22-01-2004 : The first 4 days
Jebediah Studio Diary. Cast. K - Kevin, B - Brett, C - Chris, V - Vanessa, H - Heath, M - Matt WEDNESDAY JANUARY 21ST. DAY FOUR. K - We moved in to Kingdom Studios in Perth, W.A to start recording album number four. Four records! Geez, you'd think it would get easier. Kingdom Studios is an old Masonic Hall that has been converted in to a recording space by its owner, Dom (get it? King-dom). The only reminders of this buildings former occupants are the picture of, (a very young looking) Queen Lizzy and the words to some odes - all songs that I'm sure would have been sung with gusto by the freemasons here. What the fuck is the whole freemason malarky about anyway? Who are they? How do you become initiated and more importantly, what do they do? I suspect that it is all tied to war or the Commonwealth and all the mystery and secrecy that surrounds them merely hides the fact that they do very fucking little at all, except scratch each others backs in the outside world. Anyway, the actual recording room is, as you might imagine, very large with floorboards and high ceilings. It's an unusual vibe, much different to what we have worked in before, but I like it. Our engineer is a Mr Matt Lovell, a New South Welshman with a fondness for beer and Neil Youngs ""Greendale"" record. If he won lotto he would build a recording studio with a micro brewery attached, an unusual addition that he believes would be quite popular with the artists that worked there. Matt engineered our last album. We are attempting to sort of co-produce this one with Matt, a step towards greater artistic control that we have previously never taken. Only time will tell whether this is a wise move or not. The first day of recording is notoriously slow and boring as it is spent setting up the studio and the drum kit. Obviously this is completely necessary but it can drive you insane if you are impatient. Surprisingly, we move through this process exceptionally quickley and by the end of the night have put down TWO drum tracks. This is a record for us. The drum sounds pulled are great, big and live sounding, with lots of body and character. The two songs done this day are (tentatively) called ""No Sleep"", a Stones meets Warhols drug rocker and ""Loaded Gun"", which I can't really find a good description for right now, but we've played it live a bit so anyone that has seen us play in the last 6 months would have heard it. On day two we do four drum tracks, songs called (again tentatively), ""It's Over"" (skewy, poppy), ""The Seven Signs of Ageing"" (rockin), Sew Your Life (a hymn for peace) and ""First Time"" ( sample lyric - ""There's a first time, for everything""). We are making hella fast progress so far, which is strange but exciting as it will allow more time towards the end for other stuff, e.g finding that perfect Barry Crocker sample, or getting in that 30 person gospel choir I've always dreamed about. On Tuesday we layed drums down for ""More Alone"" (my favourite), ""Dog"" (space cowboy ode), ""You Oughtta Know"" (jangly ode to homesickness) and ""Nothing"" (art-fealt). Which means at the time of writing we have just one more drum track to lay down, ""Braxton Hicks"", (desparation without a cause). After this we move on to bass. A peculiar side note to the sessions so far comes in the form of a sudden penchant for drinking vast amounts of Fanta whilst recording. I haven't drunk the stuff in years and am finding the novelty factor quite stimulating. I've just realised how sad those last sentences sound so I'm going to stop typing this shit now. C- I've had a fondness for Kingdom since the first time we set foot in here. There is a smell in the air here that evokes memories of my childhood. it is the smell of antique stores. All polished woods, worn materials and aging papers. It's a comforting kind of aroma as it reminds me of weekends spent browsing antique shops with my dad and, really, it's not dissimilar to the smell of his lounge room, making me feel at home straight away. Looking at all the stacks of vintage amps and equipment around the studio, the words 'organised chaos' come to mind, but as i would describe my own bedroom in the same way, I'm as happy as a pig in shit! This, coupled with all the months of solid preparation we've put into this recording session, bouys me with a sense of confidence that I can honestly say I've never had going into a recording studio before. Obviously, time will tell, but like Kev's said, we is well on target. B - Fanta. FANTA!!! I'VE NEVER FELT SO FUCKING ALIVE!!!!! Can't believe how quickly things are coming together, as I write this (4:30 on wednesday) the drum takes are, as they say, ""in the can"". The last one - Braxton Hicks - took a while because a) It's quite fast and I get too tired to play it properly after just a couple of takes; b) I'm being anally picky - more so than usual, even - about the results. To those of you who have just been subjected to the mental image of me picking my arse (whatever the hell that means) - I apologise profusely. Anyway, the next step is probably a final review of the drum takes, to