The pros and cons of having the studio at home

I have my own studio at home. It's no grande pro equipment, just the stuff sufficient enough to record guitars and, if needed, vocals. When I demo stuff I just plug in the POD XT and I cand go all night. It's quick and dirty, but the sound is good enough. I often use it when I sit and noodle around with solos for records I'm working on. Some of them have actually stuck and ended up on an album. I do admit when comparing the sound to recording with a miked up Hughes & Kettner there are a lot of frequenzies missing.
To the point, the pros about having a studio at home is I can write, demo and record whenever I feel inspired, be it 8 in the morning or 2 at night. I can go on for a couple of ours, take a break and watch some TV, eat or go out in the garden, my own garden. This is quite refreshing compared to being locked in a studio with the pressure to perform all the time, seeing the clock (= money) tick away.
On the con side, I have a tendency to overwork things. I'm currently working on the Constancia album, and to be honest I think I've re-recorded the rhythm guitars three times in some songs, I hopa dn believe it's all for the better. Yesterday I received the final vocal files from David and when adding them and listening back to the complete songs with vocals I felt, hmmm... maybe I should change that solo to do something cool together with the vocals? Knowing myself I know exactly what to do tonight (before and/or after I've interviewed Herman Frank for FUZZ that is). It's hard to put the foot to the floor and say stop when the possibility is right before you. I guess we all chase for perfection. Well, as long as someone sets a deadline it works out.
When this is done I will start working on the new Mountain of Power album. Yes, I have a sort-of deadline on this one, so I can't really keep noodling around too long. Tempting though :-)

Listening to:
HERMAN FRANK - "Loyal To None" - Not bad at all! Classic Acceptish metal
STORM - "II" - Re-issue of the female fronted US band. Great forgotten gem! Thanks Rock Candy!
SANTERS - "Top Secrecy" - Another band that deserves to be resurrected!
STEFAN ROSQVIST BAND - "The Guitar Diaries" - Great Swedish player!

Recording guitars at 4.00 in the morning...

Christmas is over, new years eve has passed and I have finally recorded all the guitars for the upcoming Constancia album! I decided to try and give each song its own vibe and sound (which will of course be of great joy for the mixing engineer, hehe). I've used my Hughes & Kettner Trilogy with a H&K 4x12 cab (Vintage 30 speakers), miked with a Shure SM57 up close and a big membrane AKG at a distance. I've basically laid down two rhythm guitars with two tracks each for each song. Plus additional lead and harmony guitars. Some clean guitars I did with a Pod XT. Saturday night I recorded acoustic guitars until 4 in the morning. I used my old Washburn steel string, miked it with the same two microphones. It came out sounding pretty good I think. The only problem playing and recording yourself, is I have to sit by the computer to be able to record/stop etc without having to run back and forth. Plus I need to maintain the same position for the sound to be consistent. As the mikes are really sensitive, eeven though I have really tight and good headphones, I had to turn the sound (click in particular) down really low for it not to leak into the recording.
David has finished the vocals, too, so now I'm just waiting for the vocal files and I will have a listen to it all to see if anything needs to be added. It's really exiting to hear how it's developed since the first demos. It's so much fatter and heavier now. Feels great!
Me and singer David Fremberg have also been collaborating on a cover which can be quite cool, too.
So, life is good, and tonight my girlfriend's back from England :-)

Listening to:
Sky High - "Download" - Heavy blues rock the way it's supposed to be played
Rob Johnson - "Shredworx" - Great collection of Rob's nice shredding
Coney Hatch - "Friction" - What's up with Canada and all their great bands?
Santers - 4-CD box - Finally got this Japan release! Another great Canadian band!

2008 summary

In the last quaking moments of 2008 I'm sitting here, contemplating what I have achieved this year, and where the hell it went!

So, what did happen? Released an album by Balls, a short but interesting journey which made me think about personal chemistry and how it can sometimes fool us. On the other hand I decided to give the accumulated Balls-energy to Overdrive and we soft of ended the year with a gig at Compagniet in Karlshamn which went really great, and made me gain hope in the band again. This time we did some quite unexpected covers: "Red Hot & Heavy" by Pretty Maids and "A Merry Jingle" by The Greedies. Yes, of course, 2008 started with a new Overdrive album, which have received raving reviews, which feels great!

