This is where I’ll be sharing with you some recordings that never saw the light of day. Or as we say in the industry, the stuff that got “shelved.”
I’m sorry that this material was never released. Hopefully, this will make up for it. My heartfelt thanks to those writers and musicians who gave me permission to post these songs.
Tracks & Downloads
The Loren Hill Aneurysm: “The Ace of Spades”
This is a cover of the classic Motorhead conceived by my evil twin, Lauren Hill. It features the delicious talents of Snake Green and Paul Paul Hopkins (Skinlab), Mark Moots (December and Swamp Donkey) Tony Jensen (Twice, Painting Gala) and Lauren Hill. This will hopefully be released one day, but I promised Loren this would be my premier “Vault” recording.
The Dead Body Parts “What are Words For?”
Another Loren Hill brainstorm. This one covers the classic Missing Persons tune. It is performed by Chelsea Keen (aka Keen), Lisa McCuiston (Bluestone), Mark Moots (December, Swamp Donkey), Vince Gates (Maytan’s , Frank Booth Trio), Asa Dakin (December, Cranium, Keyser Soze) and yours truly on Drums. This was recorded on February 29, 2000. Lovingly referred to as the “Leap Day Session.” This ensemble performed the song live once with the substitution of Jim Williams (Twice) at the Zephyr for a live show for the return of Loren back to Reno called “Forloren!”
Psychobabble “Doll House”
This was the first band I produced and the demo was recorded but never released. This song is one of my favorites that I’ve ever worked on. Mario Guzman (Convicted Innocence, Audioboxx), Ryan Hall (Cranium) and Eric Olivas (Red Cell, Keyser Soze, Tread, The Dicks).
Two distinct memories of the making of this song are the guitar solo and the vocals. Ryan and I really crafted this solo phrase by phrase. By Ryan’s standards today, he’d probably have a very different take, but I think it’s beautifully played and phrased.
The vocal session was very intense because Mario was at his wit’s end trying to play bass and sing at the same time with such technical music. Before the session he spent 20 minutes telling me how he never wanted to sing again. This was a very bad position to be in just before cutting a vocal. After a lot of talking with him he said “On the other hand, there’s a side of me that wants to just stand up and kill this vocal.” I took that lead, got him in the booth and he delivered the vocal you’re about to hear. The take is 99% that first pass. There were only two small punches. On the scream at the end, you can hear the tape saturate because it’s so loud. He was that pissed. But the performance was so genuine, that there was no way of recreating it at a safer level, so we kept it.