Our Album is Tracked!

When we left Boston to head to Montreal we didn't have much on our mind other than to finish our album in the window we had the studio rented. There are so many unknowns when it comes to making an album that it can become very daunting if you start thinking about everything that could go wrong. You're always better off focusing on the music and knocking things off the list to do in a methodical fashion. Just keep moving and don't look back; and hopefully when you've got to the end of list you've completed everything to your satisfaction and with enough time to spare. Now that we're done, I can say without a doubt that we've hit both of those benchmarks. The whole process exceeded our expectations. 

Knocking things off the list - Producer Patrick Krief, Mix Art Studios Montreal, Quebec

The six months+ of preproduction with 40 hours a week spent in our practice space definitely paid off. This is the first recording process I've ever been apart of that has run ahead of schedule. Because we were tracking the drums, guitar, bass and vocals live, we had the potential to cruise through the recording session. We also had the potential to have a disastrous time. If something isn't feeling right with one of the parts, the whole band has to wait and before you know it you've gone days without anything to show for it. Luckily our experience was the former and we tore through the songs. From the first time we hit the record button, our entire album (11 songs) was tracked in 6 days.

The ending couldn't have gone any better. After we had completed everything, Chris from Stars and Liam from The Stills were nice enough to come by and play some horns on a couple of the songs. Liam played a killer Wurlitzer solo on one of the tracks too.

So here we are now. Six months of work sitting on hard drive the size of a pack of guitar stings (backed-up of course). The next step is the mixing and mastering process. More to come on that!

Cheers,

Ross

Working Hard in Montreal - A video tour of Mix Art Studios

Hello WANDA-NATION,

Things are going great up here in Montreal. We're ahead of schedule in the recording process and are absolutely thrilled with how everything is sounding.

We're also pleased that our double fake out of mother nature couldn't have went any better. While we headed north to Montreal, (the only place colder than Boston in the winter) Boston was getting slammed with a Blizzard. I guarantee you if we recorded in Miami, they would have had snow on Christmas.

Here is a little video tour of Mix Art Studios, where we are tracking the album. My apologies if some of the video is a little dark and hard to see. The studio has a lighting vibe designed to inspire sweet sweet music; not necessarily great for filming. However, you should be able to get the gist.

Can't wait to share the music with everyone!

Cheers,
Ross


Happy Christmas From Montreal

Hello All,

What a great Christmas morning. We all awoke to find all the musical gear we ever wanted. Brent had wall of amps ranging from Vox to Orange. I had the best Ampeg setup in the world. Will had more snare drums then he knew what to do with them and Keith had one microphone alone worth twice as much as his car. This year theWANDAS are celebrating Christmas at Mix Art studios in Montreal, Quebec. 

It's a bit different that our traditional Christmas festivities but it is still festive nonetheless. One of the neighbors to the studio brought us over some home made wine and one of Patrick's friends hand delivered some egg nog for a Christmas Toast.

(L-R) Recording Engineer Joe Saliba, theWANDAS, Producer Patrick Krief. Christmas 2010 Egg Nog Toast. Mix Art Studios. Montreal Quebec.The recording process is going very well. I must say the months

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Off to the races. Let the recording begin!

A lot of people say that growing as band is a marathon not a sprint. I prefer to think of it like a series of impromptu sprints with no defined beginning or end. Sometimes you just have to run like crazy and hope that your body doesn't give out before the race ends. We're at one of those sprints right now.

Recording Engineer Joe Saliba setting up Will's Drums at Mixart Studios. Montreal Quebec

We departed early tuesday morning to the only place colder than Boston, MA right now; Montreal Canada. our target departure time was 8am. We hit the road by 11am; not bad for musicians. This was actually pretty good considering Will was stuck in traffic for an extra hour and a half and Joe (our engineer we brought with us to Canada) was passed out asleep in a sound proof room at another studio he works at in Boston with no cell phone on him. After banging on the locked door for about an hour trying different knocking techniques, we

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