The Berf of my Baby! by Citrus

From Citrus' myspace blog

Good Grief...how many years in the making? Two I guess...really. We had started off with by recording an entire album that got shelved! Lot's of hard work and great guests are on it...we will slowly trickle that one down to the Pipe Posse. The Lost Album.. I won't go into the other names for it as it may offend some mugs! LOL
One year down the drain...but a HUGE learning period for my band and myself, setting the stage for the NEXT one!

Then after deciding to scrap it all Laura talked my good buddy C3 into giving us like 4 days...two to record and two to mix. We were hoping to at least get a real DEMO out on the table. When working with intelligent and talented mugs who have great toys in their houses(C3) you often find that time is as man made concept. He kept sayin...now GET OUT...it's gotta be DONE by (add any date here)!!!! but then we would somehow manage to schedule another session!
The Rhythm section did it's thing in a flash really. We got all the basic tracks done in a session and a half or so.

Then came the overdub period. Horns were laid up on there first. One Session and they were out. Then I came in and did my guitar overdubs...only one and a half hours! It was amazing. I laid down like some 20 tracks in that time. Hit it and quit it was in full effect!
Afta dat came Vox....we spent a goodly amount of time on them...going back again and again until they sounded just right...of course...most of our studio time was in the mornings at the start...and my vocalists were normally going to sleep at the time they were supposed to be trackin! But we got thru it...changed the schedule some and it all worked out!

Next up??? the MIXDOWN! Now the BIG problem with the LOST Album was that while I was away we had a body go in there and move stuff all around... I mean...cut copy and paste like mad...it got chopped into a lifeless bunch of samples IMHO....so with THIS one...we decided that we weren't going to splice solo's together...unless we had to...We kept it as LIVE and energetic as we could...leaving in the little bits of music that make it organic. We stayed as far away from triggering and sampling as we could...adding a few effects here and there for fun tho!
The process took a long time as we had short bursts of studio time in which to work...I suppose that if we had the duckets to PAY for our studio...we would have done it much faster in larger blocks of time...but as it was...we were on borrowed time and we took it when it came to us.

Afta DAT....we took the mixes to get Mastered...now this was something completely NEW to me. I had never sat in a mastering studio even...and here we go...to a grammy winning mug that really sprinkled some good juice on it!

Then of course...we had to deal with the tape..the RED tape...I have never had to go thru the whole copyright jammy in ernest. I was in bands that had somebody else handle it. The wifey and I went round and round trying to get it all just right with much help from our lawyer (Shoshana) and our producer(Billy Tee)!
Finally we had to send it off....and WAIT....
The wait is over...I have TEN beautiful boxes of CDs in my living room! True product...and a wonderful group of recordings if I do say so myself... I have listened to this thang enough to make me sick of it...but I am NOT sick of it...in fact...I keep hearing things that I didn't hear before we went to Master..
Morale of the story? This shyt ain't over...in fact..it's just begun!