Hey there friends,

Well, the Bridge To Nowhere process came to a beginning over this weekend, and we have the final Track listing for the album. The tracklist is as follows;

 

1.Faded Within

2.Epitaph

3.Its Not Right (ft. Grant Cambridge of Longfellow)

4.Christine

5.Stand Tall

6.Wonderin

7.Save The Day

8.New World Order

 

I know that there are at least a few of you out there that wanna know what happened, and after this weekend, what are the next steps in getting the album ready for you. So here it is.

 

The schedules of all the members involved in the recording were cleared the entire week before we hit the studio, and were then filled with grueling 5-6 hour practices EVERY NIGHT. Throughout this whole week, our practices consisted of set schedules of what we had to practice. We had to prioritize all of the songs, while at the same time choosing which of our many songs we were going to do. 

 

Friday night, Mark and I went to stay over at Brians, figuring it would calm our nerves and hopefully help us relax (Zack was going to come too but unfortunately had to stay behind at his house). It didnt work. Mark and I were up the ENTIRE night, not getting one minute of sleep, and my personally were so shot that I threw up for almost ten minutes straight. A little after noon we loaded up our gear and head to Faded Studios, where we met back up with Zack and went over any last minute preps we had to do. When we got there, we pretty much went into our own little worlds, as the time slowly(VERY SLOWLY) counted down. We ended up turning on some of our favorite music and having a mini singalong, listening and singing to Outside by staind twice. At about one forty, we gathered up our gear and headed over to the studio, where Grant met us at the door. We all went up into the studio and began setting up. As we set up the equipment I started to feel a little more comfortable and relaxed alot, even before we started into the first song. The first two songs we did("Stand Tall" and "Save The Day")featured Hoss on drums, and they went about as smooth as they couldve been. By the end of the first songs, everyone was very comfortable with what they were doing, and we were getting into the swing of things. at around 3:45 Zack had to take a break to play a basketball game. While he was gone, Mark took a break while Brian and I ran through the two acoustic songs, "Faded Within" and "Epitaph". We did both of them in one simple take apiece. after this, we started on "Wonderin", which is another acoustic song but unlike the other two has a full band. So mark jumped back in the drum booth, and in a few takes we ripped this song out. I sing this song, so I got my first experience in a vocal Iso-Booth. That was the single most scary moment of my life lol. Im now have a larger respect for Brian and vocalists everywhere. Anyways, after I got the vocals done for the song,Zack came back and we got the bass line layed down. After this, we attempted to run through It's Not Right, but for some reason it wasnt sounding, so we stopped that one. We had hit the point in the day where we genuinely didnt know where to go. So I asked if there was anyway we could get a keyboard up into the studio. A few minutes later, an enormous keyboard was brought up, and in a few takes we layed down our piano ballad,"Christine", which is a love song for Brians wife. At this point, I was fighting sleep and Mark had already lost the fight having dozed off in the control booth. So we called it a day after the recording of Christine. But we were all very excited at what we had accomplished. So we went home, no longer nervous, but excited and anxious to get back.

 

We met up at FW Studios, a little after 1:45, all refreshed and ready to go. I woke up that morning with a little scratchiness in my throat, but other than that I felt great and ready. We loaded up an hour later and headed back to the studio. The first thing we did that day was we had Amanda Lutts, My 5 year old sister come in and lay down a haunting end vocal track for "Faded Within." We were all amazed and pumped at how beautiful her track made the song, and it fired us up to keep going. Once Amanda was done with her vocals, we got back onto the rest of the album. We retried "It's Not Right," laying down bass, guitars and main vocals vocals first. We were having trouble getting the drumline for it down though. We had discovered that the drumline was what gave us the problem. Mark and I both tried to do it, but both failed miserably. So the engineer, Grant Cambridge, who is also the drummer for the band Longfellow, came in and gave it a shot. He nailed it so perfectly that we decided to just scratch the previous track and redo it with him on the drums. As the day grew on, my scratchy voice got worse and worse, until I was at the point to where i could just barely get my voice above a whisper. So I was doing everything I could to avoid doing backup vocals. Brian,concerned, jumped into action heating up some tea and giving me some tylenol. It was almost l;ike a miracle cure. My voice got better and better till it was almost back to normal. We laid down the final song of the CD, "New World Order," in about 3 takes. This is our loudest most heaviest songs yet, with plenty of screaming and a nice metal guitar riff. We laid down the guitar and drums and main vocals first. I laid down the bassline for it. At this point we looked at what we had and decided that this was where we were gonna stop musically for the album. After this came laying down the backup vocals for most all of the songs("its Not Right,"Epitaph","Wonderin" and the screaming military march at the end of "New World Order"), which we did in just the right amount of time. We drew the recording process to a close doing the Backup vocals to It's Not Right, all the while jumping around and dancing like idiots. We paid the bill, thanked Grant for everything he had done, and left with 6 unmixed copies of our demos. It has been on constant rotation in my house since then.

 

Right now, we are trying to start a new budget to get the mixing and mastering of the album done so it can be completely done and we can get it to you. We have to get about 350 dollars together to do so.

 

we have a set of pictures on the mainpage(click on the link), and we may soon even have a few videos up for you of the studio. So come back soon.