• Digging in the dirt. And facing The Meshing.

Yesterday, I arrived at Hyde Street Studios with about 800 gigs worth of storage on two drives, and the false expectation of being able to get through it all in about four hours.

Yes, I can underestimatimate ever so slightly the time things can take. At the four-hour mark, we'd gotten through about three songs.

As engineer Jaime Durr and I began excavation proceedings, I was worried. First, I'm always nervous that I'm going to play something back and not like it anymore. But beyond that, I was nervous about The Meshing.

The Meshing had to be done for only one song, but it's a song I have the highest hopes for, and I was worried somehow something might not work out. For here is what we had to do: import the drum tracks, which were recorded in a home studio in L.A., import the guitar tracks, which were recorded in another home studio in LA, import the bass and piano tracks, which were recorded in my home studio, and combine them all with a scratch vocal from Hyde Street. Praise the lord for click tracks. Everything synched up nice and easy, and, more important, blossomed into a whole greater than the sum of its parts, which, after all, is what every decent song should do.

After The Meshing, we dug into a few other tracks, creating clean, organized master sessions. Then we tackled a song called I Got Drunk. It was heartbreaking, because, truth be told, I think I might have to start over on the tune, despite Jaime's masterful edits. We'll see. Jaime's going to put some more time into it, and then we'll decide together if we have something worth keeping. Or not.

And so it will go for the next few months, as Jaime and I build clean, finished master session files for each track, adding bits as needed, then mix, master and RELEASE.

I can't wait.