October 18 , 2005
Patrick and Joe have taken time to address many of the studio and gear related questions they receive on a regular basis from friends and fans of the band.

What is your favorite guitar?
Patrick: My favorite guitar of all time is my purple EVH Wolfgang Special. It has a rosewood fretboard, which is rare for a production Wolfgang. That guitar was used on many of the tracks on Big Top World. The runners up are my Reverend Slingshot Pro and my Fender Eric Johnson Stratocaster. The Reverend has a fantastic tone to it and great action. On the song Machine II, which will be released as a single in the near future, I used the Reverend for the lead and rhythm parts. For the lead, I ran the guitar through a Marshall amp and the new EVH Phase 90 pedal. For the rhythm part, I used a Vox amp and the new Eric Clapton Crossroads pedal.

How has ProTools and digital recording affected your studio work?
Patrick: To me, the work I've done in an analog environment, 2-inch tape on 24 or 48-track machines, has a better sound than anything I've ever done digitally. Whenever people talk about the "warmth" that analog tape has, it is because there is frequency degradation that occurs not only in the process of recording to tape, but continues everytime you playback that same tape. The physical limits of the tape itself becomes part of the magic of why it sounds so good. That being said, digital recording has totally expanded the boundaries of what can be accomplished in capturing sounds and building a sonic landscape. If given the choice, I would choose ProTools or a digital recorder over an analog machine every time. It is just a more efficient way of working.

Have you used a double-bass drum kit on any of the songs?
Joe: I don't believe that I ever used a double-bass drum on a recorded song. I've used my double-bass pedal when we've jammed older songs, and I had tinkered with the idea of using it on I Have Nothing, but I'm pretty sure that I never used it in any recording.

What kind of drumsticks do you use? Do you prefer heavier rock sticks, or lighter jazz sticks - and how often do they break?
Joe: I use Vinnie Colaiuta signature drumsticks by Zildjian. They're not as heavy as rock sticks, and not as thin as jazz sticks, and have a wooden head (which I prefer over nylon). I don't break very many sticks anymore - I'll split the sticks on occassion, but for the most part, I'll play with the same pair of sticks for months. I also haven't broken a drum head or cymbal in a long time either - I guess I've gotten tame over the years!

Who are some of your favorite guitarists and why?
Patrick: My favorite guitarist is Edward Van Halen. On top of the fact that he revolutionized guitar playing in the 1970's, I think he's maintained his passion for music and has always grown and moved forward. Some guitar players use up their bag of tricks and go stale, but Eddie keeps pushing himself. Finger tapping is only a small part of what Eddie does, even though most people only dwell on that aspect of his playing. Eric Clapton is next for me. Eric is a true scholar of music. His study of and contribution to promoting the blues form is historic and should be recognized as that. I know that Eric Clapton was a huge influence on Eddie Van Halen as well. One interesting difference though, is that Eddie uses his pinky finger when soloing, whereas blues players like Clapton don't. Because I grew up on Van Halen, I use my pinky too, so I am always amazed to watch a player like Clapton hit a fast run in his solo, and never use his pinky at all. Finally, I have to mention George Harrison because of his slide playing and finger picking. George had a great talent for melody, and when playing slide, you have the choice of either the standard open chord riff that is the most basic trick, or really expanding out a great melody line. George played incredible melodies, and to do it, moved that slide all over the neck in standard tuning, while finger picking and palm muting the strings to get the clearest, silkiest notes possible. It takes great skill to play slide that well.

Who are some of your favorite drummers and why?
Joe: At the moment, Stewart Copeland and Vinnie Colaiuta. Stewart's playing really helped mold my style as a drummer, and I really liked his attitude. He was playing reggae-infused rock, and he was beating the living crap out of his drumset. Perhaps he had mistaken Gordon for a RotoTom when he beat him up! When I first started playing drums, I was mimicking the style of Peter Criss and Robert Sweet. Listening to Stewart Copeland opened up so many other possibilities with the instrument.

Why Vinnie Colaiuta? Because he is a god. If you can't hear that from his performances with Sting, buy Joe's Garage by Frank Zappa. The guy's abilities are legendary.

August 19 , 2004
In The Studio - Attention all Gearheads!

Early in 2004, announced on their official website their intention to begin scheduling live performances by year's end. The Newsdesk has gone In The Studio to look at some of the gear the band will bring out on the road with them.

Because of the different types of venues the band will perform in, has assembled a core amplification and P.A. set-up that will be their primary F.O.H. (front of house) rig for the shows where there is either an insufficient, or no house P.A.

Vocals will run through Shure SM58 microphones, with signal processing done on outboard gear by PreSonus and Alesis. A 300 watt Crate P.A. system will drive the vocals through two Crate 15" P.A. cabinets. Two Crate 10" P.A. wedges will be used for vocal monitoring by the band. This system will also be used to run pre-show music. also has a custom built 10 cabinet P.A. rig that can be configured both as a stacked or flown system that the band will use to supplement their production depending on the size of the stage area at each venue.

