Sunday at Hi-N-Dry

"do you play upright?"

Billy Conway gestures for me to follow him into the iso room at Hi-N-Dry studios as Rick Berlin is working out the piano part for "End War" with T Max. we get to the far left corner, and he turns on a light and reaches for a tall wooden shadow leaning against the corner.

"this was a custom job for andrew," he tells me as he hands me the solidly-built electric upright bass to try out. it plays beautifully, insofar as i can tell without having it plugged in. very smooth feeling. "it's not pretty, but it sounds awesome," he says, and i just want to re-do my electric bass part with the upright.

it's my first time at Hi-N-Dry studios in Cambridge, MA, and we've already gotten our basics down. T, Shawn and i arrived at the studio a shade before 1pm to bang out the bass, guitar and drums for the song, and the third (and last) take was deemed the best. i think we had two false-starts in there, but the relaxed run-thru the night before did exactly what it needed to do.

Tim Casey is there videotaping all the action. funny to meet him for the first time, since i played bass on two tracks of his excellent Brian Eno tribute two years ago. ah, the joys, pleasures and conveniences of the modern networked recording studio!

not long ago, Billy was the drummer of bass-rock trio Morphine, and the studio is filled with pictures of the band onstage, posters for concerts and more, including late-bassist Mark Sandman's bass hanging a few feet from where i tracked my bass part. very humbling, but also very comforting. you could feel a welcoming and warming energy throughout the room and those working within its walls.

while T is doing acoustic guitar, Shawn sits in a chair reading a Tom Waits interview under a shelf of about 20 basses and guitars and i have a quick smoke with Dana Colley. Dana was, with Mark and Billy, the third member of Morphine, and it was fantastic hearing him track his sax parts over the basics i contributed to.

the engineer, Jabe, and assistant, Ben, were both awesome to hang with, too. i'm definitely going to be back over there if they'll have me. i'm secretly hoping to get a call from them for a session bassist one day, too.

weekend in NJ

"most people carry pictures of their family in their wallets, but look at this..."

uncle stanley reaches into his pocket for his wallet, opens it and proudly displays a ticket stub for the 1960 football championship game. "this is the last time the eagles were the champs!"



uncle stanley and me

i'm seated at the kitchen table at my parents' house with uncle stanley, who is my father's mother's brother, with my dad, my grandfather (dad's dad), uncle john (dad's little brother) and munk. munk and i hadn't heard the story about the eagles championship before.

"look at the price on the ticket," uncle stanley insists.

"$8?! holy shit!" i say.

"that was when they played at the U Penn. season tickets cost $16, but my buddy worked at U Penn so i got a student discount. $8 for season tickets, and then $8 for the championship game ticket."

he goes on to tell us about how he was at a game one day, and it's raining really hard. stanley was a mailman, so he's in his US Postal Service raincoat and everything. the stadium is doing a contest where they pick various seats at random and people go out on the field and try to kick a 25 yard field goal. he's sitting there, half paying attention, when there's an announcement that he couldn't hear and then suddenly everyone around him is pointing at him and yelling "that's you, that's you!"

his friend had been saying how easy it'd be to kick the field goal, so stosh gives him the ticket and says "go for it!"

unfortunately, his friend completely missed to the side. it's gotta be a hard kick anyway, what with the rain and poor ground condition, but to have it be your first time trying it in a stadium full of loud philadelphia fans (these are the same people who, some years later, booed santa claus) has got to make it still MORE tough.


uncle john with grandpop in the background


dad, munk, and uncle stanley 'round the table as stanley takes a call

good weekend!