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 HERE'S
TO SHUTTING UP (Merge, 2001)
Here’s To Shutting Up
This little long-play album was written over the course of the last
few months of 2000. We kicked around ideas in the garage of the
country house Jim and producer Brian Paulson shared. The place was
located about 6 miles outside of town in the middle of the woods
and we felt at times that we were the only people on earth. Wouldn’t
that be great? Think of all the parking problems that would be alleviated.
We must have had about 40 or so parts so (see photo for my notes)
that people came up with but many of them got lost along the way.
It was Jim’s responsibility to name the song sketches. And
he came up with some good ones: "Cigarette Camera," "Frank’s
Bath" (the original title of "Phone Sex"), "Shiver
Me Timbers," "Jon’s Agent," and "There’s
Something About Marvin" to name just a few.
By March we felt we had enough fully-formed tunes (20 or so) and
needed to "lay ‘em down." But where? Atlanta’s
fledgling Zero Return studio fit the bill, mostly because of its
close proximity to a Captain D’s seafood restaurant. The studio
was designed by a Chapel Hillian named Wes Lachot and features an
honest to God railroad car as its control room. Things really started
to take shape once we kicked out the two hobos who were lurking
about.
We allotted ourselves a good amount of time to record and mix this
one but still found ourselves needing more. Basic tracks (drums/guitar/bass)
were recorded pretty quickly but overdubs took a good deal longer.
There’s a lot of layering going on HTSU (especially vocals)
and this can really take a while.
We mixed the record in Brian’s home studio. Mac was usually
always there and the rest of us would pop in to see how things were
going. This was our first ever foray into "computer mixing."
In a nutshell, you record the songs onto 2" tape and then dump
them down to a hardrive. There are several space-age recording software
programs one can use to mix and edit music and I think the one Brian
uses is called….well, I can’t recall what it’s called.
Vegas? Compurock? Hmm.
A little stream of consciousness:
Rainy Streets: First song recorded for the record. One of
our shortest recent tunes. Always reminds me of Raney, one of our
Taiwanese tour guides. She once told me of the time she took her
dog for a walk and he started to eat poop. She said she pretended
not to know who he was.
Phone Sex: Honestly didn’t care too much for this one
until the pedal steel came into the picture. I like to think that
our invite for Austin City Limits got lost in the mail. We felt
a bit unsure about playing this one on our fall tour for obvious
reasons.
Florida’s On Fire: One of my favorites from this record.
We actually catch a little groove on this one! Can never remember
how the bridge goes though.
Out on the Wing: This is one of those songs that I like
to hear but don’t like to play that much. I always think the
song is coming to an end right before the second verse happens.
Great chorus.
Act Surprised: This could have been the first song fully
written for the record. Kind of a companion piece to Florida in
some way.
Art Class: This song will always remind me of Joey Ramone.
I heard the news that he died while Mac was singing this one.
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