“The Roughest Draught” will always pinpoint a time in my life full with perpetual inspiration. Years have gone into developing the sounds and songs heard on this record. With the help of an anonymous world-class producer (thank you), the generosity of Expression College http://www.expression.edu/ , the power of seven extremely talented guest artists, the love from Sophia Simon-Ortiz, and the beliefs of my good friend Asier Leatxe http://www.myspace.com/asiere , I've finished recording and mixing this record in April of 2011. The album was recorded using a mash-up of 24-track 2” tape machines, 12-bit samplers, 4-track cassette recorders, and Protools hard-disk recording. While mixing at my home studio, Asier and I refrained from indulging in fancy digital plug-ins and processing. Instead, we used as little EQ, compression, and automation as sparingly as possible. We also ran a few tracks through my Moog modules. I should mention a bit more about the recording process. Songs created earlier in the album-making process began as digital demos from home, which were dumped to 2” tape for overdubs of the band and vocals. These analog tapes were then digitized over at Fantasy Studios, and the new files were further worked on digitally in Protools, where they were tweaked, added to, deconstructed, re-arranged and mixed using both analog and digital methods. Throughout the process of making this record I’ve learned many of the techniques necessary for achieving the sounds I’d needed tape for in the past. In other words, a Neve console into Protools HD has become my preferred recording medium. I obtain my sounds through careful selection and placement of microphones, and generally create my sounds “on the way in”. I write, sing, play, compose, program, record, produce, and mix. I also own a cherry 88-key Rhodes (and by cherry I mean it has some sweet action), which I don’t think made it anywhere onto the album. I got it from my high school in ’94 for two hundred bucks. It was a steal then. I think the band teacher felt bad that he’d stiffed me on a gig that he’d hired me out on in my 11th grade year. A few years after I’d first acquired that Rhodes, I heard that they’d also sold their Hammond organ cheap to another musically promising graduate. They probably figured the seventies were finally over. Anyway… I got the Rhodes, and it’s still sweet. On this record, I programmed the electronic drums and synths Kraftwerk-style, i.e. manually inputting values for the pitches, event durations, etc. for every sound or sample used. For lead synth sounds (like on the melodies in “You”) I employed glitch errors as my digital oscillator source material, which I looped and sent through digital filters before mapping them out onto a midi controller. These sounds were then sequenced and recorded either onto tape or into Protools, where I‘d line up the tracks peak-to-peak. Analog synth sounds involved either tuning up some Moog modules with my Peterson tuner, or using an Ebow with my Les Paul. When sequencing in Protools, instead of relying on midi clock, I lined up tracks at sample-to-sample resolution, and stuck to tempos easily divisible by the sample rate. On this record, I play a grand piano, a Moog synthesizer, an Ensoniq EPS sampler, a Roland digital synth, a Casiotone, an M-Audio keyboard controller, and a Nord 3. My best instrument is the guitar, and on this record I used some classical, acoustic, arch-top and resophonic guitars. I am at heart however, an electric guitar player. My main guitar is a Gibson Les Paul, and I have a Guild solid-body as a backup. I only own Ampeg guitar amplifiers, but I think a Fender and a Vox might have slipped into the record somewhere, courtesy of the good folks at Expression College. I use analog guitar effects by Analogman http://www.analogman.com/ , Voodoo Labs, Foxrox, MXR, Jim Dunlop, Area 51, Skip Simmons, Radial, EHX, and Moog. Enough of the technical, and I’m skipping over the how’d-he-do-it? stuff, because who knows? That’s the art, it’s a mystery, and it just comes. I will say that I spend a lot of time imagining. …On to the music credits. I split the bass duties with Jeff Drudge http://twitter.com/#!/JeffDrudge . We each play on about half of the songs on this album. I love the guy and he’s a great player, but … you readers may not know this, but I used to do a bit of bass plucking myself, and I enjoy handling all of the notes in my own music. With Jeff in play, you get a great band dynamic, and with me, you get the mind of the composer. I personally like both, as it’s a mixed bag; it’s the best of both worlds. Jaymie Arredondo plays the live drums on the record, with Ajayi Jackson http://www.facebook.com/people/Ajayi-Jackson/1018106771 sitting in for him on “Someone Else”, and with Tony Daquipa adding some tom-toms and snare fills to “Wesley Willis”. The song “Wesley Willis” was named in honour of the world’s greatest Casiotone player, who passed away several years ago to leukemia. You can date my music by whether or not it has a Casio. The Casio was stolen last year, so there you have it: the Casio series. Myself, with Jeff and Jaymie are / were “The Paris King Band”. We put out a record together several years ago entitled “Music To Groove To”. It is available on CDBaby.com and through itunes.com. “The Roughest Draught” is more of a solo record in that the choices in musical direction and aesthetic were mine alone. I personally have signed off on every note and beat on this record. The lyrics on this album are directly related to my experiences as a living being. That’s why it took so long, I guess. It takes time for life to happen, and self-editing should be done with a steady hand. Khalil Anthony http://www.myspace.com/urban_folk wrote the lyrics to, and sings lead vocals on “You”. Khalil and I share lead vocals on “Vampyre Ship”, which was written by the two of us in collaboration with Karma Manifest and Leah Joy. Marversal http://www.myspace.com/marversal wrote the lyrics to, and sings all vocals on “Movie Called Madness”. Marversal and I co-wrote the music in collaboration. Harold Williams plays tambourine on “You”. Adisa McKenzie http://www.adisamckenzie.com/ lent me some chords on “Shotgun Wedding”. All other music was written and performed by me.