Anchormen, Aweigh! VIII
After hanging out at the Boston Dragon Boat Festival with Sarah and Heather, I headed to JP to meet up with the rest of the Anchormen for another recording session. While the weather was pretty decent and the martial arts demonstrations and food stands were worth checking out, the boat races themselves were pretty boring. Instead of elaborately carved dragon boats like I'd imagined, the boats were basically just crew sculls -- and the races were merely an excuse for all of the festivities on shore. Huh. Might not check it out next year.

The recording session went well. We were at Scan's from about 4-11 p.m., grabbing a quick bite at Bella Luna not far from his house. We knocked down two songs -- "Idlewild" and "Audobon Park," which proved to be the biggest challenge. I sing so fast that I can't keep up with us the way we recorded it! So we decided to multitrack my vocals, with me trading off lines of the verses like Michael Stipe did for "It's the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)". It's kind of weird to hear myself alternating with myself, overlapping the lines a little. But it sounds hella better than it did with me rewriting the words and trying to cut out syllables to save speech -- "To-ba-cra-li-vee-va-go" instead of "Toe bones cracked like V. Van Gogh."

Jef also did some backing vocals, and we made good progress. This record is coming together!