Stark

The cover photo for the album was taken by the illustrious Collin Stark (I can't think of a better last name for a photog), whose work I love, and who believes in adventure as a way of life, and does not compromise this belief during his photo shoots. I've shot with Collin a few times now, and during past shoots (under his direction, of course) I have smashed two televisions, jumped across a sixth story ledge with my guitar in hand, stood in a swamp next to a snake, and run from an angry homeless man. Collin tells me he once dropped a camera off a 9th story roof onto the street below,("Good thing it was insured!"), and he builds gigantic sets by hand in his loft/studio in Downtown LA - check out his website (you might recognize a few of his other subjects) -

http://www.collinstark.com

Master of My Domain

(from left, Dan, Reuben, and Yours Truly)

I have in my posession a disc with the masters to the new EP. Masters, in music terms (as opposed to Masters in other industries - i.e. Golf, Higher Education, Baiting) are the final, polished recordings as they'll eventually be delivered to iTunes, burned onto the CD's, and of course, blasted (at a reasonable volume) into your ears.

We had the album mastered by Rueben Cohen at Lurssen mastering, and of course, Dan and I went to sit in on the session, hang out with the guys, eat frozen pizza, and admire the Grammy awards they have sitting out not-so-subtly under a spotlight (hey, if you've got em, flaunt em!). Rueben worked his magic, running the audio signal through an analog system, where he added some compression (not too much!), adjusted the EQ, made a couple of other small adjustments, and then converted it back to digital. To those of you who glazed over during the last sentence, the record sounds amazing, and I'm really excited for you to hear it. We've set the official release date for November 16th, but those of you who contributed to the campaign are, of course, going to get it before that.