Band On The Run

Will There Be Enough Water?

Back in the studio, frowning over the recording from the day before seemed like it was becoming a broken record for us. Between Fly Way and I, we just kept chasing one another in circles. It was more tiring than dizzying.

I'd gotten the whole band in the studio this time, ignoring the rough demo I'd slotted together when I'd sent Nick, Dan and Marcus scrambling to leave me alone. Rough didn't really cover the mix I'd thrown together. It could be more aptly described as sketchy as fuck. It wasn't good enough for a demo, too confusing and complicated, main vocal take rather lackluster while the backup was anything but and the instrumentation was just bouncing from the walls. There was just too much going on. It made a pulse throb right behind my eyes just from listening.

Maybe a better producer than I could have made sense of the mess that I'd been presented with, but I felt lost in the midst of it. There were producers that I knew who had reputations for just this sort of problem. I wasn't one of them, though. Pro-tools weren't exactly my specialty.

And who could blame me? Seth had been my unofficially official mentor, after all, and he'd never been one for them, either.

I could've said he had more of a hand at mixing than I did – not that I was about to admit it. He was the type of producer that always seemed to be able to find something, that one thing that made a song worth it. Whereas it had struck me with a resolutely ridiculous wave of panic that it might have been one of the things I hadn't picked up from him, while lying and sneaking about seemed to have stuck around quite well.

I'd always been the sort to get caught up in my own frustration. And if I thought about it, Seth wasn't immune either. Remembering his short comings as a producer – sharp temper, cruelty, demands, and unrealistic expectations – it managed to make me feel a little bit better.

That soothed the throbbing anxiety slightly, allowing me to think a bit clearer. It was only then that I demanded the whole band come in the next day. I'd thought a live take of the song was in order – there was something about the energy of a band playing together that no board of pro-tools could manage to emulate under any circumstance.

It was a technique we'd used as The Spares billions of times. In fact, it was rare that we didn't record live. The four of us always sounded better together instead of sectioned off into separate entities. It was probably the reason we'd imploded in the end, spent years in each others' pockets until unable to stand one another.

To be fair, there was nothing more difficult that hating people you loved.

Still, it might've worked with The Spares – having Jake and Will to ground the disastrous energy crackling between Seth and I – but it appeared to have done fuck all for Fly Way.

Well, it did something. Nick's vocal take was much better – not so lackluster when the boys were with him. It at least let me know what to do instead of nagging him through a thousand takes of the same song. Yet that wasn't enough. The composition of the song far too clumsy to be intricate – which I could only assume was what Nick and Ben had been going for when they'd written something so needlessly complicated.

So far we had a handful of songs ready to be worked over for a final mix, but each one had been painfully dragged out of them. I'd never know recording to be such hard work. The music had never been hard for The Spares; it was just keeping our tempers in check. We'd made a pact that any recordings containing a punch to the face were to be scraped immediately – it had really limited us.

I switched back to the recording from today, jumping straight into the song about halfway through. It just had me shaking my head.

This was what we had to show for an entire day in the studio. It had been one of those days that we'd started early, only breaking for coffee breaks and for me to sneak a smoke while they went to get lunch. And just the mere thought of a smoke had my stomach clenching hungrily as my fingers twitched to get a cigarette between my fingers.