Adventures in Making a Rock Album

For the last several months I've been working on one of the biggest projects of my life to date. I've been producing (and self funding) what's shaping up to be the debut record of my new band, The Rose West.

Somewhere in the beginning of 2010 I got into my head that making a record was the thing I HAD to do. No more screwing around, no more weekly ratios of 8 hours of practicing to 1 hour playing live, no more sleazy New York City show promoters in the business just to make easy money off of bands, no live/bootleg/sub-indie production value shit. It was time to make a real record.

So I prodded at Alex and Aaron (drummer and lead guitarist respectively) to help me get the ball rolling, emailing studios and producers and really seeding the idea out into the industry.

We end up getting a reply back from the good folks at Applehead Studios near Woodstock literally minutes after we hit them up. And that was pretty much that. We'd been fans of early Coheed & Cambria and Three records for a long time, and much of the stuff we loved came out of that studio. It was the right timing, the right fit, the right everything.

The scary part was how easy it was to get the ball rolling. The scarier part is how hard it is to slow the ball down.

We came in planning on doing a five track EP. We actually ended up putting down a 9 track full length album. We originally planned on two weeks in the studio. By now it's already been a full month and we haven't finished yet.

Time and money and blood and sweat and other substances have been poured into making something incredible, and the experience of hearing your music evolve from the stripped down three piece rock ensemble we've played live for two years into something large, ambitious, epic and FANTASTIC sounding is something I cannot possibly put into word.

Right now all of us core band folks are wrapped, and all that's left to track are some bits and bobs of other instruments (strings, latin percussion, accordion, the usual) and a boatload of vocals from what I've been dubbing my "virtual choir". (Speaking of which, if you like singing and rock music, let me know and I'll try and get you something to sing over.)

I'm itching to get this thing in to be mixed, because I'm in love with the raw tracks with barely more than a little bit of editing. I can scarcely imagine how this is going to turn out when it's done. All you can really hope is that something you loved making turns into something other people end up loving to listen to just as much.

The purpose of this post was mostly to explain the long absence prior to this post, and perhaps prime this blog for what it's mostly going to turn into.

That is to say (with any luck) a tour blog about the ongoings of the travels of the front man of a kickin' little New York City rock band. Let's see how it goes.

- West