Mushrooms, Turkey Hunting, and Music

So, the mushroom season is off to a pretty crappy start. My black morel patch was raided recently, and among the missing are many choice morels I was letting grow. We were surprised to find they passed our two yellow morels, the first of the season, as they are still too small to be harvested.

The yellow morels we found are dubbed (by shroomers) as the “Gray Morel”, because this particular phase of the yellow morel looks gray, and ghostly. This color phase of yellow morel is so different that people argue its a different species. Mycologists have discovered it is not however.

Finding the ‘grays’ was nice, because it’s a sign that the yellow morel season is starting. Yellows are easier to spot, and also tend to get bigger than the black morels I have been hunting since March 31st. And, with my black morel patch not yeidling much of anything in the way of blacks this season, I’m looking ahead to my yellow patches in hopes they’ll yield more than the blacks.

The dogwoods are nearing full bloom and spring has arrived. My father, an avid turkey hunter, had a lot of success Monday using one of his own handmade wild turkey calls. He bagged a mature tom with inch and a half spurs and a long 11 inch beard.

Pennsylvania, where wild turkeys see a lot of hunting pressure – hunters are enjoying boutiful turkey seasons because of good wild turkey management. This is thanks in part by the hunters who started programs like The Wild Turkey Federation.

So Jarrett, Bree, and myself all headed to the studio last night to begin work on an upcoming EP we are hoping to have done by mid-May. You see, our friend Cory has a high quality recording studio in his basement, and the bassist from his band (Steve) is basically the engineer, producer, and programmer of the show.

The vocal booth has removable walls, there are a barrage of different mics, pro tools, and tons of equipment I didn’t even know existed. Then Steve played us some examples of his work with another artist, as well as his own bands work, and I must say I was impressed! The three songs we’re recording are going to sound great!

What was exceptionally nice about Steve is the fact that he is a judge of good vocals, and he said I had a really, really, really good voice and that we were going to have a lot of songs recording the three songs. His praises meant a lot to me, because it made me glad I made the choice to grow some balls and start singing in the first place.

So, last night we recorded the scratch tracks for the three songs; Wonder, Six Years Later, and Superficial Stain.

Played to a metronome acoustically, the scratch track acts as a reference guide for everyone as they come in individually to record their parts.

Drums are first. Seeing as how Erik hadn’t been to a practice in over a month, and had just quit the band due to 2 jobs and a girlfriend, our friend Cory is playing drums. He’ll be recording them Wednesday night, and Jarrett will record his bass parts. (Jake, our bassists just started so he doesn’t really know these songs yet.) Friday, Jarrett and Bree come in to record their guitar parts, and then last will come my vocals.

We expect to be done with this within the next two weeks. Recording, mixing, deciding, creating. Steve and Cory’s band leaves for tour in mid May so we’re going to move things right along.

After recording the three tracks, we’ll be recording three acoustic songs at Floyd’s to throw on to the EP for additional material. Once it’s all mixed and completed, we’ll be burning copies and handing them out to everyone to generate hype about us prior to our first show.

And yes…I can send you all some copies too!!

Stay tuned…

~ by Michael on April 28, 2009.