Blacklodge Recording, a studio in Eudora. Eudora, as many of us know, is a pretty small place. Its downtown district, made up of one main road, is cute and quaint, and many of the buildings are reminiscent of antique dollhouses. This is hardly the place you'd expect a bunch of hip kids in bands to want to hang out. And it's hardly the place you'd expect to find Blacklodge Recording, where bands come from as far away as Israel to work with local producer Ed Rose and his crew.
When larrive at Blacklodge, studio manager Ron Hayes gives me the grand tour. The studio on Main Street is situated in a building that has been around for more than 120 years. Although it was refurbished in 2002, the place still has the eerie
charm of a haunted house. The front door opens to a brick hallway and the first door on the right leads to the control room, which is where recording bands spend most of their time. The main studio is straight ahead, and the wood floors and tall ceilings amplify our footsteps. There are two sound-proofed isolation booths to the left - where vocals
Record studio vocab
EP: Stands for "extended play," meaning it's longer than a single, but not quite a full album. Most EPs have four or five tracks on them.
only a day – finishing four tracks in about eight hours. I quickly learn that that's no longer the case. In eight years, new technology developed to make producing easier has actually done quite the opposite. Now, a band is lucky to complete two drum tracks in an eight-hour day.
and guitars are usually recorded, Hayes says - and a door that leads to the back lounge of the studio. Behind it, there's a large room that looks like it used to be a foyer. Inside I find an 8-foot-tall walk-in safe (used when the building was once a hotel), a wide staircase with thick, white, banisters, and antiqued walls that have been unearthed from layers of paint and wallpaper. Since this is a "lodge," there are angry-looking stuffed deer randomly mounted on the walls. Hayes tells me the building had a past life as a mortuary, which explains the door in the floor that leads to the basement. The basement, he says, is where they used to burn the bodies. Creepy.
LP. Stands for "long play," this is a full-length album because it plays longer than an EP.
Scratch tracks: Bands record rough vocal and guitar tracks before real recording begins to give each musician something to play along with.
The process of recording typically goes like this: First, the band records some scratch tracks for the drummer to play along to. Once the drums are done, guitars follow and vocals are recorded last, allowing the album to be mixed and completed. Rose attributes the slower process to bands that expect a producer to "fix" their entire album.
In 1996, when Rose was the chief engineer at Red House Recording, he produced The Get Up Kids' second EP, and he and the group became fast friends. The studio became Blacklodge when they purchased and renovated it in December 2002.
Liner notes. The booklet you find with an album that usually contains art, lyrics, photos, and credits to producers, etc.
"Back in the day, a band with no money had to have their shit together in the stu-
He takes me outside and up a steep metal staircase to the second floor. Above the studio, there's a two-bedroom apartment where touring bands that use the studio can stay for $100 a night. It's clean and has the same old, creaky wood-floor charm as the rest of the house.
The studio is co-owned by local band The Get Up Kids and producer Ed Rose. Rose has worked with successful local bands like The New Amsterdam and The Casket Lottery. Those bands chose Blacklodge over more than 2,000 other studios nationwide to work with him. Rose is so popular, in fact, that bands must pay an extra $100 a day for the opportunity to put his name in their liner notes.
When Rose and the band recorded the EP back in '96, the entire process lasted
dio. They had to show up and play," Rose says.
Now he says bands can come in and have the computer get their shit together for them. A shame, indeed, but there's a catch: most of those bands have no live show and make complete fools of themselves on stage.
super-anal about this part."
"I'm just being
Back in the control room, where I'll spend the rest of the day, I sink into a leather couch. Across the room, the band's producer, Robert Rebeck, sits behind a giant computer screen, listening to Luo track the introduction to the band's song. He is dwarfed by the control board, speakers and electronic equipment that take up half the room in front of him. The control board is complicated. There are enough buttons, blinking lights and moving parts to keep an antsy toddler satisfied for hours. Rebeck mans the computer, typing, clicking and highlighting the purple and yellow sound waves on the huge computer screen. He's such a whiz at Macintosh Pro Tools, a digital audio production program, that he says he is developing a repetitive stress injury in his right wrist from the constant clicking. After each take, he talks to Luo through a microphone. A glass window in front of him allows a view of the studio and Luo able to
respond through a speaker in the control room.
best tracks for each instrument and then mix the album accordingly. As Luo plays, Rebeck repeats the line that will become his catchphrase of the day: "Let's do that again." Schubert jokingly informs me that they've labeled Rebeck the "sourd Nazi" because he's anal and is always making them repeat themselves. Rebeck swivels in his chair to laugh, then turns back to his computer screen. "Let's play that just one more time," he says to Luo after the next take. Forty-five minutes later, this 20-second intro track is finally done.