Patrick Bamburak's guitars will be run through a Marshall MG50DFX amplifier. This Marshall amp is a key component of Patrick's current recording rig, (which also includes amps by Vox and Hartke). As for the guitars themselves, Patrick will use two Peavey EVH Wolfgang Specials (a tobacco sunburst quiltop and a gloss purple model) and his brushed-aluminum flame Reverend Slingshot Pro. In terms of effects pedals, Patrick has always used a very simple approach, and in his current rig, the pedals include a Fender chromatic tuner, a Marshall channel/effects switch to operate the amplifier, and a digital delay. The backup amplifier for the tour is a Crate GT-60 amp with a 12" Celestion speaker.

Patrick will not use a wireless system, instead choosing to use cords for optimum signal quality.

Check back In The Studio for the next installment where we'll talk drums and bass!

February 13, 2004
We have a bit of studio news to report. For those of you who have followed 's independent recording career, you know that the band has recorded on everything from 4-track tape machines in garages and rehearsal spaces to the latest Pro-Tools technology in studios such as API Records Studios and Trax East. All the while, Patrick has been maintaining his own studio where he's done a significant amount of remixing work, as well as recording, for all of the latest projects. With some recent upgrades that have included the addition of PreSonus Tube preamps and Wharfedale studio monitors, (many thanks to Tim Keyes and Meg Poltorak at API Records for the Wharfedales,) Patrick's studio has developed to the point where he's decided to give it a name: Meadow Lake Studio. Stay tuned for regular In The Studio updates from Meadow Lake Studio right here at baitoven.com as the band continues their work on new music. - Newsdesk

August 2, 2003
It's Patrick here In the Studio with some info on the track Twenty-Fifth which is featured on our newly reissued debut album Cold. I've been getting some questions lately about how the guitars were recorded on that song. First of all, there is no bass guitar on that song. The song is a straight-forward 4-track recording. The first two tracks are stereo drums and guitar, that Joe and I recorded in a live room together. I added a third track with a really fat guitar sound, and then finally the lead vocals were put down on the fourth track.

The guitars were cut with my famous Washburn A20V - the guitar that has been the staple of my studio work for almost 20 years. I have the two guitar parts panned to separate left and right channels, with the brighter guitar sound on one side, and the fat, fuzzy guitar sound on the other side. Because of the compression on the distortion, and the fact that I was using my A20V, the guitars have great sustain on the recording. Even though it is only two guitar parts, they combine to form a cool wall of sound effect. It's like an army of guitars backing up the wild drums and lead vocals.

One of the features on the Washburn A20V that helped me get the right tone for the track is that you can pull and depress the volume knobs on the guitar to switch the humbucker pickups to single-coil. I used the single coil setting to get the really bright sound, and the full rythmn humbucker to get the fat sound. I also have great Seymour Duncan pickups on the guitar, which combined with the set neck and excellent natural tone of the A20V, makes it easy to get a wide variety of tones from a single instrument. I've been doing research on the latest Washburn models, and the NX6 has all of the great features that I love in my A20V, plus many new innovations, such as the the Buzz Feiten Tuning System. The NX6 is a beautiful looking guitar, and it plays great.

While I'm talking about guitars, I also tracked Thousand Languages on Cold using a Washburn D10 acoustic. For those of you who have checked out my guitar work on the new Tim Keyes album Sketchbook, I used that very same D10 along with the 8 or so other guitars, (including my A20V,) that I played on that album. It's cool to have that connection between the Cold CD which we've just released, and the new Sketchbook CD. They were recorded 15 years apart, but I have some of my same tried and true instruments on both. See you soon while we're out promoting Cold!

February 19, 2003
It's Patrick and I have some guitar news! As you may already know, we will be reissuing in the near future the first album, Cold, on CD through API Records. The Cold disc has some pretty heavy guitars on it. On that recording, I used my Washburn A20V electric run through my Crate GT-60 amplifier. That set-up was the staple of my guitar rig for the past 15 years. Recently, I've acquired some new equipment and have changed my set-up considerably. First, my new main stage guitar is an Epiphone Ace Frehley Signature Les Paul Classic. Secondly, I have replaced the Crate as my main amp with a new Marshall MG50DFX digital combo amp. The tone through my new guitar and amp rig is a world apart from the tone I got through the Crate. Obviously, Marshalls are among the best amps out there, and I'm hooked! My Washburn A20V also sounds awesome through the new amp. I'm looking forward to using my new rig during the promotional work we're planning to support the Cold reissue.

