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CMNO and life
Posted on 04/05/12 by Clint
Long time no talk, been so busy lately. Lots have happen since I attempted one of these. Sitting at home while the wife is away for a one day work trip. Just put my son to bed. Great day. As for business- I've been up to a lot lately. Working on Call me no one release stuff. Some 7d business- changing management companies for example. That's always an interesting thing to go through. 7d has had a few different managers over the years. One has to ask the question- what's the common denominator WE ARE!!! They all can't be wrong right?? Well maybe it's been a few wrongs on they're end and a few on ours. Nobody's perfect and that certainly applies to bands and music industry folks. We all operate on ego, fear and pride for the most part. But at the end of the day all you can do is surround yourself with a team that has a common goal.
I'm so damn excited about the CMNO project. So far the response to the single has been amazing. Morgan and I have been very nervous to the reaction and it's been good. So far anyway, I'm sure there will be the obvious, "THIS AINT AS HEAVY AS 7D" or "Clint can't sing like Lajon" or any assortment of hate or dislike of the project. That's expected. All I do know is that I love what we did. I love the feeling of singing an entire record. Not having to write lyrics and melodies and pass them over to someone else to sing. Feels good to finally get the same amount of time the other singers get to track and pull it off. All though I love writing for other singers I do feel like if I didn't do this I was gonna lose it. It's been healthy for Morgan and myself. People worry about CMNO being a sign of 7d ending. I'll say this, if we weren't able to do this 7d would of been in a lot more trouble. So if you love 7d and want it to continue then be glad we had the chance to do this.
I adore 7d and can't wait to do another record. But now it's about CMNO. I also had the pleasure of producing two bands. One called Dead fish handshake and another called Novus dae. It was an amazing experience for sure. Both very different bands. DFH was an EP and Novus was a full record in 10 days. Amazing time on both. It was tough trying to bring something to table with Novus because they were so prepared and had chops for days. Mostly I tried to add small things here and there and trim fat on the tunes. Had a blast though. I really want to pursue producing as career in the future. Maybe fully moving over to that in a few years. It just seems like the natural progression. Need to work on my engineering skills a bit.
Over all life is good, I saw a guy in my neighborhood today with arm crutches trying to get across this grassy area and it was very hard for him. He was a bit older, I sat and watched him and it sunk in and was a very clear thought. This guy is tough, he's independent and brave. Where some people would feel sad for him I was happy to see such a huge display of strength. To most it would of been a simple walk, to him it was a battle won. I know that's a lil dramatic but it truly was amazing to see. Each step he took was hard and it seemed as if he would collapse. For some reason I knew that if I asked him if he wanted a hand it wouldn't of been right. He did it. It just made me realize how grateful I should be for something as simple as walking. Running, talking or simply breathing.
I love being alive. I love my family and the fact that today I'm sober and have love in my heart. Tomorrow I fly home to see my mom and brother Dustin who is meeting me there. Very excited to see her. I'm also going to see my dad who is in assisted living situation. It's so tough to deal with, but again, I see this as a man fighting a disease of the mind, a man who has a gift to play music and that is the only function he can still pull off with ease. He can't remember things, he can't take care of himself but he can still play guitar. His hands shake from Parkinsons disease but they settle when he holds a guitar. That to me is the most powerful testimony to music in our family's life and history. We all life and die by music. It's in the core of us. It saves us from this worlds hardships and illness. It confirms in my heart that God's gift to me was a true gift and blessing indeed. Not only playing it but admiring others who play until there's not a breath left in them.
Well I hope you are at peace in your life. Stay tuned for CMNO details and thanks to any who have supported us as we start to build this thing.
Much love and many blessing
Clint
Last week of recording
Posted on 02/12/12 by Clint
Writing this from the plane, gotta love wifi 36k up in the air. Makes sense though if it's based off of satellites. Should actually be easier in theory right? Who knows, that's why I play guitar. Well I thought I'd take a lil time and reflect on these past few weeks of recording and lifebin general. Excuse the typos that are gonna happen. Its a vert turbulent flight and I'm feeling sick typing this.
Well the last few weeks have been intense. Basically to give you an idea I'll tell you the typical process of doing a record. Typically for bands theres a few different stages. First is the writing stage. This varies for different bands. Some bands write for the better part of year before entering the studio. Some write while on tour, some have one or two guys that put together a lot of ideas and present them ton the others to learn and get familiar with. Some bands just start rehearsing and write as a band. It can be done a lot of ways. For Sevendust its basically John and I putting together a few musical ideas at home and bring them to rehearsals where we pick the best ones and jam them out. Most the time the best ideasbare done as a whole band. Then lyrics and melodies are written by one or two or even three off us. Then pre pro- which consist of the band entering the studio with a producer or engineer, or both and refining the songs(typically 12 to 20) and picking the right ones for the record.
The band enters the tracking phase- which is the frustrating one for me- the hurry up and wait tracking part. Tracking is awesome, waiting to track sucks. The waiting can be blamed on a lot ofnthings,mostly it's lazy producers that don too much editing and job security BS. Some are quick and fast pace. You never know.
Then the final stage- the mixing and mastering stage- I like this stage because you finally get to hear the body of work sonically take shape the way you imagine it. Sometimes the mixer hits it out of the park, some times not. A lot of times you hear guys say "we will fix that in the mix" don't believe it. Fix it during the tracking phase, then enhance it during the mix. All though sometimes, very rare, but sometimes they actually fix in the mix. Master the final product and send off to the press. This whole process with all the stages can take anywhere from 3 months to a year.
