The Dollar Bill Quartet

We were pleased this Monday to commemorate the King's birthday by recording at the fabulous Sun Studio. It was an exciting night for us, to say the least. What happened at Sun in its heyday is a source of great pride for those of us who grew up as music fans and musicians in this town. To be able to record in the same room as so many incredible artists was super-cool and, actually, not nearly as intimidating as I expected. As the photo below indicates, it's a very comfortable and unassuming environment. Not surprisingly, I suppose, it just felt like a great place to make music!

And that we did! We decided to record Great Big Cosmic, a tune we've been playing live now for over a year. As you can see, the boys were in the rock 'n roll zone, and we got a solid track within the first fifteen minutes. It was the first time we've ever been able to record basic tracks with all of us in the same room, which was a lot of fun. We made a conscious decision to avoid adding acoustic guitars (which we unashamedly have an affinity for, of course!) and tried to keep the arrangement really stripped down. In that spirit, we just tracked my lead vocal, Ted's backing vocal and a second electric guitar to fatten up the sound a bit. James and Matt mixed it on the spot, and we left with the finished song well before midnight. It was definitely one of the most painless and carefree sessions any of us have ever experienced. And, I must admit, we listened to the song several times on the way home. This is definitely a good sign. Many thanks to James and Matt for doing a bang-up job and being such cool guys to work with!