It's also taken most of the year (in small portions) to demo and record the Constancia album. Now that's it's finally in the final stage I think it's been worth it as it's becoming a really great album!

I've started workin on a new book, got the Ebay-bug and started selling stuff to be able to buy stuff (writing encyclopedias is an expensive hobby). I've so far found around 2500 Swedish bands I need to include and write about. Fun, but a lot of work.

We decided to sell our house just before Christmas, so the ad is out and the ball has started rolling. It will be interesting to see where it takes us!

Two weeks in New York was a great experience as always, and seeing Dave, Amy and Jeb was great, not forgetting Robin Trower at BB King's and rehearsing old Sir Lord Baltimore songs with John Garner! Firefest in Nottingham, Arrow Rock in Nijmegen and of course Sweden Rock Festival and the Sweden Rock Kick-Off with Blackfoot, Hammerfall and Bullet. Some nice trips to Denmark to see Pretty Maids and Three Doors Down, the of course Ted Nugent, Kansas and ACT in Malmö.

So, my top 10 among this year's releases goes like this (it actually changed in the last minute):

1. Grand Magus – “Iron Will”
2. Volbeat – “Guitar Gangsters And Cadillac Blood”

3. Black Stone Cherry – “Folklore & Superstition”
4. Opeth – “Watershed”
5. Blindstone – “Freedom’s Calling”
6. 3 Doors Down – “3 Doors Down”
7. Truth – “Machine”
8. Big Jim Slade – “This Is Delicious”
9. H.E.A.T – “H.E.A.T”

10. Nickelback - "Dark Horse"

However my Top 10 - overall - right now, looks like this:

1. Diamond REO - "Dirty Diamonds"

2. Robin Trower - "Bridge Of Sighs"

3. Santers - "Shot Down In Flames"

4. Black Pearl - s/t

5. James Gang - "Bang"

6. Foghat - "Fool For The City"

7. Grand Magus - "Iron Will"

8. Budgie - "The BBC Sessions"

OVERDRIVE and Explorer!

Bought a Gibson Explorer 76 Re-issue of Micke "Nord" Andersson a few months ago. Lately I've only been using my two True Temperament neck guitars, the Gibson Les Paul and the Epiphone Strat. These I still use for the Constancia recordings, but man, that Explorer felt so 100 % right for the OVERDRIVE gig! It's so much wood, so much power and even though it's still got the original pick-ups, man they sound GREAT! Micke had put on s standard 0.11 set and I'm sticking to it! As phat as it gets (to quite Leslie "tone master" West).

I've also got my signal chain together pretty well now. For the OVERDRIVE shows I'm using the Boss Delay and a booster in the loop, only for the leads, and in the chain I've got the Sonic Research strobe tuner (AWESOME!!), Ibanez Tube Screamer, Cry Baby Wah and the Boss Super Octaver. Still using my Highes & Kettner Trilogy amp + 4x12 cab.

I've seriously started looking into the next MOUNTAIN OF POWER album, too now. I know some of the stuff I will do at least like Trapeze, Max Webster, Rory Gallagher, Pat Travers, Diamond REO, but there are sooo many more I'd love to get into! We'll see. I've also got some great offers from musicians that are into lending a helping hand, like Steve Williams (Budgie), Kim Mitchell (Max Webster), Mark Boals (Uli Roth, Royal Hunt), Ed Collins (Pod), Frank Zuri (Diamond REO). This will be fun!!

Listening to:
FOGHAT - Energized
STRAY DOG - Stray Dog
BLACK ROSE - Boys Will Be Boys
Mountain - Flowers Of Evil

New Balls please!

