Terrible Majesty - The Making Of (Pt. 1)
Terrible Majesty is one month old today! Thank you to everyone who has listened and a huge thank you to those who have shared it with friends. In the spirit of thankfulness, I thought I’d share a little bit of the process of making the album and highlight a few of the people who helped bring the record to life.
Once the songs were written, it was time to assemble a rhythm section. I turned to my friend and longtime collaborator Cameron Stedman for bass guitar and to a drummer I’d admired for a long time, Josh Malyon.
We were in the process of rehearsing the songs and giving them shape when the pandemic slowed our plans. When the lockdown finally lifted, we relearned the songs, schlepped a few carloads of gear to Cameron’s mom’s place, and set up a temporary studio in her basement.
We decked the place out with foam bass traps, U-Haul moving blankets, and other makeshift sound treatment. We got the drums all tuned and mic’d up and set up a bass amp in a bedroom down the hall.
Erin helmed the mix board and took notes on which takes had the most pizzazz. I played my acoustic guitar parts on an electric guitar that was running into Cameron and Josh’s earphones so that we could get a natural-feeling groove without my acoustic guitar bleeding into the drum mics.
Cameron (pictured here looking like an extra on Breaking Bad) dialed in the perfect bass tones, kept the groove strong, and tastefully added some amazing fills to make the low end really pop.
Josh (pictured here behind his sound rejection/coronavirus rejection screen) kept us in time, added a lot of refined detail, and brought a healthy dose of swagger to the recordings.
Over three sessions, we recorded the drums and bass for the whole record. It was then time to figure out how to layer on everything else.
To be continued…