One month ago, Joel and I found ourselves contemplating that an entire year had passed since we moved to Los Angeles, and that after one hell of a year, we were very nearly back where we had started: neither of us had jobs, we didn’t know where we would be living in the coming weeks, and there was no rock band and no recording.

The past year had been spent doing a lot of different things, but a lot of that boiled down to just staying alive, and not a lot of it involved working on music.

On May 26th, however, Joel received an email from a lad named Graham Hope. Quite out of the blue, and a through a connection nearly missed, Joel was offered a chance to record his music at a studio where he could have only dreamed of recording with our limited means. But the offer was as real as it gets, and before we knew it, we needed to be ready to record.

We had been holding band rehearsal once a week with drummer Mike Walker and bassist Matt Parsons, but with the musicians’ combined obligations to school, work, and family in the month leading up to the date set to record, practices were sparser than we hoped.  Nonetheless, recording was a go, and there was no turning back.

The afternoon of June 26th drum tracking began, and even though Matt and Mike had never even played some of the songs, everyone managed to focus when it really counted, and after two very long nights in the studio, the drums were finished, and a very relieved and excited Joel literally skipped down the sidewalks of Hollywood in search of a liquor store for something with which to celebrate.

p.s. Joel played the drums for one (easy) track, but it was Mike Walker who really gave it everything he had and came through for us. Thanks to Mike, the drums turned out how they needed to: awesome.