Groezrock is going to be pretty good this year. I just played with Face to Face last Friday and they were really awesome. Hopefully they have time to play a long set in Belgium. In other news, I talked to Mike tonight. He’s bringing over the new EP’s artwork in the next couple days so we can approve it and get things moving. I can’t wait to see it. Also, Matt Hyde decided to do some more mixing and apparently made the EP sound even better than it did. Anyway, sorry it’s taking us so long, we’re all so busy! Scott’s team is 3-2 so far. Check it out on www.bisons.com. My Mariners pretty much suck ass right now. 2-5 Woo!

-Tyler

Mike and I just finished making copies of the new EP for ourselves at my apartment. We couldn’t be happier about the final product. Matt Hyde did a kick ass job once again. I actually think the sound is even “bigger” than Matters. I can’t wait for all of you to hear this thing! Mark DeSalvo is working on his new painting for the cover. The next step for us is to figure out how we are releasing this thing. I’ll update with more info when I have it. I saw Iron Maiden at the Forum in LA last night, btw. Good times.

Sorry for the lack of updates. Scott’s been getting ready for spring training. Jim’s been sick as a dog. Mike’s been stressing over album cover concepts and artwork. Tony is about to go live in a mansion for a month and write a huge rock record. I’ve been selling oil filters, hangin out with Stijn, and playing with DBS.

We met up at Matt Hyde’s house on Sunday to take a new band photo. Our buddy Stijn flew out here from Belgium to hang out for a week or so, so we enlisted him to take the new pictures.  We also had time for Mike to play one last guitar part and Tony to put some tambourine on the song “Mandarin.” We then signed off on Matt’s final mix of the new EP. Mike and I hung out until the end of the day finalizing the sequence of the songs and discussing the album title. I’ll save that for another post. We have our friend Mark DeSalvo (who painted the last two album covers” working on the new cd cover. The EP goes out to be mastered today!

well this is it,  today we are finished!
i hate every song so far but it will have to do for this session,  hope everyone likes it as much as much as us,  also yesterday mark desalvo who has done the last couple of album covers will be doing this one as well, (time insensitive material) our belgi friend stijn is out here in california to put together all the other graphic art and layout,  kind of cool we are doing it ourselves, even though tyler keeps insisting we shop it to all the major labels that are left,  no not really but he did pull off some good bass lines as well as tony’s beats and mike and jims shredding, ya see i have heard these songs now probaly 100 times or so continuing to hit the right notes, they are powerful and sound like the band america,  oh,  did i give too much away,  bye

-Scott

well its saturday morning feb. 2nd,, yesterday went great, 1 song down and 4 to go, the first song mandarin sounds like pulley and hope the rest of them turn out as good, after being sick with a cold for a few days i was kind of worried about starting but once we got going everything went smooth, we are recording over at matt’s house our engineer’s, he has a small unit behind his house with an ikea wardrobe closet for a vocal booth its kind of tight but i turn off the lights and pretend we are playing a gig somewhere, drink alot of tea and hit the vaporizer,, hearing the songs complete for the first time was great, nice to hear every part clear, something that doesn’t happen at practice or a show but always come through when your under the microscope of recording, well i hope today goes as smooth as yesterday and it sounds just as good!

-Scott

Mike and Jim finished up all their guitar overdubs this afternoon. I would love to tell you all more about it but I was at work when it was happening. Scott will start singing at Matt’s house on Wednesday night!

Friday night Tony started tracking his drums and finished four songs. The drums sound HUGE! Saturday he finished the last one early and then Mike came in to start his guitar tracks.  I think it’s pretty cool to be able to say that Mike has used the same Les Paul and Marshall head and cabinet on every Pulley song ever recorded! I don’t know if any band with 5 records, various b-sides, a split CD and now a 5 song EP can make that claim. Bottom line, when you hear Mike Harder play, you know it’s gonna sound like Pulley!

