Canadia Beats

Early Sunday morning we got up and headed west to Dave Parker’s Little Monster Studio to record our Christmas song for the compilation he’s putting together. Dave’s posted some pictures of the other bands’ sessions on his blog. The record looks like it’s gonna be radtastic.

Rachael didn’t just play bass, she also played Tetris.

And I played in the bathroom. The toilet is just out of shot to the left.

Out track is called ‘Apparently it’s Christmas,’ and it’s sounding pretty sweet. We kept it simple, tracking electric guitar, bass and drums, then pouring in a bit of acoustic guitar and a big old layered-guitar instrumental section. Phil Spector was mentioned, but we actually showed more restraint, than I thought we might, opting not to put ‘November Rain’ piano parts in the bridge. We did, however, keep Will’s glockenspiel parts in.

You probably won’t get to hear the track until Dave gets everything finished some time in November, I believe. Listeners are encouraged to spot two references I made to some other Christmas songs, and may even be rewarded if you spot some references that I didn’t know about. If you ask nicely we might even play it at one of the gigs we’ve got coming up.

UPDATE: Dave has blogged about the session.

Life, eh? You’d have a assume I’ve been busy with all kinds of things that aren’t your typical Canadia like making movies, looking at comic books and drinking. And this is all true. But despite the fact that I always seem to answer “what have you been up to lately?” with “um, working and… not working,” I have in fact been making an EP.

If you follow my Twitter at all you’ll see I’ve been mumbling about recording for the last month, but then I’m always mumbling about recording. But it goes like this: by the end of June I will have tracked the follow up to One Dog Clapping. There will be a new Canadia EP.

Wait, hold on, it’s July already. So make that some time in July. The plan I wrote on my wall says June, but I used pen and can’t rub it out.

The EP has no name yet, is mostly acoustic in nature, and will have six tracks. There are three brand new songs, and three that have been kicking around in the live set for a while. Although I changed them, so let’s act like they’re new and not get all “I liked your old stuff.” If you liked my old stuff I would have more wine. That is science.

Progress so far: two songs completely tracked, one song almost completely tracked, and three songs totally started. I’m joined on the recordings by new white MacBook Maggie Williams, who is the most helpful member of Canadia since Eunice Brance Branca. She’s basically doing all the work.

My children need wine.