FEB 26 in Recording Studio (Part I)

PLUMP has been plotting and scheming to get back into the recording studio for some time. We typically wait until we have about 10-12 good original songs, and then we look to go in and record. The time period between June 2010 to the present represented months of change for the band because we had Jody as the primary singer, and then he left the group, and as a result PLUMP decided to go with Doug (myself) and Jason as the singers (as opposed to bringing in someone new), and as such we had to re-learn the songs we had with Jason and myself singing them. Also, at the same time, we were writing some new songs. AND, at the same time, we are playing gigs every weekend. That's a lot of work. BUT, we did it.

As of the end of 2010, we had a batch of 12 songs we were looking to record. We took January and February 2011 as time to really work on those songs so that the songs would sound as good as can be.

A listing/history of the dirty dozen can be seen below (I have tried to document these songs in the chronological order in which PLUMP wrote them):

1. Sauce - This song was written in 2007 not long after we finished recording "I Like the Idea of Chance" - (this song is old enough that James was still in the band when we wrote it). I want to say we used "Sauce" as the opener at our cd release party (at Dan Electros in Houston) for "...Chance". The inspiration for the lyrics for "Sauce" was the show when we were the opening band for Dr. John at the Warehouse Live (in Houston), when we strategically positioned ourselves for an unavoidable 30 second audience with the good doctor, which proved to be a sublime 30 seconds indeed. The music in Sauce was attributed to several different jams PLUMP would play together in practice. In particular, I remember the opening section to "Sauce" was based on a riff/pattern that Josh and I would play all the time when getting warmed up at the beginning of practice. "Sauce"was played regularly for a year or two, then less regularly when Jody was in the band, and has subsequently not been played live since Jody left PLUMP in July 2010.

2. Gonzo Says - This song was also written in 2007-2008 while James was in the group. The music within the verse and chorus were based on PLUMP jams--at least the first part. Then we would work together to come up with additional sections that work with the firstpart. The "jam" sections of the song with the guitar and saxophone solos were sections we came up with together, with Al coming up with the ideas and rationale for subtle riffery in within the solo areas. The lyrics for "Gonzo Says" are based on the love of another good doctor (that is Dr. Hunter S. Thompson). But, as background--PLUMP has a whiteboard in the practice room on which we list all of our songs, chord structure and changes for songs we are working on, and other markings representing random musings and mindless blather. We are also known to "graph" songs - by which we will graph volume/feel/etc. (The graphing process may sound kind of dorky, but the process is actually kind of helpful for us, and also serves of a never-ending source of amusement, laugheter, choking, gagging, and crying.) Al had graphed what we were looking to do in the jam for Gonzo Says, and I swear the graph looked like the face/nose of "Gonzo the Muppet". So, Gonzo was identified as inspirado, but Dr.Gonzo was utilized as content of the song as opposed to Muppet Gonzo. Like "Sauce", "Gonzo Says"was played regularly for a year or so, less regularly with Jody in the group, and has not been played live since around July 2010.

3. Violent Pussy (Funk of Heaven) - This song was written in 2008. VP(FOH) is primarily the brainchild of little Jason Jackson, the subject matter of which is near and dear to him. I remember in 2008 we were driving out to an early evening show in the Woodlands area at Townhall (which is a huge privately owned property with a little lake and cabana area - the owner lets people have shows on the lake and its really cool) and while in the car Jason is singing us this song he wrote a couple hours earlier. All the lyrics and back-ground vocal parts were all there. Almost all the music was all there. The only thing the band added to the song is the jam part where Al does his guitar solo. VP(FOH) is probably one of the shortest in duration songs in our catalog, and it was probably the quickest song for us to write, learn, and deliver live. Due to the somewhat explicit lyrics of VP(FOH), we are capable of playing a "Rated G" version of this song titled (Violent Kitty) when we play afternoon/early evening shows for which the audience potentially includes more pre-adolescent individuals (i.e. kids). Violent Kitty is no less amusing, and I daresay PLUMP has as much fun playing VK(FOH).


4. The Sixer - The music for this song was written in its entirety in early 2008. PLUMP didn't get around to start playing this one live until 2010, due to a variety of factors, which definitely allows me to present The Sixer with the award for "Longest Duration Between Writing the Music and Actually Playing the Song Live in Front of a Real Audience"! The Sixer is a kind of mesh between two ideas. Al had come up with a couple parts written in 3/4 time, with the concept that the chords would move slightly different than the time signature,but would come together again after a certain number of times. It sounded really cool, and also kind of "heavy" and "dark" - really "heavy" and "dark" from my perspective. At the same time, Jason had come up with this crazy blues that has really crazy timing, starts, pauses, etc. So we took some time to learn this crazy blues thing. At some point we decided to put Jason's and Al's collective riffs together--in song form. Next, we spent a long time coming up with how we would do the transitions to fit everything together, which took a long time. Unfortunately, "The Sixer" was on the backburner for a couple years due to the transitions of the band, and also due to the lack of direction on how to put lyrics to the song because it was heavy and complicated. At the time, I remember Jody and I were of a mindset that we should let the song stay instrumental (without vocals), but Al kept insisting we put vocals to The Sixer. The song always sounded like circles and cycles to me (really here I am talking about the part of the song Al came up with), so I tried to make the lyrics sound like circles or to be connected, especially in one particular section where the last word of a line become the first word of the next line. Josh had the idea of repeating some of the lyrics 3 times to go with the 3/4 time, which also lends itself to "circles" and "connectedness". Finally, having a song celebrating the 16 ounce perfection of a Lone Star beer was a subject matter the entire band could really sink its collective teeth into. The lightness of the lyrics really provides a nice juxtaposition to the heaviness of the song. Jason, Al, and myself all sing on The Sixer. The song went from one where I wondered if we would actually play it live much to a song that is one of my favorite songs to play in a show.

This is actually taking a lot longer than I originally thought, so I am going to split up this pre-studio/studio entries into a couple sections. Please stay tuned for (Part II).