KY Recording Clinic at Saint Claire!

Nashville engineer Bob Bullock has teamed up with us to teach a clinic on recording techniques here in our studio. We're very excited about everything that's going into this event. A list of local people have thrown in their support along with us and 20 lucky individuals are going to wind up with an awesome learning experience. Burriss Amps is supplying us with one of their wickedly-cool Shadow amps (which will be a great compliment to the custom made Burris 100w bass amp they built for us a few years back). The drum center is donating heads and various sundries to make our DW kit sound it's best. THIEL Audio brought over a pair of their SCS4 speakers and a matching sub for us to test-drive in the control room. (Those speakers sound great!) And last but not least, local cajun faire is being brought in for lunch, catered by Bourbon and Toulouse.

The clinic is going to last two full days here at Saint Claire. We're going to have a live band here in the studio and Bob is going to walk everyone through his methods of microphone placement, getting the best sound out of your recordings, and how the recording process works from start to finish. It's undoubtably going to be an eye opening experience for everyone who participates.

For more information on the clinic, click over to www.kyrecordingclinic.com and read all about it.

Let's Dust This Thing Off...

Wow. It's been a while since we put anything up here, huh?

Lots has happened here at the studio since our last post went up. We've hosted a smattering of projects and, as usual, lots of wonderful new faces. EA Sports sent Tom Hammond to us to record all of the commentary for the new Madded NFL '09. Local gospel songwriter Judy Reynolds and her group, From The House, recorded their first full-length album with us in June/July. Another session with the advertising firm Cornett-IMS brought a spot for Applebee's to us. Neil Dorfsman has been here to mix three separate projects; first with East Village Opera Company, then again late in the summer for both a second Manolo Garcia project and with independant singer/songwriter Jason Valesio. So far, this has been a good year for us. We've met lots of great people and worked on some fantastic music.

Also, I'd like to proudly mention that Saint Claire has found it's first gold-status album! Congratulations to Manolo Garcia and Neil Dorfsman on Manolo's new album, Saldremos a la lluvia. Our studio even made it into the music video! Check it out for shots of the studio, the entry gate, and our toaster!



No english title - video powered by Metacafe

Now it's November and we're inching close the end of 2008. We have a new president (FINALLY), and we're looking with great hope for the future.

As always, thanks for reading. Stay tuned for more in the future!

February comes to a close

Continuing the trend, we've been incredibly busy these past few months. 2008 is really shaping up to be a great year for us.

After a short break for the holidays, we picked up a day doing demos with the Louisville, KY based Villebillies. Then, it was on to the mix of the Shake Anderson project that has seen two previous tracking sessions here. Joe Alexander flew out from the west coast to join Shake, Zach, and a revolving door of other members to mix for a little over a week. Mixing was a shared effort between Joe and Zach and everyone was quite pleased with the final result. The album went to Nashville for mastering soon after the end of the session and the album is due to release soon.

Later on in January, Tony Visconti, Mario McNulty, and Alejandro Escovedo came back in January to mix the album they tracked here in December. Man, what a great sounding collection of songs! It went to mastering earlier this week and should be released on June 10. Alejandro's new album is only the second project that we've had both tracked and mixed entirely here at our facility. We all had a great time working together and we were sad to see them leave.

No sooner had they left the building, though, than Neil Dorfsman was arriving to mix a new album by Spanish artist, Manolo Garcia. Zach McNees is playing assistant on this one. The two of them braved ice storms and snow to drive down from New York and we're all relieved that they made it here safely. A day later, they were joined by Manolo and his recording engineer, Jordi Sole. They're in the middle of their mix right now. Hopefully we'll make some time for photos soon; Neil brought LOTS of gear down with him and the control room is really a sight to behold right now. Manolo and Jordi are really a lot of fun to be around and I think we'll be going out to do some sight-seeing before they have to return to Spain.

As always, more to come! Stay tuned.

December already?

Wow. It's already December! Where does all the time go? Gotta do some catching up here on the blog!!!