see if anything naughty has slipped through unnoticed during the frenzy of hitting and listening that has been the last few days. Something I will call aural fatigue can set in after listening to drums at high volume on the monitors for a while, so going back through with slightly fresher ears will be interesting. At the moment Matty and Dom are trying to install a 200 gig (!!) hard drive on the Mac, so we are having a bit of a break. I remember when the Mitchell family got our first computer, it had a very respectable 450 meg. I think it's time to heat up my beef w/oyster sauce from last night. K - Computers didn't reach Bullcreek until 1995. H - I can't believe these guys let me in here. B - I can't believe we did either. K - Yeah, it's wierd. Brett has a dream that one day he will open a discount store that sells cheap stuff, very much in the style of your Crazy Clints stores in Melbourne or those 2 dollar shops around the place. He would call it ""Krazy Kuntz"" and use the slogan ""Come inside!"" B - Yes, this idea has been floating around for a couple of years now but it remains a bit of a pipe dream. Could be a bit confronting for smaller regional communities, so would have to kick it off in one of the capital cities, I imagine - a nice mall somewhere with good traffic. One thing's for sure, the ""Grand Opening Sale"" of the first store would be a special day for me. C - Maybe you could have a whole warehouse and call it ""Krazy Kuntz Wholesale"" M - Maybe you could all stop writing this dribble and concentrate on making this album!!! K - I don't want to make rock music anymore. I want to make drum and bass."

23-01-2004 : THURSDAY 22ND JANUARY.
K - It's now day five. All the drums have been thoroughly checked and the consensus is that they are quite good. We moved on to bass by the end of last night and will continue on that throughout today. This leaves me very little to do really. We will all be present to check final results but for the process of actually laying it down Ness will just do her thing. We've spent so much time on pre production (around a month compared to 1 to 2 weeks with previous records) that for the first time we all have really intimate knowledge of everything that is going on in the songs before we commit them to tape. In the past when parts are being laid down we often find that things clash, or notes are wrong here and there and that sort of thing, but this time 99% of that has been cleared up in pre production. Some songs we have already recorded in demo form multiple times. ""Sew Your Life"", for example, has been recorded 3 times in pre production, at different speeds and what not. My only fear with this method was that we may have over analysed things too much, which is a real danger with music (and anything creative I suppose), where you are striving to get songs to that special place. You can overthink things too much and clutter your ideas, or make the end result too unnatural. I've always been a huge fan of simplicity - it's highly underated. Hopefully, though, only good things will come out of the preparation we've done. It's always a bit of a gamble though, really. Does anyone really know what they are doing when they make records? If there is a formula to songwriting and successful record making, Chad Kroeger from Nickelback knows it. But is the music any good? At the end of the day, I think if you are trying to make music purely to satisfy your own tastes and no one elses, then it is a total lottery as to whether you will be successful or not. And by successful I mean, successful in how many other people will like it, which definately isn't the only barometer of success, and its level of importance differs depending on who you talk to. I think perhaps in my head I have a more clear vision than I have had in the past about the type of Jebediah record I would like this to be. Now it's just a case of trying to get there.
B - Quite good? QUITE GOOD?!! I would have thought they rated at least a ""really good"". Mind you, it's all relative I suppose, so if in the past my drumming has been merely ""adequate"", then ""quite good"" represents a quantum leap. Kev thought he might have been getting a little too deep writing that last bit. He may be right, but it's hard not to think about things in that way from time to time - especially when you're not busy doing stuff. I reckon that when you find yourself thinking too deeply about whether or not you are thinking too deeply, chances are you're thinking too deeply. I wonder how many people have had a total meltdown in the studio from walking down that path. That would be best avoided on this project, we simply don't have the time or the drugs to devote to it. Personally - being a Gemini - I swing between knowing that this is the best album we have ever written, and wanting to become a pivate investigator in the style of Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently. In the short term, such dilemmas can be averted by consuming copious amounts of Fanta, which, incidentally, we are almost out of - I'd better get on to that now. And find a mobile number for Chad Kroeger.
