Mustardy Day Two

Day Two of The Mustardy Sessions began with horrible weather in the forecast. Not a huge problem, unless one of the band members is driving 35 miles to the session. Which, in fact, was exactly the case. But freezing rain (turning to sleet, turning to snow) could not deter Jon from making it to the first full Chuxx session of this new album.

We began by playing Jon the tracks we had laid down on Saturday, and then launched into adding instruments to "Bellydancing Superstars". Jon came up with a guitar line loosely (or maybe not so loosely) based on "Jamie's Crying" that actually works really well with the Eastern groove of the song. Skap added some violin (keyboard) and ukulele (the Chuxx new favorite instrument). I added a real bass (replacing the MIDI bass of the scratch track) and some slightly Emerson-ian organ.

Around time for lunch (Culver's Butterburgers...quite delicious) came the conversation of what to do: do we keep laying down rough tracks for other songs or do we try to finish at least one track. We were a little split on this issue, but came to an agreement that as we moved forward, we would try to finish a song or two for each session we got together. But that wasn't necessary in this first session as we were just getting the project off the ground.

That said, we came pretty close with "Bellydancing Superstars", I think. Other than some backing vocals, I'm not sure what else we need.

After lunch, we were visited by Bill Biggar (hopefully spelled right here) and his two nephews, who happen to be HUGE fans of the new album. Their favorite song? "Che Gusto." Go figure. So they sat in and watched while I laid down a scratch vocal track on "Her Grandfather, The Robert Frost of Korea" and while Jon tried out a lead guitar line during that same song's bridge.

Once that was done, we decided to take advantage of Bill's deep voice and the two kids in attendance by having them record wild lines for a so far unwritten song titled "Grandpa Grub." It's a touching story about the wily old grandpa who comes to babysit, but the parents aren't too wild about it. What with him letting the kids play under the sink and "washing down" their vegetables with tablespoons of bourbon.

At least, that's what the song seems to be about now...in our heads. We'll see what happens when Skap and Steve actually write the music and lyrics.