Twang 'em High! Plays "Longhorn Caddy"

The Mysterious Track 16

While doing Anastasia Scream's "Moontime" LP at Nashville's at Sound Emporium Studios, we encountered some bizarre happenings. I'm not jivin' you. Some really crazy wierd shit happened. In one anomalous event, we recorded a loud thunderstorm that was happening outside the studio. This was a real boomer. I quickly threw on a blank 2" 24-track reel, popped track 16 in to record, and put a mic in front of an open doorway. This was a $3,000 Neumann U47fet that happened to be handy, and the studio assistant was none too happy later when she saw it placed inches from the torrent outside.

We recorded about six minutes of big rain and thunder. It's not like we had any plans for "the storm track", but thought it might be cool to have. (And besides, we were like, wicked baked, y'know?)


Eventually, we needed that reel to record songs, so we put track 16 in safe and recorded around it. Pretty much forgot about it.

Days later, when we were mixing this finished song called "Blues", I remembered track 16. About two minutes in to the song I eased fader 16 up. At one point right before the song, which is raging full-on, breaks down in to a quiet part, Chick Graning sings, "there's a hole in my head where the rain gets in," and, BOOOOOOMMM! A huge rolling thunderclap follows his phrase right on beat, and rolls and rumbles for about 20 seconds right through the breakdown! (The low-frequency of it vibrated the whole control-room)

Yes, for real.

Of course anybody listening would assume we very carefully placed a thunder sound-effect right there in the song. But no! It was there before the song was even tracked.

The breakdown is followed by this manic sax solo, so we left the magical track 16 in behind there...with the rain and thunder and sax wailing, it sounds like total madness!

Fathom This, Baby!

I CD I poured my heart and soul in to engineering/mixing and co-producing was recently released. "Fathom This!" is the first release in nearly a decade by Boston's Daddies of Surf Instro music, The Fathoms. I had worked with them back in '95 or '96; then we started this in '05 -- 10 years later. It took a while to get it done and even longer for the label -- Cali's MuSick Records -- to release it. But it's out and I hope everybody likes it as much as I do. I listen to it in my car regularly. It's great driving music. Twang guitar God Frankie Blandino and company have created much more than a Surf LP. "Fathom This" ranges from Surf, Spy Jazz, Western film and TV themes to, I guess you'd call it '60's Brit-influenced Beat music. There's even a "Bike-Sploitation" track, ala Davie Allan and the 60's drive-in biker-bash vibe. Sax-master Dave Scholl and Mariachi Trumpeter Tom Halter make wonderful cameo appearances.
We recorded it at my Altitude Studios and then mixed it at my house in the Flying Scotsman room.
Go to Amazon, order "Fathom This!" and ride a reverb-splashed wave!