For the Call me no one project it didn't really go down like that. It was a very compact version. First off, Morgan and I only had a small window of oppritunity to make this happen so it wouldn't conflict with 7d. After we got the business stuff together on it we moved into the studio in Butler, NJ on Jan 22. We had only demoed 4 songs and did those in three days. So we had no idea what
we were gonna write. On top of that we only had 30 days to write, track and mix this thing. That is very hard to pull off. We have had a great team to help us. An engineer, a bass player/programmer,a drum tech, some amazing interns and a guy over seeing all the other logistics.
We must of wrote 6 songs the first week. A song or two a day.nbasically we d go in, jam on an idea that would either come from Morgans beat or a riff I had, then arrange it, track drums, guitar and bass right after. Then after we piled up a batch of I started writing melodies and lyrics forth ideas slowly everyday. Going in and singing the ideas and refining as we go. Keeping some and throwing out the others. Because of the natural chemistry Morgan and I have, the help of the others, we actually pulled off 13 songs. The direction is pretty wide open. Not like 7d at all. Just a rock record with different flavors. Some moody tracks, some hard songs, some fun songs. Just whatever we felt at the time.
On entering this challenge we said a few times- this would be either the stupidest or smartest thing we've ever done. It almost worked out better because we couldn't second guess. We're gonna be competing with bands that have a year to record, three times the budget, A list producers and engineers. But that's ok. If this thing does well it'll be quite a story. If it doesn't then we at least have a record we enjoyed making and created together. I think we've done a great job and have some killer music. That will be for the people to decide.
Singing an entire record has been a huge learning experience. I really enjoyed it and feel like I'm a better singer because of it. Even though I didn't get the lead singer treatment and have candles burning, and people feeding me grapes in the vocal booth while someone tells me I'm the best singer on the planet, I had Morgan vocal producing and helping me track with engineer Mike and we did a good job and created some hooks. It blows away any of HDMS stuff i think but it's full electric, zero acoustic. It's just two different vibes. There's some melodic stuff of course. Hell I always gotta be crooning somewhere. Haha.
I'm simply grateful for this chance. To finally release a record as a singer, to do what Morgan and I have wanted for a long time. I just visited home and saw my amazing wife and son. Recharged my batteries for the last week. Sobriety has brought me a lot of gifts and this has been one of them. I can't wait for y'all to hear this thing.
Much love and respect
C
CMN1 studio progress
Posted on 01/25/12 by Clint
In my hotel listening to the progress so far after a few days up here in the middle of Jersey during the worst time of the year to be here weather wise. This makes for good focus in the studio. Before we came up to this spot Morgan and I didn't know what to expect. You never can know till your there. When we did Cold Day Memory we had no idea and come to find out it wasn't ideal but you accept your surroundings and get to work.
In this case the team we are working with is a very young, bright and ambitous team who have bent over backwards to give us a very comfortable vibe there. Great team, great engineer, overall amazing. We're about three days in and we have 4 songs musically. Basically we have our man Pooch with us helping Morgan with drum stuff and helping create some good starting points. We have a friend Kurt that's playing the bass parts with as we write to have the full band vibe as we write this. A few very cool interns keeping things smooth. Killer engineer Mike who is ninja fast. My man George over seeing it all.
The sound we're coming up with is very different from 7d and that is the objective. That doesn't mean it isn't intense, just different. It's not heavy but it's hard and full of heart. Over the years I've talked with Morgan about different directions that would be cool to do if we ever had the chance to do it and here we are. 7d is finally taking a break long enough to make this a reality. This will come out on the same label that releases the 7d stuff. Actually it's 7bros so it's all in the family.
It took a tremendous amount of energy to make it happen, a lot of hoops had to be jumped, a lot of phone calls, choices and red tape. Here we are. This business makes it hard sometimes to simply do what we want to do and that's record music. I personally love being in the studio, especially like this where it's less chefs in the kitchen and we can go any direction without wandering "is this a 7d sounding song" there are no limits. It's very liberating. But I will say it will be good to get in the studio again with 7d when the times right which will probably be in June.
I miss my family so bad it's physically painful, especially at night sitting in a hotel. That's when I have time to shut my brain down and think about what's really important. Family. My wife, son, mother, father, brothers, sisters..pup My dad has been in poor health recently but is getting through it. I don't get to see my family and it's tough. But like my brother Corey said, we all love each other and even though we don't get to see each other a lot we all know deep down we are here for one another. My son is growing everyday, giving my wife and I something to smile about daily. That's the magic of a child. I never knew that until he came. But they can pull more than smiles out of you, they can pull stress and sleepless nights as well. But that's part of it and I love it.
I really can't wait to get deeper in this record and see it develope. I'm gonna do most of the singing and I tell you, the music is so good it's gonna be a challenge to match the intensity when I step in that vocal booth. HDMS is very chill and it's easy to do those type of songs. I'm also used to singing parts in 7d and when we write Morgan and I sing a lot of ideas that Lajon eventually sings so I'm accustomed to more aggresive vocals but this will be the first time I get to spend this long perfecting vocals, writing and singing a full records worth. But damnit I'm ready. I appreciate the support I've gotten and can't wait for you to hear it.
The name Call Me No One is basically a way to say that up till now I've never been the one in the band who people know and I like that. I like being the guy who isn't noticed. To stay humble, not the rockstar attiude. In fact I want to be the anti rock star, the person who sings about the truth, exposing the silliness of it all. To speak about the stuff that relates to the world around us. So to me the name Call me no one say all of that. I'm one of you and you are one of us. No guy in a band should feel above others. They should be happy they're blessed with a gift to play music.
Anyways, I'll look into putting up some videos in the near future. For now I hope you have peace in your life and love in your heart. I'm happy to have this chance to step up as a singer and make a record with this team. It's an honor and I'm grateful.
God bless ya'll
C
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