Jim wasn’t feeling particularly well so he stayed home and Mike finished off most of his rhythm parts for the rest of the night. On Sunday it was pouring rain yet again. I went down to the studio around noon and loaded in my gear. I had to make a quick trip to Guitar Center to grab some last minute supplies. Some guy who worked there asked, “didn’t you used to play in Pulley” I explained that yeah, I DO play in Pulley and we are recording a new EP down the street. His response was,”oh, you guys are still a band?” Rad.

I got back to the studio in time to watch Jim play a completely shredding solo on a new song called “Mandarin” Mike and Jim traded off playing their parts on that song for a few hours. After that it was time for them to take a break so I set up all my bass stuff and prepared to record. Chris Aiken and I jaywalked Sunset Blvd. and grabbed a Red Bull at the liqour store and then I was all set. I played through all the songs kinda quickly and hopefully did a good job. I really tried to mix it up this time and think way outside the box and find a place to sit my bass lines between Tony’s fills and the guitar melodies.  After I was done I left and Mike started back on guitar parts. Looks like we will be back tomorrow night to finish guitar overdubs.

Sorry no pictures today….forgot my camera!

It was the rainiest wettest day in SoCal in quite a long time. I had just got off work around 5pm and headed down to Hollywood to the studio to start working on the new Pulley EP. Traffic already sucks pretty bad at 5pm on a weeknight, but this was ridiculous! It took me almost three hours to drive the 35 miles into Hollywood.

When I finally arrived, Mike Jim and Tony were already there. Matt Hyde and Chris Rakestraw had everything up and running and we were ready to begin the recording process. We spent the night mapping out all the tempos (we had figured out the day before) into pro-tools. Then, Mike, Jim and I played some scratch tracks of guitars and bass to Tony’s scratch drum tracks. That way, it’s all in the correct time, and when Tony goes to actually record his drums for real, the three of us don’t have to keep playing the song over and over since it’s already there on the computer. Chris Aiken showed up to hang out and offer some encouragement. We were watching old skate videos from the 80’s and checking out the latest hilarious “shred” videos on youtube. (Just type in “Santana shreds” or “Eddie Van Halen shreds” to see what I’m talking about!) We got done with the last of the five songs about 11pm and called it a night. Tomorrow, most of us will be working, and Tony will come in to track his drums. Maybe Jim or Mike will start some guitars after that.

-Tyler

Well not much for a singer to do on opening day,
Its all about the drummer today and getting sounds, don’t even know if i will make it down to the studio.
We spent a couple of hours last night doing last minute preparation for the recording, tempo’s and last minute changes for the better we hope, guess i will just plug in the 4 track and scream till i cant talk anymore so i will be able to do the same in a few days.
Its never just 1 take its hours and hours of singing the same line over and over and being told “you still haven’t hit that note yet”, dont get me wrong i enjoy going into the studio as much as anyone its just challenging everytime..
Looking forward to the songs we have it’s a good mix of old a new sounds, well i am off to scream… bye

-Scott

I just got home from the last band practice before we start recording tomorrow. We spent tonight getting all the tempos down to the click track. One song worked perfectly to one tempo the whole way through, but the other four have several different ones. For example, the chorus might be faster than the verse…or we might turn the click off for the intro or bridge, etc. to give it more live feel. We’ll see what happens tomorrow.

On another note, I see this blog got picked up on the www.punknews.org page. A few people commented that they are bummed that we are only doing an EP and not a full length. The truth is, we have written a ton of songs since the Matters record in 2004, but due to the lack of time we all have to get together during the year, we decided to just record the five strongest songs. We also decided to try to commit to recording an EP of five songs every year, rather than a 12 song record every three or four years. We don’t even know what label we will be on or if we will be on a label at all. We tried it selling our DVD on our own through our website last year and it worked out pretty well. I kind of figure that whoever likes our band will probably know how to go to our myspace page or our website and buy it from us. Do we even need a label for that? Not really sure why we would….Do bands even need record labels anymore?

I’ll finish the Costa Rica story when I get some more time.

-Tyler