It was a Tuesday afternoon in November. We loaded in Andy Patterson's modest studio and set up. We set up everything in the one main room who cares about bleed. We just played as hard as we could and tracked everything in about 2 and half hours. There was another band coming in to practice, so we did about 2 complete takes of each tune sometimes 3 on the shorter ones.
There was a drum set and one guitar into three different amps and only 8 tracks. The guitar(s) used up half the tracks, so getting the drums to sound as good as they ended up sounding was part magic and part miracle. The Smashy string section is acutally a DanElectro baritone guitar, the "Innuendo" model I believe. The pickups are split and one is routed to a guitar amp and the other takes only the bass strings, down an octave and to a bass amp. A third pickup, gerry-rigged to a capo, is attached at the nut getting what I call the "backwards ghost" guitar sound. Each pickup has its own on/off or volume control and goes to its own amp. Earth Sound Research amplifiers were used exclusively.
Well, after we edited out all the shit, we'd take the 2 good takes and frankenstein them into a final, definitive, super version of the tune. Then we threw the vocals on top. Then we fussed over the mix for good part of a year before we finally found someone to put it out, thanks to Jason at stereorecordings.com (is your site up yet?) Then we fussed over the CD art and layout for rest of the year and then some til finally its here for mass consumption. Of course it wasn't quite ready from the printer by the date we set for the CD-release show (but we had the CDs, just not the packaging). So we made some limited edition covers out of raw sheet metal and faux black fur.
Again, why is it titled #3 ? I could explain but I think it will become appearant as other Smashy CDs are released. Plus, people's interpretations of the signifigance is often more interesting than what you originally intended. Anyway we just finished tracking another batch of songs for a new full length release. Hopefully we can get this one out there a little faster this time.