Musical Weekend

The weekend was full of musical projects. Saturday morning TR and I set out with M. Jones to shoot a little music video. We went out to an absolutely gorgeous forest preserve in Lake Forest (the name escapes me now) and shot a bunch of stuff on Super 8. It was an unusual experience as we are all so accustomed to digital. When you are shooting old-school, there is no way to view the shot you just took. Also, no re-takes. So we’ll just have to see how it turns out! Despite that it was a really fun and easy shoot and we all had a good time.

Saturday night was JUPITER practice. Actually, since T-bag and wife just brought their new baby home, Danimal and I just practiced together. This was interesting because although I have worked on music with both D & T w/o our drummer, I have never worked with only one of them one-on-one. It turned out to be pretty good and fruitful. We were able to work on some new songs that we are doing some more interesting vocals with (harmonies, a round, etc.), nothing beyond our abilities but stuff that requires practice to get down. We also worked on a song part for a new tune that doesn’t quite work yet. We ended up turning it into a very 50’s sounding riff, which probably also won’t work for the song but we’ll play it for the guys anyway and get their feedback. Lastly we even came up with a little something new.
Sunday it was back with TR again. We went to visit A, a member of The Bitter Tears, who had agreed to lay down some horns for some of our songs. A was super nice and very talented. He put down a 3 part trumpet harmony for the chorus of one song and suggested adding an alto clarinet part or 2 as well which turned out amazing. I am so excited to hear how TR puts it all together in post! Working with A has really opened our minds to the possibility of working with many different artists. Since we are mainly thinking of ourselves as a recorded outfit, and we are totally mobile, the possibilities are limitless! We know we want to put a string section on one song, banjo on another, maybe mandolin? It is a new adventure….