Sessions:

2011 - Prairie Sun
2012 - Decibelle

2013 - Hangar

2014 - New, Improved

2015 - WHTBLDG

2016 - Orient Street

2017 - Orient Street

2018 - Public Hi Fi

Drums / Percussion:

James McAlister
Jason Slota
Alex DeCarville

Bass:

Elijah Thomson

Nate Brenner

Kurt Kotheimer

Michael Zapruder

Guitars:

Michael Zapruder

Joe Davancens

Keyboards:

Kevin Seal

Steve Hogan

Matt Cunitz

Michael Zapruder

Tinted Vapors/Grimulence:

Scott Solter

Strings:

Adria Otte

Alan Lin

Horn:

Monika Warchol

Marimba/Vibraphone:

Jason Slota

Joel Davel

Sitar:

Peter Van Gelder

Invented Instruments:

Bart Hopkin

Vocals:

Michael Zapruder

Production / Recording/ Mixing

Scott Solter

In 2011, Scott Solter and I went to Prairie Sun Studio in Cotati, CA for a little more than a week. I had more than twenty songs, mostly in half-finished form, and I was imagining a big, sprawling, uninhibited record, with all kinds of songs mixed together. I invited a bunch of great musicians, several of whom slept in the freezing and very damp cabin we had. We worked long days. We made a bunch of music but it was hard to hear a record in there. The working title was "Thou Shalt Be New."

 

Almost a year later Scott and I went to Decibelle Studios in San Francisco, CA, where I added some new songs and started to ask the musicians to work on lots of cross-rhythms and things like that. I brought more great musicians in. The mixing board broke. We put more sounds on the songs and things were even more unclear after this session than after the first.

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The following summer, in June of 2013, we went to Hangar Studios in Sacramento, CA. We all slept in the building, a giant warehouse space by the railroad tracks, filled with figurines and long hallways and empty rooms. Some things seemed to take shape a little bit. Something about rhythm and songwriter music.

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During 2014, at some point I recorded some bass, some sitar, and some guitars with Eli Crews and Mark Allen Piccolo at New, Improved Studios in Berkeley, CA. I was still working on the idea of doing a big record, an unapologetic mess of 20+ songs. 

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In 2015, in the summer, just before moving to Austin, TX, I worked in my studio space, WHTBLDG, trying to finish the record before the move. Some good things seemed to happen, but the sense of a record was still nowhere to be found. 

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In 2016 I realized that the record as I had envisioned it was not going to work. I cut more than half of the songs. I changed the title to "Latecomers."

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In the fall of 2017, I called Scott and asked him to take eight of the songs I had selected and produce them - get them ready for me to re-sing them. He worked his magic at his Orient Street Studio.

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In the summer of 2018 I went to Public Hi Fi Studios in Austin, TX with Grant Eppley, and tracked a bunch of vocals, some piano, and quite a few other things. Later in the summer I went to North Carolina to try to mix the record with Scott at Orient Street. We mixed some, but also decided that I should re-sing a few things. We worked remotely through the summer and fall and finally finished mixing Latecomers in September, 2018. 

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Dave McNair mastered it in November.