On the subject of my new Les Paul, I've always been a fan of the Les Paul guitar. I chose the Washburn A20V initially because the neck action on it was similar to the Les Paul. Although I have used Fender Stratocasters many times on albums I've done over the years, my preference has always been to have my own Les Paul someday. The Les Paul fits my hand better than the smaller Strat-type necks. My first electric guitar ever was a no-name Les Paul copy. I got that guitar around 1980, and I still have the body of the guitar, although it is completely stripped of its neck and hardware. When Joe and I performed as Shockwave, which was our first band that eventually turned into , I had our friend John Baronowski do a custom paint job on the Les Paul copy. John designed a great Shockwave logo and painted it on the back of the guitar. He did an island scene on the front. The design was such a classic, that I always held on to the Shockwave Les Paul in the hopes of building a custom replica of it someday. I've been doing some research with a few custom guitar makers, and there is the possibility that I may have one built.

For those of you who have followed from the beginning, in addition to being a great artist, John Baronowski was also a great guitar player and singer. In fact, John and I put the first version of Shockwave together in 1986, and that ultimately led to Joe, Bob, and I forming the following year. John had a Washburn electric that he customized heavily. It was a wild guitar with a cool paint-job, a new DiMarzio pickup that I think he got from a Les Paul, I believe he put a Floyd Rose tremelo on it, and he scalloped the neck. I wonder what he's playing nowadays? Keep checking in with us here at baitoven.com, and we'll see you soon with Cold!

January 2, 2003
It's Patrick here with an In The Studio installment on the upcoming reissue, Cold. I'm really, really, really excited about this release. Have I expressed my excitement sufficiently? For the first time, Cold will be available on CD in it's original form, with a restored tracklist and the special stereo edit version of 74 Words. I've always felt that the Cold album had a life of its own, so I'm really happy for us to have the opportunity to get the album out in the market again and let it stand on its own two feet. We'll see where it takes us. has blazed its own path through music over the years, and while our sound today is far removed from where we were almost 15 years ago, all of the music we've recorded and released over the years is still relevant to us. Cold is an important chapter in the book of !

There are some interesting studio bits about the Cold reissue. For those of you who already have the Cold tracks on the Ugly Songs release, the versions on the Cold reissue have been newly remastered at API Studios, leaving these classic recordings sounding their best yet. The never before available 74 Words edit is a great piece of work too. I had been going through 4-track masters in my studio when I stumbled upon the original master for 74 Words. The previously released version of 74 Words is actually the mono audio track from an unreleased music video that Joe and I edited for the song way back in 1989. A complete stereo version of the song has never been available. 74 Words dates from 1988, but shortly after the recording was made, I mistakenly grabbed the master tape, loaded it upside down in my 4 track, and recorded over half the song while I was working on an acoustic song I wrote called The Winter. It's a shame that I messed up the 74 Words master, because The Winter ultimately wasn't as much a song as it was a waste of tape!

When I found the 74 Words master this past year, I immediately made a stereo mix of the remaining fragment of the song on my Fostex digital recorder. Through the magic of digital editing, I brought the stereo fragment into API Studios, where Tim Keyes and I edited the piece into the existing mono version of the recording to create a new version of the track. We've done a few tricks to the track as well, to help the overall feel of the song, so that the edit sections are not as contrasting. In fact, the track is now a new "composition" made from the various bits of the original. It was an interesting project to revisit and restore this song after all of these years. I've also learned in the intervening years to be more careful with my tapes and discs!

March 5, 2002
This is Patrick, visiting the In the Studio page here at baitoven.com. In about a month or so, API Records will be releasing a special compilation album called Music Is Freedom, which will be available to all of our friends and fans for FREE directly from API Records. Joe and I recently recorded two new tracks for this album, Free and My Only Friend.

I'd like to write a bit about the guitar work on My Only Friend. I double-tracked the guitars on the song using my Yamaha APX 500 electric acoustic guitar and my Yamaha AEX 500 hollowbody electric guitar. The electric acoustic was run directly into my Fostex digital recorder with a clean sound coming from its piezo pickup. The hollowbody guitar was run through a chorus pedal, with a blending of its humbucker and piezo pickups to create a warmer, fatter tone. That guitar was also run directly into my Fostex digital recorder. When I was finished tracking the rest of the instruments and vocals on the Fostex deck, I brought the unit into API Studios to be loaded into ProTools for mixing.

After all of the tracks had been loaded into ProTools, we ran the hollowbody electric, (that had been recorded through the chorus pedal directly into the board,) through an amp emulator. I selected a Fender Twin Reverb, with 12" drivers, to give the guitar a really bright sound. We also doubled the part across two channels in ProTools to create a stereo effect for the hollowbody guitar. The electric acoustic was then EQ'd a bit to fatten it more, and blended into the stereo mix of the hollowbody electric. Tim Keyes produced an awesome mix of the song in the studio, and the way the guitars fit into the mix with the accompanying bass and keyboard parts gives the music on My Only Friend a real dynamic effect. Thanks Tim!!