K - As Ness forges ahead with laying down bass parts, I thought I might weigh in on the beer debate. As I write this, I am suckling on a Rogers, which is a mid strength beer (c'mon, do you really think I'd be getting drunk in the studio? There's work to be done!), and is brewed by the Little Creatures Company in Fremantle. The Little Creatures beers are a fine boutique beer, with a distinctive fruity surprise. Now whilst these are very palatable beers, ( Rogers is definately the best mid strength beer I have tasted), they are not, in my opinion, the kind of beer you can drink for extended sessions. The fruity flavour can become a little sickly by the 5th or 6th beer mark. Which brings me to the utter brilliance of V.B. Now while this beer may be your standard, everyman beer, with not even the slightest hint of surprise, it is custom built for extended drinking sessions. The more you drink, the more palatable they become and the less you need to switch to another drink later in the session. Sure, the first couple may take some getting used to, particularly if you are starting in the A.M, but once you're in the groove, there is no going back (much like some of our songs). As for the international beers, I think many of them are over priced and over rated. And I hate XXXX and Emu. Well, there you go. That was a pointless little article. On a more sombre note, I would like, (and I hope it is not insensitive to do so here), to express, on behalf of the band, our deep sadness at the passing away of David Hookes in such horrible circumstances. The amount of violence in this world continues to shock and depress me.
B- Ummm... Is it just me or is there something weird about first endorsing extended beer-drinking sessions, then lamenting the violence in our society? Hookes and his friends were, after all leaving a pub at the time.
K - Depends on whether you believe the two are inextricably linked. I for one can say that I must have been pissed at various establishments thousands of times and have never been in such a violent situation. Alcohol itself is not to blame for such violence, it is the people that have the violence already in them, brimming at the surface, waiting to be unleashed as soon as their inhibitions are stripped away, for without a doubt, alcohol loosens our inhibitions. Some people dance or kiss strangers when their inhibitions are loosened. Others get their kicks out of beating people up. And besides, Hookes and his friends were leaving the pub. No matter what state they were in, or even if they were a danger to other patrons (of which there is no evidence), the security had no business to follow them out on to the street. Their jurasdiction ends at the front door of the pub.
B- I agree entirely that it shouldn't have happened, alcohol or not, and that the bouncer probably represents an all too prominent sector of the industry - those who are in the job because they are large, not very intelligent, and like to fight. These idiots give the rest a bad name, and I'm sure any decent bouncer would agree. Still, I think the percentage of reported violent incidents where alcohol is undeniably a factor, must be high. After all, we all have experienced violent instincts in the heat of the moment, it seems to be pretty fundamental. The degree to which you allow it to control your actions is partly a result of social conditioning, and partly genetic, like pretty much every other trait we exhibit. But it's really all about chemistry. How about if there was a drug which could be forcibly administered to individuals who have repeatedly demonstrated an inability to regulate their alcohol intake, and uncontrollably violent behaviour under it's effects? When the two substances interacted, they would produce instant and debilitatingly excruciating pain in the testes. Or something like that. I reckon that's a corker of an idea, pardon the pun. I'd even volunteer for experimental trials if it paid well. Really well. Of course, they'd have to avoid things like certain pharmaceutical cough suppressants (which are of dubious effectiveness anyway) and those little chocolates with brandy and shit in them. That would teach them a lesson, eh?
K - Now that, my good man, is the greatest fucking idea I have heard in a long time! Anyway, it is now late in the evening and Australia have just won a brilliant game of cricket against India. But seeing as though this is supposed to be a studio diary, I shall describe a little more what is going on here with our record. Ness has been truckin' along with bass all day. All's going well. We are trying to really make the most of the quality of the room. We plan to record everything in the big hall room (there are also some little isolation booths here where you might normally record bass, guitars or vocals) in order to give the record some added character. I think this could work well, as far as adding ambience to the sound of the instruments. Tomorrow I will start putting guitars down. "

24-01-2004 : .
