Voice of America-Part Two- The Songs/Recording
THE QUAKES-VOICE OF AMERICA-30 YEAR ANNIVERSARY
Part two; The songs and recording.
The album was recorded in Buffalo,New York at Trackmaster studio from July 9,1990 to July 15,1990. We used the small 16 track studio downstairs.
It was engineered by Robbie Takac who is the bass player for the Goo Goo Dolls.
As I look at the tracking sheets, I see that there is only one guitar track on most of the songs. I was using a 70’s Fender twin reverb amp with a delay pedal.
There are three tracks for the bass.
1.They wrapped a mic with foam and put it in the f-hole of the bass.
2.The amp, which was in another room (underwood pickup, steel strings).
3.A mic for the natural slap.
The drums were just a kick,snare and cymbal.
The snare sound on “paint it black” was a sample.
We did not use a click track.
The bass drum sound was a sample.
We recorded all of the songs live on the first day (July 9 1990) and then went back and re did bass ,guitar and vocals.
39.5 hours of studio time @$40 per hour = $1580
The total with the tape was $1943
Some song notes.
Puttin' Out The Flame was written for this album specifically and was a new song.
One Of A Kind was a song that we had been playing when we started and was more in a neo rockabilly vein and that's why it was not used on the first Quakes album. It was however on our first demo cassette that we were handing out to various people at the Klubfoot when we arrived in London 1988.
We had changed it a little bit since the early renditions of the song.
Nothing going down was a new song for the album.
USA. The guitar riff is definitely influenced by Call of the Wired by Demented Are Go.I had been playing with DAG for a couple of months in the summer of 1989.
Chick hunt was one of the early songs written for the album. We made a video of the demo version which was used by a collage student as his project. You can see the footage of the video used as the stick to your guns video on youtube.The song is obviously in the same vein as Clint Miller’s “Bertha Lou”.
Stick to your guns- The guitar riff was probably inspired when I was trying to learn “Stompin Beat” by the Nitros which had come out earlier and I was digging that album. It also is the same kind of chord pattern as “Where did it go” off the first Quakes album.The version of Stick to your guns that is on our youtube channel (leedspond) is a special mix of the song that is different from the album.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1Do9lBihQg
Far Away. I don't remember where this one came from.
What Would They Say. One of our biggest songs. This was inspired by an incident I witnessed involving a friend and his girlfriend. His girlfriend was into hardcore punk and we were rockabilly/psychobilly guys. She was embarrassed because we were “different” and didn't want to be seen with us in front of the other hardcore kids waiting to get into a concert. I remember this like it was yesterday. Immediately after this happened I went home which was around the corner and wrote down a few ideas. That would have been 1986 so that song in idea form was hanging around a few years.
On the record it is incorrectly labeled as “what WILL they say about me”
I Gotta Go. I will admit this is not my best work. The only redeeming thing about it for me is the break in the middle.
Strike out king- A girl I knew suggested that I was a real strike out king or THE strike out king after a weekend of coming up empty at the night clubs.After walking home from a club for 4 miles, I was thinking about that title and formulated the song on that long walk.
The Quakes has been my life's work and I want to say how grateful I am to be still playing these songs after all these years and having fans who want to hear them. It really is a thrill. Thank you, Paul Roman