Even though My Only Friend is built primarily around a guitar riff, the arrangement and production of the song is more of a tip of the hat to keyboard bands like Depeche Mode, with a bit of the Cure thrown in. I wanted the guitar sound to be as big as possible, so that when combined with the keyboard part, it had an orchestral feel to it.

With regards to my use of the Yamaha guitars versus my Washburns lately, if I think back, except for the electrics on I Cherish You from the Coming Attractions EP, I've been using my Yamahas for all of the guitar work on my most recent recordings. Right now, my Washburn A-20V is still my main stage guitar, but in the studio, I've been using the Yamahas most often. I'm still searching for another guitar to add to my collection right now, though, and the front runner continues to be the Peavey EVH Wolfgang.

With age and experience, your tastes change and perhaps you grow a bit wiser. Since the beginning of , I have been almost exclusively a Washburn endorsee, but I'm really in the mood for something new. I've recorded over at API Studios playing a Fender Stratocaster, and I've done many recordings using my Washburn A-20V. The Peavey EVH Wolfgang, in my experience testing it out, seems not only to be the best of both worlds, but the better of all worlds. I better start saving my pennies!

June 22, 2001
Patrick here - Finally, with the latest, long-promised, installment of In The Studio. This is the section of baitoven.com where Joe and I show up to talk about recording, gear, or anything else studio-related that comes to mind.

I've mentioned in prior posts the work we've done thus far in preparation for the next full-length album. As you may have read in the News section, we are releasing an EP that previews three of the tracks destined for the new album. We plan to rerecord the three tracks from the EP, and change the arrangements around for the new album, so it should be quite interesting.

One of the most difficult things to do when looking back on our recorded work, is to easily classify what style of music best describes . While the band started from definite hard rock/punk beginnings, our sound has evolved dramatically over the years and we've covered so many different genres of music. The Ugly Songs CD is a good example of just how varied our styles have been, (compiled on one compact disc!) The September album, both in it's original cassette form, and in the updated CD release, is such a totally different style/sound coming from the same band that created the Cold EP, (which was our first album and is available here at baitoven.com as free MP3's.) In the end though, our live and recorded work always contains that unique element that many people have come to refer to as the " sound." Once you hear the " sound," it all begins to make sense!

The music business doesn't often encourage variety from an artist. Since has remained independent, we have always retained the freedom to do what we want to do when it comes to the music. There are pros and cons to having such a varied output. Probably the main benefit of having such musical variety is that it is artistically satisfying. Joe and I always push ourselves and challenge ourselves with the new music we record. I don't think we've ever fallen into a pattern of pulling from the same bag of tricks. We are always able to grow as musicians, and in , it is always the music that is the most important. On the opposite side, one of the main cons of having such a varied output is that it is difficult to promote something that defies easy definition. I know that there is an audience out there that appreciates variety from artists, and we have found many people out there who like what we've accomplished musically through our recorded work. Those type of music fans exist; people who don't want to be classified or limited by categories. Finding an outlet to reach them is another story. Thankfully, though, the age of the Internet has opened so many doors. For music on the web, we've only just begun to realize the possibilities.

So, we will continue to push our music in new directions. Since we never use outside musicians on any of our records, both Joe and I have so many opportunities to do different things. For me, as a musician, it is so great to be able to be the singer, the guitar player, the bass player, and the keyboard player, all in the same band! I'm always getting to do something new and different. And Joe hasn't just been the drummer in the band either! Besides forays into different areas of percussion and singing, Joe has played a major role in designing all of the imagery associated with , from our album covers to baitoven.com.

In the end, I think that will continue to defy easy definition, but we'll let the music stand on its own. The music is the only reason why we're doing all of this anyway. Let's keep listening!

February 16, 2001
We're getting down to work, doing our preparation for the next album. It's Patrick again, (Hey,) and I'm here In The Studio to give you the latest.

A few months ago, Joe and I recorded an extended rehearsal session where we went through all of the songs that will be on the next album. Joe has the tapes of that session, and has used them to learn the basic song structures. Meanwhile, I've spent time fleshing out the music and tightening up the lyrics. I literally just sat with my acoustic guitar and played through the whole album over and over until I had the songs strong enough to stand on their bare bones. Last week, I put together the final tracklist and printed off songbooks containing the finished lyrics. Because of the logistics of how we are going to record this album, it is very important that we do as much preparation beforehand as possible. We'll have at least one more extended rehearsal session before we start tracking the record proper. The actual recording sessions will be on a very tight schedule. The sessions for this album will be much like location shooting on a film. I will be organizing the order of how we will record the songs in the same way a director organizes the filming order of scenes, to take maximum advantage of the limited time.

The recording of the album will be split among two locations. We'll be recording the drums at a secret castle in Virginia, (the actual Castle Gar of CastleGar Productions!) while the rest of the instruments and vocals will be recorded at my studio in New Jersey. I can already hear how the album will sound in my head and I am very excited about it. Fully expect to hear Joe's drums at their sonic best as Joe has invested a lot of time and money in putting together the perfect kit for this new project.

