When I put together the list of songs for this project, this one was one of the first that came to mind. It's something I've loved for over 15 years, and honestly I feel it's a perfect rock song. I can't tell you how many times I've sung along to this record, at the top of my lungs, with the windows down.
I never got to see Acceptance live back then. We actually were constantly missing them in every city we went to on tour. I still have only listened to them live, while selling merch for gates one Christmas, but oh boy, those folks still bring the pop rock jams.
The tracking for this one was fairly straight forward. I used a combination of my '86 SG and homemade Cabronita for the rhythm guitars, and bounced between my Black Falcon and my Nash tele for the leads. Everything went through Sommatone amps (Slick-18, Roaring 40, and OD-75) with the SoloDallas Storm sitting in front, and all the leads got their space from the Walrus Audio D-1. My 70s Gibson Grabber will probably be the bass I always use, but specifically for this song it ran through an Ampeg SVT3Pro for the mic'd cabinet and DI. The most challenging part was recreating some of the programming, as that is not something I'm used to doing, but thanks to a really wonderful synthesizer plugin, I think I got the job done.
One thing to be noted for every track on this record (and honestly, every song Chapter has ever released): I don't tune my vocals. As much as I absolutely hate tracking my own vocals (I am always feeling like I can do better), I'd rather have the human mistakes in there than have it be pristine through editing. I may do it in the future for others, and for effects, but most of the time it's just me and a microphone, trying our best in my basement.
Overall, I'm pretty happy with this being the start. It's not perfect by any means, but it's definitely the best thing I've ever made on my own. I can't wait until you hear next week's song, because I already thing it sounds like a step forward.
Cheers!
credits
from Covered-20,
released July 3, 2020
Take Cover - July 3rd
Originally written and performed by Acceptance
Performed, engineered, mixed and mastered by Rocky Catanese
Consulting by Kevin Dye
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