Recording/Mixing with The Sugar Jackets!

Spent the morning updating drum tracks from Amanda Francis and her massive drum kit. It took 10 mics to capture the kit – kick, snare, high-hat, 2 overheads and 5 – count ’em – five toms – 2 floor and 3 top. Amanda and I spent a recent morning deciding exactly how each of these tracks should be treated in ProTools to put out the massive sound that she gets from her kit. This morning I added all of our treatments from the 3 tracks we worked on originally to the other 8 tracks and balancing volumes between the kit and the bass guitar. The combination of Amanda’s drum kit and Searcy Hughes’ supple bass guitar created a sweet rhythm pocket for the guitar rhythms and leads supplied by Nancy Gaston. Vocals are held down by Nancy and Searcy with occasional support from Amanda. Nancy and Searcy spent the afternoon with me today as we mixed the various vocal tracks to fill in that sweet rhythm pocket – this was just plain fun!

Nancy being goofy – something new and different!

The three-women rock and roll band have challenged my usual approach of only working with acoustic instruments. I was mixing the stage monitors at a local show when I first heard them. I was attracted to their music because of the strong use of dynamics. When we talked about this after the show they got really excited because the dynamics of their sound is one of their goals and I ‘got it’. They made the recording sessions possible by agreeing from the beginning that we would record the cleanest sound/signal possible and work from these clean tracks to recreate their sound. From all of their positive comments we have been really successful. Check out the attached sound files and see what you think. There will be a kickstarter campaign starting soon to get these ladies on their way to putting out an all-originals cd that demonstrates their instrumental, vocal and songwriting talents. Be sure to check them out and hopefully lend a hand getting this fine music out into the world.