The Woods

So it would seem that the promised Woods box set withered on the vine or worse. Not so! Everything takes longer than it should and this project has certainly followed that rule.

A little back history... We started talking about releasing and/or re-releasing the Woods recordings before David Enloe passed away last November. I had the multi-tracks that Jamie Hoover recorded in Clover SC. Jaime added his parts to those recordings and the multi-tracks need to be baked and transferred. We have the RCA recordings the Bill and Dan produced. We have pretty good copies of the TwinTone/Demon Records releases of It's Like This. We have various live shows of The Woods and the one reel of tape we thought was lost was discovered in Terry's house. This reel is the Woods performance in Chicago opening for Dixon/Jones on the WXRT Budget Night show. When Reflection Studio in Charlotte closed its doors all of the tapes that had anything to do with the Woods/Don Dixon ended up stored at Mitch Easters place in Winston. I met those guys early this year and we had a field day looking though old multi-tracks to find any and all of the Woods stuff. Along with the Woods stuff I found reels of Fabulous Knobs and Woodpeckers! We recorded Golden Light, Open All Night and Tell My Fortune. Mark Enloe has a live Woodpeckers that i haven't heard yet. Mitch has now transferred all of that stuff digitally so that we can mix it or at least get it ready for mastering. This has turned out to be a big project but one Terry and I want to complete as soon as possible.

So what has been goin on?

Hmmmm, updates are clearly lacking here at 411. The OAKTeam project is ongoing with about a dozen songs recorded and more to come. Soul, rock, pop... it's all there.

Jonathan has been working with Harbor View to get that project finished. They have great songs and an amazing singer.  Jonathan also started a project with Will Anderson and Adam Ferguson of Alesana. One word: HUGE. When the kids hear this they will be blown away.

Steve Boyle was in town last week filming more interviews for his Return To Comboland documentary. Steve interviewed Terry in the tall grass of my front yard. I served the wine... Since Terry took all of the good light, Steve interviewed me in the house. We talked at least two hours. It was fun trying to remember stuff from all those years ago. Dunno when this stuff will finally make it to a screen near you but you will be blown away when it happens.

Monty Warren's Trailer Park Angel

It's official! The master was approved, art was approved, and DiskMakers stamped out a bunch of shiny silver discs. The Trailer Park Angel will be available worldwide June 17, 2008. The cd is currently available at CDBaby.

check it out!

Monty Warren

We are winding up the final mixes for Trailer Park Angel. Mastering is scheduled at The Kitchen on February 5th. The cd should see the light of day by April , on Doublenaught Records. We started recording in March of 07 and finishing up Jan 08. Not bad for a long distance project. The recording features members of the OAKTeam and Tres Chicas for the rhythm section with guest spots by Caitlin Cary, Rick Richards, Alex Maiolo and Roger Gupton. It's rockin'!

OAKTeam

Terry, Jonathan and I have finally started some real work on the new OAKTeam record. Terry tracked electric guitar, then we tried a number of different approaches to an acoustic guitar part. We were having fun using some of the pre-made channel strips in Logic, but they ended up inspiring the approach. The song is called ' Lost Your Number'. Jonathan built a drum loop, Terry sang and I added a fretless bass part. All in all a very productive evening. We are planning on this approach until Dave and Greg get a break in their schedules to track as a band.

Ryan Hamlin

I met this kid several months ago when he and his father brought a track they had recorded at another local studio. I was blown away by the maturity in his playing and song arrangement. We arranged a session back in late spring. The original plan was to have Will Anderson track drums along with Ryan, unfortunately that did not work out. Ryan and his dad Rick came over to demo some songs. We tracked a few basic tracks with Ryan playing piano and when it came time to sing discovered that Ryan had spent his voice at rehearsal the night before with his 'screamo' band. We left it for a later date, which unfortunately didn't come around until August. He came this time by himself and we tracked another couple of songs and then decided to flesh out one of the songs with guitar, bass and vocals. He is good enough at most instruments so he played the parts and then we parked him in front of the Peluso to sing. Every take got better and better as his voice warmed up and he became more comfortable in front of the mic. He took direction well. We sent him away with with a few roughs. Hopefully we can get back together soon.