WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN YOU AMPP RATS? (i hope not eatting the food they leave out)

dusty....looking snapper....in front of a wisp..above a spire

O.K. here we are. Joshua, Scott, and Jessica...Front and center. We have been up to a great deal of working. Since this was our first trip out we learned a lot of new lessons. The biggest lesson was the idea that we could cover the country in any detail or resolution in 8 weeks.

This simply is not the truth. I guess you could do it if you didn't stop and expereience anything on the way. How it played out was we would find a new area....you name it medford, santa cruiz, S.F., and we would start setting up recon in that area. This process took anywhere from 3 days to 3 weeks depending on how lucky we got. Once we would find a stream of talent it would bloom from there but we never calculated in the cost of gas in getting to all of these open mics (etc.), eatting while we were scouting, and the time before we hit the band/slash person that would 'open' the town up.

Believe it or not there is always a person who holds the key to all of the talent of that city. Strangely that person doesn't even play music sometimes. They are the person who more or less has fantastic taste combined with a great personal skills. Once we have a hold of the stream is talent it is a game of finding a place to record the bands/artists that is A.) safe B.) free C.) Conducive of a great performance. When our movie comes out you will get to see what we are talking about.

Long story short we are having to break up the country into smaller 8-10 week pieces. This is better for both our health and our equipment. Our gear in its current configuration wouldn't have made it through last summers deep south weather without lighting on fire. We think of it as an undercover blessing. Our computer's green boards, even though they are military grade high/low temp can't handle the 130 that Mississippi was getting last year. Simple physics keeps getting in our way. This is why we are going to try and hit the Deep south in the winter this time. Lower reading on the mercury. Granted water is always a problem, but the heat last year......in California even (which isn't exactly fearsome) was causing problems.

We currently are working on ducting and air conditioning that will fix all of this. GO SCOTT'S DAD GO! we are taking the microbooms back up to AUDIX. (WE WOULD LIKE TO THANK AUDIX AGAIN FOR BEING THE GREATEST COMPANY EVERY. THEY WEREN'T MEAN, STRESSFUL, OF ANYTHING BUT COOL TO WORK WITH.....THAT AND THEIR STUFF SOUNDS RADICAL. IT'S THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS).

Joshua 

p.s. who is that fourth person standing there?...and when is phase two starting? and where is phase two going to take place? and what if " I was in the area that phase one took place in, but i wasn't recorded and I am damn sure that i am good enough......you guys just didn't get a chance to hear me?"

The bay area

Consistent internet connections have been few and far between since we arrived in the bay area. San Francisco is beyond rough terrain for the birthday machine and the good ol Terry but we still managed to meet some great people and record a great band in the middle of the city.
Our friend Dusty got us in touch with the band the green door and we captured them in the middle of the night and by that I mean until 7am. Thanks for being such a trooper Mike!
Aside from that we have been recording in the smaller areas around San Francisco. Wrote some music for our friend Sonja in Santa cruz, ran in to and recorded the western skylarks (our shortest session yet), met a fairy princess who was kind enough to buy us Thai food for dinner, and met an Irish man who invited us over and fed our arsenal of politically incorrect jokes.

Today our friend Christian set us up with a full day of great musicians in a little town called point Reyes. Funny thing about being here is the place we found to record in charges hourly, but people in the town donated to the cause.
Kipper ghost

Working with audix

The Audix guys are awesome. They were helping us check out the microphones before we left town today. The Portland sessions sound amazing and apparently we got through them without damaging any mics. Go AMP! And thanks to Audix.
Kipper out

Press!

The Oregonian

From our sponsors Audix Microphones

amp project film blog (from now on "flog") entry #1

Industrial folk

A few nights ago we wandered in to a speakeasy that our friend Greggory Stockert told us about. We'll leave the name out so it can keep its word of mouth stature. Nevertheless, we witnessed some amazing performances and we knew we had to set up a session with them.
One of those musicians was Dusty Santanmaria who asked us to set up in a great open building down in the industrial area.
We arrived and set up while the man who owned the place, Dylan Lee Johnston warmed the room with his music. As the night went on we started drawing the attention of more and more great musicians. Also on the list was the haunting Tasche De La Rocha, Jesse Nelson, and Galen Ballinger. Dylan's space was wonderful but the sound really came out in to the large open space that we moved in to later. We recorded late in to the night, well...morning, with the aid of the sound of that room and a couple bottles of red wine. Once we finally cut, Dylan's space opened up again for an incredibly spooky impromptu jam session. A very late but also very successful evening for the ampp team. Kipper out dy

David coffin

<p>Amp has been very blessed with fantastic musicians to record over these past few weeks. We have done sessions in warehouses, kitchens, dining rooms, and at parties. And during our time out, one name has been brought up by multiple musicians. That name is David coffin.</p>
<p>Well after a few weeks of phone calls to his friends we got the elusive David Coffin. This man has refused to be on tape for over 40 years. We don't blame him. Sometimes the steril environment of a studio can be very counterproductive to the musical process.

Here is where we come in. Our ability to bring a studio to the musician, in an environment that they are comfortable with, is the reason why Mr. Coffin agreed to record with us.

On a side note, a puppet theater across the street was doing face paintings.
Baddacat out.