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"We did the three jams on Heaven/Hell, one after the other just like you hear them. Infact our buddy Don Stewerrt shows up right before we start track three and I think you can here us all say "BIG DON " as he walks in right before we start the song "end of tape." Hey man tape was rollin'!!" Words | Jason  The whole idea of the 'Heaven/Hell' session was to capture the jams we had just been playing for the last 3 weeks while on tour with Gorch Fock. We had just finished up a 3 week leg on the west coast U.S. with our good friend Jamey Simms filling in on bass. Andrew, our original bass player couldn't make it so Jamey went with us and saved our asses!! The tunes sounded great, Jamey found his space right in between Erik and I and we hashed out 3 weeks worth of jams that needed documentation, so as soon as we made it home I got us into The Sweatbox where I worked as an engineer, for a session. For those of you who arent familiar with The Sweatbox, it was a legedary punk rock studio in an legendary building in down town Austin. Cherubs Heroine Man, Quintron, Lung Fish, Fireballs of Freedom, Bleach from Japan, Tim Kerr, Mike Maraconda, Cardinale, Monkey Wrench among others all recorded at The Sweatbox, and tons of bands had practice spaces in the same building. I mean if there was an epi-center of Austin musicians, this was it. The building has since caught fire, twice in fact, and no longer exists, but we were lucky enough to load our shit in for a session a couple of months before it burned to the ground!!! Set up was easy, the charm of Sweatbox was you could do it with out headphones, so we set up live in the main room using other guitar cabs and things as baffles but still blistering loud so we all could hear eachother. I played through my Marshall JMP with a 4x12 and a solid state Vox AC30, just 3 close mics I think. jamey was playing through a 50 watt Bassman into 8x10's and Erik on his awesome drum kit [too tired to name the sizes but a big 24" kit]. I like ambient drum sounds so I tried too get a decent room sound with all of us in there as well. The great thing about Sweatbox is that you could get good separation in there, no problem. So we got the sounds fairly quickly. After that it was just about pressing 'play' on the tape machine, of course, and running out to the main room and jammin.' The first song we did was a version of "Carrera" which we ended up scrapping on the tape but we saved a copy on CD [you can find the mp3 on our website]. After hearing the sounds and making adjustments we were ready to try again and it worked. We did the three jams on Heaven/Hell, one after the other just like you hear them. Infact our buddy Don Stewerrt shows up right before we start track three and I think you can here us all say "BIG DON " as he walks in right before we start the song "end of tape." Hey man tape was rollin'!! Anyway that song gets cutt off about 3 minutes in and the other 2 were great. I mixed it about a week or so layer and we sat on it for a while, in fact we even recorded another album, Australian Cattle God's Tia Carrera S/T CD, before we decided that The Sweatbox recording needed to be released. Thanks to Mauro and Dave at Arclight, its out. My super cool babies mamma hooked us up with the killer 4 panel master piece for the art work and it was done. Mastered by Jim Wilson, airshow mastering in Colorado, who, when I said "make it sound like Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir", didn't blink or stutter", he just did it, and I'm totally fucking stoked that people dig it. What more can I say? The actuall session took about 2 hrs total, including set up, drinking and smoking, sounds and the rolling of tape. Mixing took about 2 hrs as well, so in all of 4hrs we designed a killer soundtrack, perfect for anyone about to spend 35 minutes with a few friends and their favorite bong!!! HEAVEN/HELL > 5 things that helped us out... Jimi Hendrix | Any live record, Band of Gypsies and later Experience stuff Most of my interest in Hendrix comes from listening to live or bootleg stuff. Mainly the later stuff because it seems to have more groove and space, they were jammin a lot more. Songs like "Hear My Train A Comin" and "Machine Gun" with their slo jam roots really peak out when the guitar solo comes in and just shoots the jam into overdrive and then about 6 or 7 minutes later they go back to the root jam or a different one and take the song somewhere else. I use to say the Tia Carrera jams were like the middle of a Jimi Hendrix song. Just a long crazy guitar solo and a rhythm section laying down some sexy shit. Melvins songs | 'Hung Bunny' on "Lysol" and "Eye Fly" on Gluey Porch Treatments TENSION! These guys mastered the art of making you wait and wait, by the time the drums start building up your in a frenzy just waiting for the whole song to come together with a crushing blow. When I first heard 'Eye Fly' I loved it -it was so fucking heavy and twisted it blew my mind. I saw them live every time I had the chance after that. Nirvana | "Heart Shaped Box" Growing up in the north west I naturally could not resist Nirvana, mainly earlier stuff like "Bleach" and before that, but when "In Utero" came out with 'Heart Shaped Box' as the single, the riff was just cool as shit. So for what ever reason the beginning riff came up in one of our jams while on tour right before we recorded the "Heaven/Hell" EP, that's why I originally called the jam "Hell", "The Heart Shaped Jam." Led Zeppelin In general the grooves and boogies of Led Zep influence us all in Tia Carrera. Whether its Bonham's stomp or the slippery solo's of Jimmy Page, it definitely comes out in one way or another on "Heaven/Hell." Also the sound of the recording and the way it was mastered has a Zeppelin vibe. Cream | "Disraeli Gears" The beginning of "Heaven" and particularly the last part of the "Hell" or "Heart Shaped Jam" has this sort of descending riff and a wailing solo over it that reminds me of "Proud Ulysses" or something, I'm sure that crept in there unconsciously but Clapton is another dude I like to call on as an influence, not a big one but there's a little bit of him in there. Tia Carrera | "Can You See Me" |
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