There's something kind of funny in the idea of a band composed of members that only see each other once every couple of months, who practice very rarely and play shows even more rarely. What's even funnier is the idea of such a band recording albums. I suppose you could say we'd really never have gotten anywhere without this whole internet thing.

Anyway, to say that trying to get an album together is an exercise in problem solving would be a drastic understatement in our case. But somehow we managed something and “Songs for Girls” is well underway.

The album is being recorded, in several stages, in the basement of Grandma Abercrombie's house. We owe that sweet lady (and her poor terrified cat) so many thanks that we don't even know where to begin. Not only are we indebted to the digital age for our success, but also to the generosity and patience of a lot of people that have shown nothing but love to a band of poor, wandering minstrels.

The drums got done in one day. That's not to say that we had planned it that way, but it took us two full days of ridiculous fiddling about and overseas calls to people who know more about this kind of thing than we do to get our multi-channel I/O device working properly. In the end, it's a good thing Liam is a fucking good drummer. Ten hours and six songs later, we had drum tracks.

Bass and guitars were easier. Not everything is done, but our little makeshift studio saw three days of activity over the last weekend laying down Nick's parts and my parts. Not everything is perfect yet and some stuff will definitely need to be redone, but it got us something to work with. It's funny how things that sound so great live suddenly become so hard to translate to recorded form.

Scott will be putting down his guitars over the coming weeks and the rest will depend on everyone's schedules. I'll finish up my guitars in November, hopefully, and I suppose we'll get to Jocelyn and Dennis over Christmas. It's a good thing we're patient.

Arrived at the Lindsay Boys and Girls club around 6:30 for setup and sound-check. Got all our gear laid out and went through some songs to work out the kinks in the sound system. Had some trouble with the violin (somehow an acoustic pickup rigged to the violin with elastic bands just doesn't cut it...who knew?) but all was sounding pretty before long. Moved our stuff out of the way to make room for Captain Amazing and His Scientific Flying Contraption who were set to start off the show. At 8:00, they did just that performing such hits as "The Theme Song from Mario 2" and "Saved by the Bell." This is a band that everyone should see at least once in their life. I mean, who doesn't want to mix Nintendo game music with audio recordings of Dr. Suess readings? Following closely on the heels of Captain Awesome, we took the stage in front of a good sized contingent of Lindsay youth. Our set went extremely well, helped out by the drum stylings of Mr. Liam McKeracher who managed to go AWOL long enough to join us for the show. We played both parts of Are Tears the Blood of the Soul, the new song we've been working on which is tenatively called "Et in Arcadia Ego", Don't Leave Before the Miracle and the first part of The Future Like a Corpse in the Snow. Everything went swimmingly and the crowd was great. Following our set, Casey and Layne played a delightful acoustic set. Greg MacPherson then took the stage and proceeded to blow us all away. I would never have thought one man and an electric guitar could sound so powerful. Definitely one of the best solo-acts I've had the pleasure of seeing. He did a spoken word song at Nick's request which was quite impressive. Unfortunately, about halfway through his set, he managed to blow his amp. Fortunately, being well-established psychics, we just happened to have brought the exact same amplifier to use with the violin, so Greg went a capella for a while while Nick and I deftly switched amps. Thanks go out to Cailan Flynn for lending us--and consequently Greg--the amplifier. It turned out to be quite useful. After Greg MacPherson's set, Clann Zu took the stage and despite the rather low-budget sound system that Lindsay had to offer them, they managed to put on an absolutely incredible performance. Highlights of the set included "One Bedroom Apartment" and an intense rendition of "From an Unholy Height." After the show, we chatted with the band a bit. All of them are extremely nice guys. We traded music, did the lame fan thing and had the CDs signed and then we packed up to go home. We all had an amazing time and we sincerely hope that Clann Zu comes back around to Canada soon. A huge thanks to Olie at Dogbus Entertainment for putting on one of the best shows this town has seen and for letting us be involved in it.

It’s been a few days since the show, but I’m gonna try to give an account of things anyway. I’ll probably forget things, but it doesn’t really matter.

We showed up at the venue, which was the Lindsay Rugby Club, at 6:30 to catch the very beginning of Capadika Jones’ set. These guys are quite funky and did a great cover of Zeppelin’s ‘Dazed and Confused.’ There was already a pretty decent crowd out and people continued to pour in as the night went on. Our set was scheduled for 7:40 and we actually got on to set up around 7:50. After a series of technical difficulties involving our samples, the keyboards and the PA system, we finally got things underway after a very rushed setup. There was a severe lack of power outlets on stage and we therefore had to leave out certain pedals and such just to accommodate ourselves (yeah, we’re gear whores). There were tuning problems and everything felt a bit rushed, but once the set got going we got a little more into it and soon everything was great. We opened with “Are Tears the Blood of the Soul, pt 1” and then progressed into part two which ended up being our closer because we were low on time. We had planned to do “Don’t Leave Before the Miracle” with Dennis covering the piano parts, but in order to keep the show running, we cut that one out. It was great having a piano player on stage with us, it filled out the sound so much more. All in all, it wasn’t a bad set. The crowd seemed to enjoy things and we didn’t do half bad for a band that hasn’t actually practiced these songs live all together. A little more practice and things will be just fine. Thanks a lot to everyone who came out to see us and all of the other bands and thanks especially to Ryan Oliver and all the others involved with the organization and execution of the show. We had a great time.