We "hired" a manager last night. Rob actually used to be in the band for a while; he played harmonica. This was way, way back, like 1998, before we had a drummer or a basement to play in or songs that ended. In fact, Rob was in the band before I was. Then when the band started spending a lot more time being a band, Rob had to spend a lot more time being the CEO of an Internet startup (which is still doing very well, thanks for asking) and we kind of parted ways musically. Fortunately for us, Rob's still around and willing to help out, so he's offered to call around and try to get us some gigs. We spent some time at a local brew pub just brainstorming about places we could play. Rob doesn't actually have any experience promoting bands, but a) he's good at talking and selling, b) he doesn't get paid unless we do, and possibly not even then, and c) he can't do any worse than we have. I can't even manage to get us into 7th Street Entry's New Band Night. Now that Rob's on the case, look forward to our weekly gig at the Fine Line.

After the meeting, the band adjourned to the KrakaTomb to work on recording. Because after all, as much faith as we have in Rob, we don't know how hard it's going to be for him to book us anywhere without some kind of demo. It's that whole "we can't make a triumphant music video without Eddie Van Halen, and Eddie Van Halen will never join us until we have a triumphant music video" chicken/egg conundrum all bands face when they're trying to bust out of the basement. Or I assume all bands do. Otherwise we're going to feel kind of stupid.

We're concentrating on drum tracks right now. Last time, we got Pete recorded on "Princess in a Jar" and "Polaroid." This week we got "Adornments" and "One More Day." Here's our setup, in case you care: we've got four mics on Pete's drum set (one in the bass drum, one between the snare and high hat, one over the cymbals, and one over the other drums), each of which is patched into its own input on Jeremy's Akai digital multi-track recorder. That'll make the drums a lot easier to mix than if we just had one microphone, say, stuck in Pete's teeth. Richard, Jeremy, and I are also plugged in directly (no amps) so we can play along with Pete in order to keep the tempo steady and keep track of where we are in the song. There's no click-track, and metronomes always screw us up anyway. The output from the recorder goes into the head, and we're all wearing headphones plugged into the head so we can hear each other through the recorder. When it comes time to mix, Jeremy will turn down our tracks so all you can hear is Pete, and we'll re-record our instruments. This isn't our first attempt at recording. We've done a few "boom box" sessions, and we've spent a little time with borrowed analog 4-tracks, but we've never been particularly satisfied with the results. Now that the recording equipment is in the band, we've had lots of time to experiment and figure out what works best. And Pete's drum tracks sound swell.

Two recording sessions next week. We won't finish a whole CD, but maybe we can have a rough 4- to 6-song EP that Rob can use to shop us around.

- Jeff