Pre-Production with David Kershenbaum and Mitch Perry

In the past weeks we have been diligently rehearsing the songs we plan to record this winter under David Kershenbaum’s (Duran Duran, Tracy Chapman, Joe Jackson, Bryan Adams, Supertramp, Cat Stevens) direction. Mitch Perry (Cher, Edgar Winter, MIchael Schenker Group, Deep Purple), David’s right hand man and guitar extraordinaire, has been assisting us with crafting these songs into finely tuned, bastions of fortress 28 North. Every little detail is being intricately analyzed in order to serve the essence of these songs. Reworking, repeating, and reconstructing until nothing else makes them better is our main objective.

Up to this point the focus has been on individual instrument parts and simultaneously the dynamic arc of each song. We began, on Mitch’s insistence, by having the guitar sounds stripped down to their barest form: no pedals, minimum reverb (you can never have no reverb), in general no additives that can potentially “cheesify” (definition below) a song. One by one and little by little, the effects were added which were considered intrinsic to the emotional landscape of the tune. In result, Mike and Taylor have removed much clutter from pedal-world and purified their tones into wailing angels of six-string glory.

Ty and Jon have been approaching drums and bass parts with similar intent. For this the respective instruments are isolated, the drum part being stripped to only the kick and snare drum pattern. After insatiable looping of the parts and cutting and adding we will have the rhythms sealed tight as a drum (pun intended as always should be, or was that just a play on words, I'm not sure). The same applies to the guitar parts, which are given the surgeon’s knife treatment. With each song there have been endless stops and starts and looping and deliberating with David. We absolutely adore working with David and Mitch. They have both contributed to vastly improving our songs already in these early stages and we cannot wait to share these beautiful compositions.



Overall we have probably played these songs approximately a bajillion times in the last month. It is actually quite draining work and we will continue until our songs are ready to present to the world, which won’t be too much longer.

*Cheesify (cheez-uh-fye) - to purposefully or inadvertantly produce something of substandard