I'll be producing the album, and I have my plans set as to how we are going to capture the sound on this recording. The next album will be fully digital, but to add warmth to the sound, I will be live miking all of the instruments and I'm not going to get too crazy about keeping the sound clean. I want to have some amplifier buzz here and there. I want the drums to sound as big and live as possible.

For our musician friends, one of the few decisions I haven't made yet is whether or not I'm going to tune the guitars to E or E flat. Since there will be some piano on the album, I might opt for standard tuning. As a singer, E flat tuning on the guitar keeps the songs more comfortably in my vocal range, but the standard E tuning often pushes me to sing better since I have to work a little harder at it. It's not a big decision I guess, but one to be made nonetheless.

January 19, 2001
If you read below, you'll find posts concerning most of the gear we use to make our music, and information on what is happening with us here and there In The Studio. It's Patrick, (Hey,) and I promised in my last post, that I would come back and write a little about instrumentation and arrangements in . I guess I'll talk about our " sound."

Let me start by separating on recordings versus our live sound. In The Studio, we basically cut our songs like most rock bands. Since the days of our very first multi-track recordings, Joe and I have always worked on our music In The Studio as a duo. Joe would track his drums, usually against me playing a guitar or piano part, and then I would go back and overdub additional guitars, keyboards, the bass, and vocals. We use a pretty standard rock band configuration on our albums even though there are just the two of us making the music. Actually, though, there are two songs on the Ugly Songs CD that serve as a kind of bridge between our studio sound and our live sound. Both Twenty-Fifth and Cold, (with Bob on vocals,) are cut with just drums and guitar(s) and no bass! Even when Bob was in the band, he seldom would play an instrument either live or on record but would concentrate on his excellent vocal performances, (he always reminds me of Robert Smith, if we was from New Jersey that is.) I enjoyed that period immensely, since to me, it seemed quite punk of us to have no live bass player in the band. (We were very well behaved punks!)

It was later, during our time working on the September album, that I introduced the piano as an ingredient in the " sound." The songs I had written for that album were of a darker ilk, and we wanted to have a stark, acoustic sound to that recording. When we performed the material live, we came up with a very interesting sound where I would play the bass with my left hand on the keyboard, while having a piano sound selected for my right hand to play the chords. We sounded like a two-man jazz trio, (maybe even a little like the Doors.) When I was on guitar, I used an acoustic, and we had an unplugged type of sound before being unplugged became a music novelty! The arrangement really featured Joe's drumming, which is really the hallmark of the " sound." Joe is the Stewart Copeland of , once you hear his high-hat, you know it is us.

Now the songs I've written for the upcoming record have a lot of cool guitar in them. I wanted to get back to that guitar based rock that we started from, but lately I can hear the piano calling to me. I have some definite ideas for how the next record should sound, and I'll get into that here In The Studio when the recording begins. I really think, though, that I'm going to bring the piano back into the mix more than I had originally planned. Hmmm, we'll see...

December 4, 2000
Patrick here. If you roll all the way to the bottom of this In The Studio page, and work your way back up, you'll notice Joe and I posting information on the gear we use to make our music, (you can also go back in time if you read from top to bottom!) Either way, bottom to top or top to bottom, you should always read left to right. We've got info on our guitars, drums, basses, and keyboards. I also owe everyone a post on our recording gear, so let's get to it.

In the beginning, Joe, Bob, and I recorded our jam sessions on a simple stereo boom box. We still have original cassette recordings and are in the process of transferring them to digital MiniDisc. It was a crude, but effective way of capturing the music we were making at the time. We soon moved up to proper multi-track recording. In 1988, I purchased a Vesta Fire 4-track recorder. That small unit was the backbone of our recording rig for all four of the independently released albums. It took a little while at first, but soon we had worked out the methods we would use to fit all of our arrangements on to four tracks. I read up on the Beatles recording sessions, and learned a lot of tricks. As you may know, Sgt. Pepper, along with most of the Beatles recorded work, was done on 4-track machines.

It wasn't until 1998, just as the seeds of resuming our work as were being sown, that I purchased a new multi-track machine. With the advent of digital recording technology for home studios, it became possible for artists to create professional quality recordings without having to book time in expensive commercial studios. (As we have mentioned here at baitoven.com, we still book our mastering sessions with our friends at Trax East studios; recording and mastering are two different kettles of fish!)

The new backbone of the recording rig is a Fostex digital 8-track recorder. That unit is connected to a Sony MiniDisc recorder deck. As our fellow studio ghouls know, with that type of setup, and due to the loop being totally digital, we can fit alot of individual elements on those eight digital tracks through sub-mixing. Now, I've worked in studios on 24 and 48-track analog recorders, I've also recorded on smaller 12-track analog machines, and I've worked purely digital with Pro-Tools. But as far as is concerned, our digital 8-track recorder is an enormous leap from our humble 4-track beginnings.