So, it finally came to a halt. Last week the singer decided to leave Balls. Well, to be honest it was "an accident waiting to happen". The "offial" reason, according to him, was that we didn't want to play live or even rehearse. Well... I for one love to play live, so there's actually a bit more behind it than that.
Not to go into too many details, it actually started already during the recording when our singer suddenly put quite a big, and not previously discussed, price tag on his involvement in the recording. That's ok, IF you discuss these matters on beforehand and IF you evalutate other peoples contributions (such as artwork, arrangement etc) using the same price guide. Also IF you, after a weekend of arrangement and song-production decide "let's split things three ways", well... you don't suddenly just retract it and say "I've changed my mind" and then go into a hair-splitting contest where fractions of percent is discussed. That's actually BS.
THEN... to compensate for the economical issue (because the rest of us weren't interested in investing in the recording at the price rate decided by the singer), the rights to the album was owned by the singer and the CD subsequently issued on his label. This means the rest of us would receive no royalty until 1500 copies were sold. In all cases known to me, the members always receive at least 5 free copies. Not in this case though. We had to purchase every single copy ourselves, meaning we had to pay for the record we ourselves played on. When pointing this out, the singer had one of his tantrums and left the band... to return again (if I recall correctly this happened 3-4 times before his final bye-bye).

So, the next step was that he INSISTED that we would empty our calendars for two months to play all available gigs, from pubs to areans (well...) at any cost, to promote the album (from which only he had any income). Some of us has music or work for a living, meaning we would have to play for nothing to gain money for the singer... Does that seem fair? Not to me. So, so be it. We did a bloody good album, and the history may or may not end here. At least I and Micke "Nord" will continue working together. We have already written some great songs (in the same vein as the Balls album) and there's more to come.

Listening to:
Guy McCoy Tormé - "Evil Twin" - Great raw edged hard rock!
Sky High - "Download" - Killer Swedish Hendrixy riffster!
Diamond REO - "Dirty Diamonds" - A classic I can't seem to get out of my CD player!
Black Pearl - s/t - Forgotten gem from '94

Getting ready for Kick-off!

Tomorrow it's time to go to Stockholm for this year's Sweden Rock Kick-off. Blackfoot, Hammerfall and Bullet will be on stage. I've just finished writing the presentations for the first bunch of bands to be presented, so I k n o w!

Managed to lay down guitars for another Constancia track two days ago. Slowly getting there ;-).

Found and received a bunch of Swedish stuff for the new encyclopedia I'm working on. Some stuff actually makes me wonder why they've even wasted any vinyl on. One band, called Blue Balls, was total garbage and if it wasn't for the book I'd probably throw it away. On the other hand getting new stuff like Ammotrack, Vanity Blvd and Urbandux made me feel a bit better.

Also managed to find a few vinyl goodies on Ebay, at very nice prices - Earl Slick Band - s/t, The Dodgers - "Love On The Rebound", Blackjack (feat Kulick/Bolton), Reggie Knighton Band - s/t and UK band Rage "Nice & Dirty" with a totally different cover.

Also, through my friend Joe Romagnola at Grooveyard Records, heard some new interesting stuff by Jive Mother Mary, Fall Of Envy, Black Pearl (from 1994), Ra, Earshot, Suicide Nation, Big Bad Bubba (horrible name, but a great album!) and The Showdown. All well worth checking out.

My current playlist includes:
Ammotrack - s/t
Diamond REO - "Dirty Diamonds"
Black Pearl - s/t

So... here we are!

The BALLS album was released a few days ago. Great feedback and reviews so far. Micke has been interviewed by FUZZ and Sweden Rock Magazine, Björn Lodin and myself by Scream Magazine. The artwork came out really great! This one I'm actually really proud of!




Received an offer to record an instrumental track for a compilation CD released by Shredguy Records. I'm mainly a "vocal song kind of guy", but I've written some instrumentals for both Locomotive Breath, Overdrive and Mountain of Power, so why not. It was actually fun! It's now finished, just the mixing left! Haven't come up with a title yet, but it will probably be "True Temperament" (a dedication to the guitar necks - I used my Les Paul with TT frets all over this one).

Also recorded another guest solo for Tower of Stone. Came out pretty good, too :-)

Spent three days away fly fishing last week. Fun and relaxing, but the fishing sucked! 8 years since I did it, and it will probably take another 8 until next time...

Next weekend it's Firefest! Too bad Pretty Maids had to cancel, but H.E.A.T is a great replacement! This will be a great weekend!

Listening to:
Buckcherry - Black Butterfly - Great new album! Rawk n Roll!
Anthrax - Sound Of White Noise - Forgot how great it is!
Zero Illusion - New great Swedish band to check out!