The winners of the No Label Needed contest and series presented by Scion were Minnesota’s Iron Thrones. As the band receive insight and instruction on the music industry from music industry professionals while recording an EP at the Machine Shop, they’re blogging about it every step of the way. Stay tuned to No Label Needed and Metal Insider to get their side of the story.
This morning, I stumbled down to the breakfast area and had something called a “bagel topper” with Marc and Jason (SF Drummer). They were both fervently typing away on their iPhones, which I’m now even more jealous of, but still can’t afford one. I’ll be using my BB Curve until it officially dies.
After breakfast, Brian came down for a quick intro piece with him/Jason for the interview we had filmed yesterday, and then after a few hand shakes they took off. Both really good dudes! Once they left, there was still a quick intro & interview with us to do with the MetalInjection guys, which went sort of well. We’d never really been interviewed on camera before, and I think we’re all a bit nervous and didn’t really know what to say. We discussed it a little bit afterwards, and will hopefully do a better job of presenting ourselves next time. Hopefully we didn’t come off as dumb as I think we might’ve, as this will be the first some people will see of us.
That pretty much concluded filming for the next several days, so the majority of the afternoon was spent working on a few solos and some lyrics. And eating some home-made clam chowder I found downstairs in the hotel. In retrospect, I wish I’d taken a nap, but we have a few “days off” coming up, so hopefully I can get some extra rest then. We still have a lot of work to do on the record, and have our pre-production tracks with us, so it’s definitely some welcome “get shit done” time.
Eventually, we had a couple of beers and made it down to the hot tub for a final hang-out session. Some little boy tried to hit on Curt a little bit. I think it was the thong/speedo. Later, that kid and his friends broke the pool. Their parents seemed un-phased.
Marc came and let us know Matt was down to hang out, so we drove over to his extremely nice house through a bunch of crazy winding roads and little mountains, and hung out with him and his girlfriend. He showed us his amazing guitar/amp collection, and let me try out the prototype for his signature model Ibanez. It was honestly one of the nicest guitars I’d ever played. It’s too bad the production model had some differences, but I’d imagine it might’ve been somewhat cost-prohibitive to have all of the features of the prototype. After that, we had a few beers. I had some sort of fruity beer that seemed OK at first, but gave me a stomach ache later on. Everyone else hated it, so I didn’t feel bad not finishing it. Curt and I ended up with some strings to try out, which is awesome. They’re coated with some sort of black stuff, which apparently doesn’t affect tone, but makes Curt feel sort of weird. He’ll like ’em, I bet.
We ended up going out to a couple of bars, first “Opa Opa” which was actually a brewery as well. Adam had a good IPA, I had an extremely plain somethingorother (I’m not much of a connoisseur, I just like beer!). While we were there, Adam got a couple of amazing phone calls regarding possibly doing some out-of-state beer reviews for a reputable website. It’d be awesome if it came through, ’cause a job like that would be just perfect. Drink beer, write down what you think, get paid. Adam’s dream job, no doubt!
After Opa Opa, we went to some place called The Brass Cat in Easthampton. It was obvious that Matt was a regular when we walked in, and the bartender was quite nice. Adam and I tried a Guinness-type beer that had a weird wine-like nose to it, and a not-that-great taste. I couldn’t finish that one either. Basically, I had the worst beer ever tonight, but it didn’t even matter ’cause I had a few good discussions with Matt, and this trip is fun regardless of quality of beer. Curt, Pete, and Adam all got incredibly tanked and had animated discussions about band politics. I wish I’d filmed it, as it was pretty much the longest string of stupid crap and made-up bullshit I’ve heard to date. It was quite impressive, actually.
On the way home, the Liquid Metal station redeemed itself with Meshuggah’s “Bleed”, which we turned up and head-banged to quite fervently. Fortunately, Jeebus (our GPS unit) guided the way true, and we ended up back at the hotel safely. At this point, the guys were all slurring and stumbling pretty obviously, so I felt it’d be a good idea to film the beasts in their natural environment. Hopefully, I can upload the footage sooner than later. Let’s just say Curt ended up claiming the slaves were freed by molasses, and that he was Adam’s father. Unsurprisingly, he threw up a bunch soon after, and passed out.
I had some hot chocolate and the rest of the frozen food I’d purchased (again, no refrigerator at the hotel we’re driving to the next day), and went to sleep. Apparently, I snore so badly, Pete’ll be switching with Adam at the next hotel. I wish I didn’t snore…
Cheers,
-steve.h
