that you should have done it way earlier.  Starting from scratch is a great feeling.

Non-Existent Interviewer: I guess I can’t argue with that.  Thanks a lot for your time.

Eric: Thanks for having me on your non-existent show.

Non-Existent Interviewer: You’re welcome. Well, here’s Dead Weight by indie psych rock power trio Minor Stars.  Enjoy!