Carroll's 55th Street
Carroll's 55th Street
Deadstein is in a real Wednesday groove these days and on this Wednesday, we had the whole band back together again, feeling good and ready to go. We were so ready to go that we decided to start with a second set feel to the night. The long and rewarding (TWSS) Here Comes Sunshine moved nicely into a hot China Rider. This was a long and serious opener to the night.
No one was there too early as the city is still filled with snow and the Super Bowl is being played in New Jersey in a few day just a few miles to the east of us. There was a lot of traffic getting into town and as such, we were parked on 55th instead of 54th, since we didn't get there before 7pm. This meant with the set up time and relaxing, we didn't start the Here Comes Sunshine until 8:15.
As far as recording, I had the typical Mackie MDR 24.96 and Behringer ADAT 8-Preamp unit. Scott got there late so I was waiting for the arrival of his microphones. I have confirmed that one of his Neumanns is messed up as it was shorting out providing bad noise on lee's overheads during the Other One, I had to cut those part out manually. Good thing I noticed the levels going crazy during the break after the Cold Rain and I switched out the faulty Neumann for a AT 4033 on Lee's overhead.
Carroll's was booked this day with Pat Methany in one room and Winton Marsalis in the other room, relegating Deadstein to the large Studio 4. Scoot felt all out of skew all night. From the beginning of the night things needed a little tweaking because we were in a different room and our mixing board was different than usual. I have been getting too used to having the same setup week-after-week without having to even change a knob. I guess the holiday season is over and things will be changing over the week from here on.
Not being quite ready to record was a mistake I made this week and with a 25 minute opener mean I had to adjust the levels during the Here Comes Sunshine. When the first song began Kevin's bass was way too loud, the guitars were too soft and Scott Snare drum was not located properly. Lee's little clip on AKG snare mic apparently came de-clipped about 10 seconds into the Here Comes Sunshine and remained on the ground until we discovered this issue before the Jack Straw. With all this said the drums were captured less than optimally and I did my best to merge in the flaws with the rest of the music so not have become too much of an issue. In the end, the recordings sound good. I have a pretty clean mixdown without any real wacky stuff going on.
With the 3-song followed by 4-song second set first set opener, we didn't have a traditional 1st set, second set thing going on and we took a small break at around 9:45 but started up right again to play a few more songs for the mid-set feel with a hot Let It Grow to close. Getting everything going for a traditional 3rd set would be difficult and it was and we ended the night with a whimpering Little Sadie. Nevertheless, the Little Sadie showed promise much like the jam and the freaky ride we call Deadstein. Time to get off the ride and say, "Freak Out!"