FRIDAY 23RD JANUARY. H. Hopefully the band aren't too sick of me sticking a camera in their face. All for the common good and the archives really. I turned up just in time for them to break for dinner again. Maybe it's a manager thing. It's fucking hot in the control room today ladies and gents, it's 35 in Perth today and about 34 in here. Anyway, it's sounding pretty damn good in here, I reckon if the record sounds as hot as where it was recorded we will be very happy. I like it here in Kingdom, it has a good atmosphere. B- Sorry bout the poor effort on the diary front today folks, the band laptop has been spacking out. It's a Mac, y'see. K - Yeah the ol compute has been a little tempermental, however I was able to give it just enough tender love and care to get it happening. It's 1am and we are finishing for the day. It's been long and hot. I've been playing guitar all day so haven't really had time to write much, but it has been a good productive day, as they all have been really, bar perhaps one. There are alaways days of frustration in the studio but so far this session has been pretty good. Will endeavour to catch up on todays progress tomorrow morning but right now I'm going home to bed. "

25-01-2004 : Sat 24th January
C - Heath had bacon for breakfast today, and although to most, this statement probably isn't riveting in the slightest, I think some of us know only too well the deep and truly significant impact this will have on his moral fibre, and therefore it's warranted mention in this diary. Pork stocks will rise! K -Apologies for the shit diary entry today. I've been doing guitar all day and haven't had a chance to write. In the last two days I've done my guitary stuff for 7 songs. On ""Dog"", we got huge, roomy sounds. It is our country song from the future on the moon. ""Seven Signs"", ""First Time"" and ""Nothing"" all are rocking nicely, nicely. The control was fucking hot today, which added to the brain melting somewhat. Can't really think. Will be much better after our day off on Sunday. "

06-02-2004 : Thu February 5th
K - Yes, the studio diary has become kinda boring. Sorry. Yesterday I went home early to work on lyrics and rest up. It appears to have worked a bit as today I feel like having a go at vocals. Chris put the finishing touches on Braxton Hicks, First Time and today is doing Dog. After this, all the guitars will be pretty much done. Hopefully I might be able to get a couple of vocals down today. Looking forward to next week, as we will be adding extra bits and pieces to the songs - always fun when you can start to hear it all come together. B - Well it's not so much that it's getting boring (to write, that is - I'm sure it's boring as hell to read) it's just that by this stage there are generally only a couple of us in here at a time. At the moment we are comping vocals for ""Loaded Gun"", which is one of those things that is vital, but not neccessarily very exciting to describe. Plus, Heath passed on to me an email from a girl who was offended by my comment about Renee Rivkin getting raped, which left me feeling a bit sheepish, so I think I'm trying to censor myself, which is no fun really. As we all know, the only way to avoid saying anything that might possibly offend someone, is to say nothing at all. But if you're reading this, since you expressed no fondness for Mr Rivkin, I know something terrible must have happened and I'm genuinely sorry about that. I was being flippant and facetious, two of several words beginning with 'f' which can often be used to describe me I'm sure. But I'm afraid I must stand by my assertion that he's an arrogant twat. Week Three Video 2 "

06-02-2004 : video added
Week One Video

16-02-2004 : Wed Feb 11th
K - We finished late last night by putting some more lead guitar at the end of ""It's Over"", which is sounding great. Now it is the late afternoon today and we are recording some strings for ""Sew Your Life"". What a thrill it is to hear other instruments played to your songs. I always get a huge buzz out of it, I guess because I'm not used to hearing it and it is usually stuff that is only heard in the imagination until the final moments of recording the album. Anyway, it's sounding really lovely. It's now the evening time. We worked on ""Dog"", which is a country song at it's roots, but we've tried to take it in to a more futuristic, spacey kinda realm. It's a sad story about a dog, possibly from outer space, for his origins are unknown, appearing in the garden. Read in to it what you will, as it could, if you wanted it to, be a metaphor for all manner of things. We are hoping to add more to the song, to play on the sci-fi vibe. There is something intriguing to me about treating a country song with an outer space theme. It doesn't really make sense but I think we can pull it off. These studio diary entries have become much shorter and more boring, haven't they? Many apologies for this. I'm trying to think of a really good explanation for you but I can't. We only have two more days left in here and we are working hard to make sure it's all finished on time. The last few days have been great experimenting days. "