Drums are finished. Amazing. To be precise, drums, guitars, bass, some acoustic guitar and violins, and a good bit of programming is finished, and we’re only halfway into week two. This is scary. My calendar says I’m recording until mid April (the question then being – recording what?). Maybe we could record a reality show in the fiji’s. That would be nice.

Anyway, i’m on to digging for samples for Hogan to manipulate with the the old turntables. As soon as violin is done he can join me. Until then, keep watching me move ever so slightly from time to time on the webcam. Its outrageous!!!!

we did a track today that needed a really big fat beat throughout. no need for toms, just a fat beat. so we took the toms away and brought out the 14×8 (big!) snare that matches the 24×16 (also big!) kick drum that were provided by kieth at risen drums. they are sounding huge. i can’t wait for all to hear. also i used a set of hats that we’re given to me by my neighbor growing up. she’s kinda the reason i started playing in the first place. these hats are pretty trashed. they are not hand hammered. more like hammered by kids for the last 30 years. and they are thin to begin with. she gave me an entire kit that is a japanese student model from the late 60’s. the original heads are still intact. you could not get their sound anywhere else. go listen to “beautiful collision” if you want a reference. i’ll have pictures for them tommorow maybe.

We played about a month ago at a church in Austin where a good friend of ours is the pastor. I used the church’s kit that night and it had a Yamaha Copper Snare. I loved it. All the attack and “crack” of a Ludwig Black Beauty but with warmer tones and a little lower pitch. This copper drum was on ebay pretty cheap so I couldn’t resist. The hammering and cast hoops only makes it darker and warmer. It was immediately used on the first two tracks we did “Can You Feel It” and “For A Thousand Tongues”.

Dan Hamilton of The Robbie Seay Band has an old Rogers Wood Dynasonic – Superten hybrid that has been a staple of Crowder records. I think it can be heard at its finest on “All Creatures” on Illuminate, but it has been used on numerous tracks over the years in many, many different ways. It’s basically a wood Dynasonic shell with Superten hardware, which I’ve read was a common thing to do in the seventies. It sounds fantastic. Anyway, I wanted one bad but thay are hard to find and pretty expensive, so i had Kieth at Risen Drums build me a clone. Ten Ply maple shell with reinforcement hoops, with a completely round bearing edge. It’s 14×6.5 and I think it really compares well to the original Rogers. We used it on “Glory of it All”.

I should also note that Kieth at Risen finished the drums from “A Collision”. We were gonna do a cloth wrap that was gonna look very vintage (like they had sat out in a barn for a hundred years) but it didn’t work out. So we did this kinda 70’s retro green fade with silver sparkle which looks crazy good. It has 24×16 and 26×14 kick drums (very big) and 12 14 and 16 inch toms. he also made a 14×8 snare to go with it.

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shane lives in nashville and does what most engineers do, deal with musicians and labels. his coming is significant because it means another recording begins tonight. see for me, recording begins the moment the truck that brought his gear to waco is unloaded and the aroma of nag champa begins to fill the studio. it is a smell that means recording to me. sometimes on tour or out shopping i’ll get a whiff of that scent and immediately i miss being in the studio, making records.

so with a bit of nervous excitement for whats to come, i now head to the barn to make another record.