We don't use a lot of outboard gear in our recording rig. Some of the units we have include an Alesis Nanoverb and Nanocompressor. We also use Shure microphones of various specifications when recording. For the producers and engineers out there, we don't cut and paste on our digital deck. Rarely will I even punch when recording, since I'm often engineering and playing at the same time. I'd rather get a clean take from scratch than punch. In most cases I think a single clean take preserves the "feel" of the track better.

So there it is. A quick note on our recording rig. As for my next post, In The Studio, I want to talk about instrumentation and arrangements. has always had a unique live sound, and it is primarily because we don't use additional musicians when playing live. Some of our earliest recordings are good examples of our unique arrangement approach. Until then, check out our song Cold, which is on the new compilation CD Ugly Songs, and you'll see what I mean.

October 3, 2000
Patrick here - it’s been a very busy time In The Studio since the summer of 1999, when Joe and I resumed our work together as . Let’s recap… Lotsa dates… Gotta lot to say…

Late summer and fall of 1999, we worked on the September CD, taking the 1994 four-track source tapes from the original release and building new digital recordings around them. We loaded the original drum, bass, and piano tracks into our Fostex digital recorder, and I recorded new guitars, bass, piano, and vocals over them. We also threw in three all-new recordings. October of 1999 saw the album’s mastering session with our friends at Trax East, and by January 2000, we launched this website, baitoven.com, to coincide with the release of our first commercially available compact disc, September. When you buy your copy of the September CD, (just follow the Own The Music link!) you can find the story about the special nature of the September CD in the liner notes. It’s a short, yet compelling read!

Shortly after the release of the September CD, we were back In The Studio, remixing the 11 classic tracks that will soon be released on the new Ugly Songs compilation CD. The remixes were completed in February. In May of 2000, we gave everyone a free sample of the Ugly remixes by posting four songs as free MP3’s right here at baitoven.com. The four songs we chose were originally released on the Cold EP, which came out in 1989. In August, we were back visiting our friends at Trax East to master the Ugly Songs CD, and from what I understand, the pressing plant is melting the goo at this very moment in preparation for pressing a big batch of Ugly CD’s for our fall/winter 2000 release date!

All the while, Joe and I have been going on and on about working In The Studio on some album we keep calling Big Top World. Well, you can go to Amazon.com or CDNOW and buy September, that’s pretty straightforward. In the near future, we’ll be releasing this compilation CD we’ve named Ugly Songs, so where the hell is this Big Top World album?

Well, let me fill you in on the master plan. When Joe and I decided to reunite , we had a couple goals in mind. First, we wanted to do a new record. We wanted to take our studio work to higher levels than we ever could before. Second, we wanted to design a website, so that we could bring and our music to a larger audience than was ever possible before. And lastly, we wanted to take the best of our work from the first decade of this band, and make it available on CD for the first time ever. Being how we are, and being , we’ve done almost everything we’ve set out to do, in reverse order! September and Ugly Songs represent the best of our recorded work from our independent albums; remixed, remastered, and enhanced for compact disc. Baitoven.com, the official website, has been our soapbox, and we’ve had friends and fans visit us from all over the world. And now, we’re beginning our work on our new album, Big Top World. The songs are written. The demos recorded. We’re recording our jam sessions as we hammer out the arrangements. We’re buying the gear and telling you all about it here In The Studio.

So keep coming back to get the latest. September and Ugly Songs show where we came from. Big Top World is where we’re going. We’ll be here In The Studio giving you an inside look as we create this new album from the ground up. See you soon!

September 11, 2000
And now to the keyboards... (it's Patrick again.) I have a Yamaha Clavinova digital grand piano that I've used on tracks from the original 1994 version of September and the new 1999 version, (available on CD from the major online music vendor of your choice!) The Yamaha has full-size, touch responsive keys, and stereo outs that I run directly into the digital recorder for the cleanest possible signal. While the Yamaha has about a dozen sampled sounds built in, I stick mostly to the piano and string sounds. In the past, for different keyboard sounds, I've used a Yamaha Voicebank keyboard, that had little 1/2 sized keys, but about 100 pretty well sampled and varied sounds, (the bass from Bloodbath, which is on the new Ugly Songs CD, is actually from the Voicebank.) I don't have any plans right now to add any additional sound modules to my keyboard rig, since I like the purity of limiting my keyboard playing to the piano or some strings just for color. Now if we go back in time a decade or so, Robert Medvedz was the main keyboard player in . That is until he sold his keyboard right after we started recording our songs! 74 Words, also on the new Ugly Songs CD, is totally Bob's keyboard work. If my memory is correct, Bob had a Korg, which we ran through a Gorilla Bass amp when playing live. Joe may know the keyboard brand better than I (I think it was a Mirage or something... - Joe). Do they still make Gorillas? There was a period in the eighties where the average garage band bass player owned either a Peavey or a Gorilla! I owned neither, I didn't buy a proper bass amp until I bought my Hartke. My Peavey amp from back then was borrowed!

