Tag Archives: Cheney Hammer Mill

Usual Rubbish

Another week.

Here we are, another week ahead, one behind. I feel like a week sandwich.

Big GreenNot much time to gab. What’s new? We recorded another installment of THIS IS BIG GREEN this week, and I realize now that we never decided what the hell recordings we were going to cut into the show. We’ve got a truckload, of course. I know one that Matt had suggested is going to be included – an old ’90s recording we did on Matt’s 4-track cassette machine. Lo-fi, yes … but hey, that’s how we roll.

We’ve also got some half-finished recordings we started before turning to Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. This is a project we’ll probably pick up on again. Matt in particular has a huge backlog of songs we’ve never properly recorded, so we started hammering away at those (only natural, living in a hammer mill. Everything looks like a nail, right?) We’ve got some technical issues to work through … like a low-cost multitrack deck that is coughing up blood after producing two albums.  But we’ll make adjustments, no doubt. Anywho … another one of those recordings will probably surface on this month’s podcast.

We’ll also have another episode of Ned Trek – this is Ned Trek 12, I think, every bit as ludicrous as the previous 11. We’ve been talking about spinning this off into its own podcast, just because they’re getting so long. Or making it into an animated YouTube features. Or pounding nails through it and launching it into space. Who knows what we’ll do? We certainly don’t.

All right, sandman’s beating me to death. Time to bail. Hope all is well in Swaziland. Or Madagascar. Or wherever the hell you are.

Usual Rubbish

Mixing business.

What time is it again? Morning already? Christ on a bike. If I don’t start getting some sleep, you’ll have to take over the bailing duties.

The voice of reasonOoops. Sorry. Didn’t realize I was typing this into a blog post (or that anyone was looking at me from the imaginary wall-side of my three-walled room). We were in the process of working out chore assignments here in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill on this cold March morning in upstate New York, home of … well, abandoned factories … and crack-head shooters … and nervous deer. Come visit anytime!

The thing is, we are working diligently on the mixing of our next album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick – an odd, patchy collection of songs from a forgotten musical about Cousin (Governor) Rick Perry (the score for which, legend has it, was lost over the side of a pleasure craft on Lake Tahoe back in the seventies. True story). This painstaking work can sometimes last one, maybe two hours at a stretch, over an unrelenting schedule of nearly one evening per week, pushing late into the early evening hours. It’s as much as a person can do to keep body and soul together in this pressure cooker. Stop the madness!

All right, I have pulled myself together. (Phew!) Why are we keeping such a punishing schedule? Well, blame our corporate label, Hegemonic Records and Worm Farm, Inc. (a.k.a. Hegephonic Records). They will stop at nothing. First they send the Indonesian military after us. (That’s usually last for most people.) Then they take the unprecedented step of reprogramming Marvin (my personal robot assistant) into some kind of robotic taskmaster. Every time I freaking turn around now, Marvin’s giving me the dagger eyes and running a tape loop of John Cameron Swayze saying, “Did you do it yet? Did you do it yet?” (Strangely, Marvin also offers us Camel cigarettes, as if Hegemonic implanted some Swayze DNA in his hard drive.)

How to do all this without sleep? I should ask our mad science adviser, Mitch Macaphee, who hasn’t slept in years. (Hell, if I’d done half of what he’s done just during our relatively brief acquaintance, I’d never sleep again.)