Fourteen hours in a windowless room with the same song repeating constantly in the background is enough to make a person a little nutty. Recording an album is not nearly as glamorous as Ashlee Simpson made it out to be.
th Desmond, Jayplay writer
arshall Luo stands in the middle of a large quiet room with brick walls and tall ceilings, holding a guitar and wearing a pair of huge black headphones. A voice in his ear gives a cue and he plays a short guitar riff, then stops abruptly. The room returns to silence
and a voice echoes in his headset: "One more time, please."
On the other side of the wall, two other members of Luo's band sit in the control room. The Kansas City band, who used to be called Full Feature and will debate a new name for most of the day, is recording Luo's rhythm guitar tracks for its new nine-song album. To keep background noise to a minimum, only one person can be in studio room A at a time, and right now it's Luo's turn. Meanwhile, there's nothing but downtime for everyone else. Eddie Schubert and Steffen Davenport, singer and guitarist for the nameless band, are settled in to black leather couches. The other two members of the band will show up shortly. The small table in front of them is littered with various items: two flavors of pumpkin seeds they roasted the night before, a Ziploc bag full of candy, Schubert's PowerBook, cell phones and random garbage that has built up during the day. They are both drinking out of coffee mugs.
"The nice thing about this place is that they serve gourmet coffee," Schubert says. After about five minutes, it's clear that coffee will prove to be the lifeblood of this entire operation.
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"The basement is super-creepy." The band is recording its album at
Jayplay 11.18.04