Fitting the Pieces Together

By the time I had finished recording all the basic tracks of the album, I had been in the studio for three or four days per week, nearly every week, for almost three months. I was very happy with what I had gotten on tape, but it had not come cheaply...between studio time, salaries, hotel expenses, and the drugs I freely shared during the sessions, I was spending at least $1200 dollars every week, and often, even more . Each reel of 2 inch tape cost over $100.00, and was only good for about four or five takes of a song at the speed the tapes were moving over the recording heads. In order to get maximum sound quality for the album, new unused tape was necessary, and bulk erasing the unselected tracks was only practical to do once or twice at the most, before there would be a loss of frequency response...so even the tape costs were high. Once I was finished with the basic tracks, the expenses dropped considerably, because I no longer had to pay for tape, or for salaries or hotel costs for the musicians...their job was done. A lot of the overdubbing process was often done with Peter and I being the only ones in the studio, and that also cut down on the party expenses, too. When Peter and I were alone, with no distractions, we got a lot of work done, and although we got high, we often spent hours working on certain things without a break. Peter made a huge contribution to the album, often working with me until four in the morning, even on days when he had to be up early the following morning. He got to the point where he knew when I was nailing a lead track, or a vocal part, or if it needed to be redone...simply because we had spent so much time together that he became aware of what my standards were. There were also times when I might have thought something was OK, and he would call me in to the control room to listen to a playback, because he knew I wouldn't really be happy with it later on. We were a good team, and we both knew our jobs very well. Listening to the playback of the basic tracks, through headsets, at high volume, while I recorded guitar solos or vocal tracks as overlays that were mixed right into the headphones...almost felt like the band was still together...and right there in the room... and because of the studio environment, Peter was always able to get the mix of instuments exactly the way I wanted to hear it...andwhen I heard everything...I played my best. It was very cool to sing three and four part harmonies with myself, or play twin guitar leads with myself, because I always knew exactly what the "other guy" was doing...because I was the other guy. I got a chance to add  keyboard parts on a couple of songs, something that I could never do with the original band, and I also added acoustic 6 and 12 string guitar parts to compliment the electric guitars that had always been the core of the Avalanche sound...to a couple of the songs. I even invited a well known Hartford guitarist to play a "guest" solo on slide guitar for one of the songs, and as the recording process began to wind down...and all the pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place, the final versions of the songs were, in many ways, more textured than the songs had been when the original group was performing them. The last thing left for us to do was the all-important mixing of the album, when the fine-tuning of levels and effects would give the songs that finish and polish that is so necessary to having a product that would be taken seriously. I knew that we would spend as much time mixing as we had with all the recording, and I couldn't wait to get the opportunity to really spend the time to develop my skills in that area of the process. I had gone to The Recording Institute of America to learn how to do that, but this would be the first time I would actually have the freedom to put those skills to practical use over a period of many consecutive weeks, and I knew what I wanted to hear...and now, the music was all there...just waiting.