October and November were full of activity here at Saint Claire. Anti-Flag's crew kept us occupied for about three weeks for the mix of their forthcoming album. The mixes on those tracks were fantastic to witness. We're all eager to see the final product when it gets released in '08 (supposedly around the Feb./Mar. timeframe). In the meanwhile, a truckload of photos from the making of the album are now up for viewing in a set on our Flickr account. Also, don't miss their appearance in the January '08 edition of Alternative Press Magazine (pg. 122).

Shortly after the Anti-Flag guys vacated the building, Shake Anderson's session resumed tracking for an additional week. Week two was every bit as incredible as the first round. Zach McNees flew down from NYC to play the part of engineer again. The session went fantastically and near the end, Shake treated us all to an overwhelming meal of home-cooked soul food. That man can cook! And he's not a bad musician, either. All of the tracking for Shake's album is now complete and they're presently anticipating coming back to St. Claire to mix in early '08. There are lots of photos that have been added to the Shake photo set on Flickr as well.

After Shake and company left us, we had a couple of days to put things back in order before a british rock band called Saint Jude took over the studio. Dave Hadlin, a local producer, has teamed up with the London-based Chris Kimsey (read: Rolling Stones, Peter Frampton, Duran Duran, INXS, etc, etc.) and they chose to come over here to record Saint Jude's album. We, of course, were honored to have them; there is some serious talent in that band and, with Chris driving the boat, it was truly wonderful to be a part of. Such great music and genuinely delightful people to be around... We were sad to see them go when the session was over. Photos of that session are still on the way. Keep an eye out for them.

That's all for now! More activity is scheduled to start here very soon, so stay tuned!

September Session

Saint Claire was blessed with a fantastic session in September. Shake Anderson (who we've known for quite some time, but simply haven't had a chance to work with until now) brought his solo project to us. He's a very talented guy with lots of talented friends. He and a whole crew of his pals came in to record some fantastic music here. Zach McNees came down from Brooklyn to take on the engineering duties. Shake played bass and produced the arrangements, J.D. Blair played drums, Darrell Tibbs was on percussion, Tim Krekel and Mark Hamilton handled guitar, Thomas Cain came up from Nashville to play piano, and a whole handful of other talented individuals came in at different times to add to the mix. Watching that team of top-notch musicians knock out entire passes in one or two takes was simply amazing.

Mixing will happen on round two of this session (which will be very soon). For now, though, enjoy the pics from what's happened so far!



~rosco.

Small Update...

Well, Chiodos have come and gone and we had a great session. Now, they're out on the road and Casey Bates has returned to Seattle to mix. More big things are brewing in the not-too-distant horizon for Saint Claire and we're very excited about some changes going on here at the studio... more about that will come in subsequent posts, though.

For now, I just wanted to post something geeky. Our vintage LA3A's were sent out to master tech/magician Dave Hecht to have them gone through and modded with the classic "Evans Mod" (sometimes called the Clearmountain Mod...). They're back in the rack and clean as a whistle now. Love that.

Thanks, Dave.

FIELD DAY!

MTV2 held a contest for two lucky fans to win a day at the studio with Chiodos. An executive decision called for a day off from recording and turned the day into a celebration. Everybody had a great time. The winners were flown out to Lexington and driven out to meet the band. We all chilled outside and enjoyed the beautiful summer weather. A fantastic lunch was catered by Tony Roma's and everyone enjoyed a few rounds of basketball, then we all headed in to give a quick tour of the studio. After the tour, everyone headed to the control room where the two lucky contestants got the privilege of being the first to hear the new album in its still somewhat formative stages. Needless to say, they weren't disappointed.

Everyone had a great time; great food, games, slip-n-slide, and just chillin' out behind the studio. It was a perfect day to be outside, enjoying the open air. Later that evening (one and a half kegs later...), we broke out the fireworks and shot some impromptu portraits as well. For photographic evidence of the fantastic day, click the photo in this post to head to our flickr.com account.