Bob's Korg was from the time before you could store large amounts of sampled sounds on internal hard drives and such, so his keyboard had a little 3 1/4 inch floppy disk drive built in. I remember him sampling a lot of sounds with it. It was a pretty serious keyboard for our little garage band, and I think it turned a tidy profit when Bob sold it.

So for now, the Yamaha Clavinova will remain my main keyboard of choice in . It'll make an appearance here and there on the new album and it'll probably join us on tour. A quick story about moving this piano around: it is a pretty heavy piece of equipment. When Joe and I performed at Montclair University in 1994, we could only get our truck within about 100 yards of the entrance to the building. We had help from the staff who organized the event, but we basically roadied most of the gear ourselves and it was ALOT of gear that we brought. The piano was packed way in the front of the truck, so it was the last thing we unloaded when we were setting up. It was a hazy, hot day, with thunderstorms and rain. Now we had dollies and wheeled roadcases, but the piano really didn't fit on any of those, so Joe and I had to literally run a 100 yard dash carrying the piano from the truck to the building! I think we made it halfway before we collapsed! Luckily the rain was only spitting then. I think we'll need to come up with a better plan for moving this thing when we're on the Big Top World tour.

Let's see, I've covered guitars, bass, and keyboards. Joe has filled us in on his drum kit, ( his new cymbals sound awesome!) So, I think our next gear installment will move on to our digital recorder and studio setup. All of this gear-talk just numbs the mind...

August 30, 2000
We've completed the mastering of the digital remixes for the new Ugly Songs CD. Thanks to our friend Eric Rachel at Trax East Studios for the excellent work. The Ugly Songs were first digitally remixed by me (Patrick) in my own studio from the original 4-track source tapes and transferred to Minidisc. At the Trax East session, we loaded each of the songs from the Minidisc into Pro Tools, while Eric further EQ'd the mixes to fatten the sound. Once all of the songs were loaded, they were cleaned up, globally treated to even out the levels across all of the tracks, and then the master CD's were burned. The next step for the album is off to the pressing plant!

August 21, 2000
Patrick here. I'm moving on to my bass rig in this installment of In the Studio. My bass guitar is an Epiphone, which I bought somewhere around 1987 or 88. Until recently, I've run the bass direct into the board for all of the recordings, but for the new album, Big Top World, I will be running the bass through my new Hartke B60 amplifier. As most bass players know, Hartke Systems make some of the best bass amps and enclosures available. I not only use my Hartke for my bass, but I've run my Yamaha digital piano through it to boost the bottom of the signal just enough to give the sampled piano sounds a warmer, more "real" feel.

My bass playing influences come from many sources, but I have a specific influence for when it comes to my bass strings. Like the God of Thunder, Gene Simmons, I rarely change the strings on my bass if I can help it, so that I get a rusty dead sound from the guitar. They need to age like fine wine. I don't like a slick sound from the bass when I play. I want the bass to growl. Now since a song can be anything from a hard rocker to a piano ballad, I will play with the bass sound to best fit the arrangements, but in the end, and in the future, I'm going to be aiming for that monster sound. If I had an extra few thousand bucks lying around, I'd probably get myself a Gene Simmons Punisher bass guitar, which is absolutely the most evil bass around. If you want to hear another gritty sounding bass player, listen to John Cale on the Velvet Underground Live MCMXCIII CD. Use your headphones and play it loud! That's the bass, pure and simple.

August 11, 2000
This post is for all of the drummers who may be visiting our humble web site. Patrick has been filling you all in on his equipment of choice, now it's my turn! 

I've been playing the same drum set for the past seven years: a black Pearl Export 5-piece drum set. It's served me well over the years, from my days playing clubs in a hardcore band during my college years to our most recent recordings. It has a fairly decent sound for what it is, but I've started to pine for a new, all wood set. My dream kit would be either a Pearl Maple Custom or Pearl Birch Custom, with a slight preference for the warmer sound of the Maple set. Ideally I'd be playing a 6-piece with an Omar Hakim signature snare drum. Oh, and throw in a Power Shifter Eliminator double-bass pedal for good measure. One can dream...

I've recently added an array of new cymbals to the set. I'm playing all Zildjians now, with a mix of K, A and A Customs. The A Custom crashes have a really sweet sound to them. If memory serves me correctly, my favorite drummer, Vinnie Colaiuta, assisted Zildjian in the design of the A Custom series. Kudos to Vinnie! 

My cymbal setup consists of a 6" A Custom Splash, an 8" K Splash, a 20" A Ping Ride, a 17" A Custom Ride, an 18" A Custom Ride, and 14" K/Z High Hats. I want to add a 10" A Custom Splash, a 20" Oriental China Trash, and a 15" A Custom Crash. I'm leaning towards replacing the K/Z High Hats with some Brilliant Quick Beats - love the responsiveness of those high hat cymbals. Like the Maple Custom, one can dream...