The same riff Luo is working on plays over and over in the background each time he records it, as he tries to get the timing and intonation perfect. Rebeck's job as producer is to coach the guys to get the
This is the guys' seventh day in the studio, and they have
completed all the drums and final vocals for two songs and the guitars for six. The band optimistically booked nine days at Blacklodge, paying $500 a day to rent the studio and Rebeck's services. It was the band's hope to be done recording nine songs in that span but now figure it will take 11. The process is tedious, with a lot of repetition and a lot of Rebeck saying, "1,2,3,4" to cue the boys to begin. Schubert says it's pretty normal to spend three to four hours on one song for each instrument, and guesses the band will be in the studio today until midnight or 2 a.m. The session began at 11 this morning.
"We'll be super, super happy to get the guitar done in one day," he says.
"What separates the men from the boys is getting in the van."
The band gets a lot of practice while in the studio, but the guys agree that the best way to practice is to play a lot of shows. Back when they were Full Feature, they constantly toured for three and a half years, building up a solid local fan base and driving them to write more songs. A little bit of band drama and a subsequent year-long break halted that plan, and now the guys are in their mid-20s and Schubert
Eddie Schubert blow off steam in a moment of mock-frustration with Blacklodge producer Robert Rebeck while his band looks on. After long periods in the studio, the band members say they begin to lose their minds.
Kansas.
says they've all got other things going on. In fact, the goal of this record is to have fun together, to file the last year of their lives away and not to go on tour again. It's too much of a serious commitment and took a toll on the band before, when they were all students at the University of
"I was cheating on school with the band," Davenport says.
Rose says this idea of serious commitment to a band is the reason why many of them don't succeed. He says bands can't go into the recording process thinking
they're going to be huge in six months.
"The chances are better of being hit by lightning than being a fucking rock star," he says. "If you want this to be a day job, treat it as one. Work eight hours a day."
Hard work does, in fact, pay off. Case in point: Rob Pope, who has played bass in The Get Up Kids for 10 years, points out that his band was able to stick together because it was completely committed. The Get Up Kids' gradual ascent to popularity came from the members' mutual desire to work their asses off for it. He says they knew from the start that they
wanted to get out of the local scene, so they played shows wherever they possibly could outside of Kansas City or Lawrence. In fact, the band's first show was in St. Louis. The guys began touring and playing in basements, slowly working their way up to smaller clubs. Now, they pack larger concert halls and tour with the likes of Weezer and Green Day.
As for going straight to playing stadiums, Pope says people "are delusional to think that that actually occurs." It takes work to get in a van and go, and he says it takes more than any old schmuck with a road map to do it. A lot of bands don't realize that going on tour for six or eight weeks means ditching a girlfriend, leaving a job or otherwise leaving behind a lifestyle that is comfortable and normal. Going on tour makes bands realize they're in it for the long haul. It's like a test—surviving a tour is cementing your faith and passion for your band. And that's what it ultimately takes: passion.
Back in the studio, Schubert tells me that performing live is his own passion because he loves all of the attention it gives him. Boyd Brasel, the drummer who recently arrived, and Davenport agree going on tour and performing in front of strangers is definitely the most fun part of being in a band. Schubert likens it to an addictive drug.
"It's the attention drug. Some of us just require a larger dose than others," he says. Kind of like coffee.
"Yo, take five."
Three hours after he began recording, Marshall Luo's guitar part for the entire song is done. The band, which is finally a full fivesome since Craig Luo, the bassist, has just arrived, comes together in the control room and listens intently to the completed version. Their words turn to "da da" and "du du" while emphasizing certain parts of the song they especially like. "Sounds good," Schubert says. The ever-picky Rebeck shoots back, "It's all right," and jokes to Marshall Luo that they're replacing him with another guitarist. "Yeah, we found a better one in Tonganoxie," Davenport says.
Now that they're all here, the band discusses what it'll be calling itself for this
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11.18.04 Jayplay
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