Well, I/we finally released an album! Introducing The Motion EP by Jon DeLise. A collection of tracks we’ve worked on over the years.
Music – Gettin’ Low
Brian wrote this guitar lick years ago. And it’s awesome. Totally awesome. How could you say this isn’t awesome?
We recorded the main riff and it sat rotting in a backwoods directory on my computer for a few years. At some point in early 2012 I rediscovered it and played it for Brian over the phone. He decided that he’d try to sit down and write some lyrics for it to see if we could give the song a heartbeat.
He banged out all the lyrics in a single sitting. That next weekend we recorded the vocals. After we fooled around with the song form a little bit, we decided we needed a bright, bluesy guitar solo, a very “in the pocket” clean drumbeat, some simple non-showy bass playing, and a subtle organ part for the chorus.
When deciding who to pick for a bluesy guitar solo, we both thought of Mr. Jeff Scull, who came over and did a fantastic job after we fed him a lot of rum… A lot of rum.
The whole idea behind this tune was to respect the groove and respect the space.
Credits:
Written: Brian Schwarz
Lyrics: Brian Schwarz
Vocals: Brian Schwarz
Guitars: Brian Schwarz
Solos: Jeff Scull
Drums: Chris Potako
Organ: Chris Potako
Bass: Chris Potako
Recording/Mixing/Mastering: Chris Potako
Finished: 2012
Music – What I Wanted
Credits:
Written: Jon Delise
Lyrics: Jon Delise, Brian Schwarz
Vocals: Jon Delise, Brian Schwarz
Guitars: Jon Delise
Drums: Chris Potako
Cello: Sachino the Cellonator
Bass: Mike Steel
Recording/Mixing/Mastering: Chris Potako
Finished: 2008 – Refinished: 2011
This song was meant to be a compact and efficient foot-tapper.
Jon wrote this with his band Tragedy Fails. He came to me because he wanted to record a “band version” of this tune.
It had been a long time since I had to “collaborate” with a bass player as a drummer. In all of our other recordings, I always played both. It’s very easy to do both actually. You tend to place bass notes in the same spots you place drum hits.
Recording the cello parts with Sachino was quite a bit of fun as well. He’s one of those guys that you can simply sing a part to, and without missing a beat, he’ll play it exactly how you wanted it on the first try.
This tune was revisited this year because Jon felt like our original version wasn’t quite complete. He wanted to fill it out with some electric guitar parts and he had a few lyric updates. It took a bit of convincing, but I finally relented. We also added the context of the beginning of the song being recorded with a room-mic.
Overall, I’m glad we made the changes. The song is quite a bit more “full” now.
Music – You Make Life Beautiful
Credits:
Written: Brian Schwarz, Jon Delise
Lyrics: Brian Schwarz, Jon Delise
Vocals: Jon Delise
Guitars: Jon Delise
Piano: Chris Potako
Recording/Mixing/Mastering: Chris Potako
Finished: 2007
Brian wrote this as a very slow country song. We had an opportunity to send this tune off for a potential co-write… tomorrow. So we had to move fast.
We worked on the song for a few hours and it wasn’t really coming together. We were about to quit for the night when I jokingly hit my double-speed button. That was it. We were then re-energized because we finally had the direction for the song.
We laid down all of the vocal tracks and guitar parts and called it for the night (it was about 4 AM). The next day I woke up early with the challenge of having to write a piano part and finish the mix in about 4 hours. I fumbled around for quite a bit before finally landing on a bit of a Hornsby ripoff.
All in all, the simplicity of this tune was a nice change from the previous song we recorded.
Music – Unclean
Credits:
Written: Brian Schwarz
Lyrics: Brian Schwarz
Vocals: Brian Schwarz
Guitars: Brian Schwarz, Chris Potako
Drums: Chris Potako
Bass: Chris Potako
Recording/Mixing/Mastering: Chris Potako
Finished: 2006
This concept came out of nowhere one night while we were just jamming after a night of practicing other stuff. It was originally quite a bit slower and only an acoustic guitar and a bass. We decided to work it up to a “full” rock recording.
We decided to record it and focus on layering guitars and getting the drums right (which took me a few weeks to figure out). Drums suck to learn to mix. You have a lot of EQing and compressing to do.
I’m quite happy with how it came out! The bass drum has a decent punch, and the snare has a good thwack. The overall mix is large and distorted, but clean.