August 7, 2000
It's Patrick again. The guitar question from the last post is solved. I bought a Yamaha AEX 500 hollowbody electric guitar. Expect to hear a lot from this new axe of mine. Yamahas and Washburns... A unique combination I must say.

August 2, 2000
Hello all , it's Patrick. I'm here to give all of my fellow gear-heads a quick update on the gear I use when Joe and I get together to make that sound we all know as . I'll start this post off with my guitar rig. From the very beginnings of , in the late 80's, I have always used a simple rig that was composed of my 1983 Washburn A-20V electric guitar as my main stage and recording guitar, run through a 60 watt Crate GT60 amplifier, which has a twelve inch Celestion speaker. You know, I've been playing guitar for over 20 years and I've never owned a stomp box! Amazing... Anyway, I've always used the amp's overdrive controls for my dirty sound, (making it really compressed, almost like a Mesa-Boogie sound,) and I had the adjustments set on the clean side to give me a very, very bright clean sound, (leaving almost no bottom in the signal.) Crate has really come a long way from the early days, and my GT60 is an example of Crate's effort in the late 80's to make a combo amp that could compete sonically with the Marshalls. I still love that amp. The new Crate Red Voodoo is awesome!

Right now, I'm playing Washburn electrics exclusively, with my A20V being my main electric, and a beautiful red G1V with a newly installed Seymour Duncan double-coil pickup as my backup. Both have rosewood necks. I have a Washburn D12 acoustic, which I play for a full-bodied acoustic sound, (I used it on Thousand Languages,) and a cool Yamaha APX series electric/acoustic, which I used on the September CD and numerous other studio projects I've done in the past few years. I really want to get a new electric guitar for Big Top World, though and I haven't decided which route to follow yet.

In the past, I used my Washburn/Crate rig to get a very bright, compressed guitar sound. It really was the classic 80's big rock sound. Now, I'm trying to get as much bottom in my guitar sound as possible, and I'm trying to get as much sustain as I can without compressing the signal too much with the overdrive. I want mud, not buzz. For the guitar portion of this equation, I'm currently looking at three options. First, I may go with a hollow-body electric, like a Gretsch or a Gibson. I'd definitely get a real fat sound from a guitar like that, and after playing my Washburn for all these years, which is set and feels like a Les Paul, I'm used to the type of action I'd have on a hollow-body. Second, I really, really love the Peavey EVH Wolfgang. I played one recently, and it is the most well-balanced guitar I've ever played. The action is incredible, and the flat, unvarnished neck is both fat for a strong hand, but light on the fingers. Quite paradoxical! It also has sustain that doesn't quit. If I switch to the EVH Wolfgang, I might be possessed to constantly solo! And lastly, I'm thinking of setting my Yamaha APX up with electric guitar strings, getting one of those feedback/sound hole things, (whatever they're called,) and running it through my amp like Lindsey Buckingham does, (Lindsey's not really using my amp... he has his own!) I'm skeptical on how the piezo pickup would perform though, since we all know that feedback is a problem with the electric acoustics.

In my next gear installment, I'll continue my guitar rig talk and concentrate on amps. After that, since I'm also the studio bass player and keyboard player for , we'll move on to my bass rig and my piano/keyboard set-up! I'll preview the bass installment with one word: Hartke!

July 24, 2000
Fueled by bottle after bottle of Mint Snapple, Patrick and I worked on the new material that will be featured on Big Top World. We have ten songs so far, and they're all starting to come together quite nicely. We also brushed the dust off of a few old songs and covers during the weekend jam session. Ahhhh, memories...

All in all, it was a very productive weekend.

June 27, 2000
We've just finished tape to digital transfers of the complete 1992 original masters from the Naked Singularity and World is Gone cassette albums. Along with new printings of the original artwork, an extremely limited run of the two albums will be produced from the new digital transfers for archival purposes.

Also, the copy of Cold posted on baitoven.com was taken from a first generation tape copy from the digital remix of the album completed this past February. There are top secret plans for the fully digital version!

With Cold fully digitally remixed, the original Naked Singularity and World is Gone masters digitally transferred, the original cassette version of September fully digitally remixed, and selected full digital remixes from the entire catalog assembled for a potential compilation CD, the catalogue of independent recordings is in its best state of preservation yet.

February 25, 2000
We've done digital remixes from the 4-track master tapes of 11 songs, taken from among all four of the independent cassette albums. As part of the 11 songs selected, the entire Cold album is now fully remixed and ready for re-issue.

A demo for I Cherish You has been reworked for the Big Top World project. This song should change even more during rehearsals. It's a tough nut.

December 13, 1999
Initial demos of Big Top World and Inherit the Earth have been recorded. We plan to start jamming and fleshing out these songs in the next few weeks.