Sunday at the studio
Night Flight Studio, Fort Washington, MD

Familiar Faces
I sat in with Familiar Faces at the studio to work on their upcoming album and possible PA as well. I first arrived at the originally scheduled time of noon. Night Flight is in the back of a house in a residential neighborhood - its owner is Kevin, formerly of the GoGo band Prophecy in his mother's home. I played pool with one of the employees, then waiting for a return call from Scotty Beats (the engineer FF was to work with); who told the manager Jeff that it was re-scheduled for 8 PM as D-Floyd had to work. I left and came back a little before 8 PM (I did see at home that FF had emailed me about the re-scheduling, but I had already left by that time).

I could see FF's equipment minivan already parked there. I walked around back and Bojack, Thomas, and Googie sat there with Bojack's congas and Bongos set up in their stands. Bojack asked me about where in Bethesda I am from and what other GoGo bands are my favorites. I told him Trouble Funk and that I had seen them last weekend. Thomas had three cell phones and a two-way radio. Bojack talked about how his Mercedes was in the shop. They discussed how the second percussionist at Reggie's, Charlie, is a protege of Bojack's. Bojack held a cowbell, insisting that he could play a beat with just the cowbell (and drum stick), but Googie said without another beat to match it with that it was "Just noise". Scotty came back and told us the current session was running long, the FF session wouldn't start until 9 PM.

Googie had somewhere to go, all three of them got up and walked out: Bojack didn't leave, but the other two did. At one point I went back to my car to get cough drops (I had literally coughed myself to sleep after getting home from Reggie's) and Bojack talked with Jauhar out front.

Donnell showed up later and talked with Scotty about (producer) Rich Harrison's hit songs with major label artists that feature GoGo beats. Rich Harrison is from DC and is Scotty's cousin, Scotty engineers for him. At one point, Scotty asked Donnell if he thought Rich might have heard a specific GoGo song as inspiration for the GoGo-featured song Take Your Hand on Usher's album "Confessions". Donnell responded, "Did Jay-Z hear Overnight Scenario?" (This is a reference to Jay-Z's sampling of the song for the song Do It Again (Put Your Hands Up) from the album Life and Times of S. Carter, see here for more details). Later, Donnell referred to this as how they get big and keep us (GoGo bands) in the "poorhouse".

We finally got in at around 9 PM. I used my Dad's DV video camera, but the battery, which was supposed to last three hours, died in a little over four minutes and he didn't leave me an A/C converter, so I used the other digital camera I have been using for the rest of the session - I took a few stills and a number of movies. We were in the Platinum Room (there is also a Green Room at Night Flight). There is a mixing board along with a MacIntosh computer system. The software used is Pro Tools HD - Scotty said that the HD version allows you to create a warm sound.

Scotty, Donnell, Bojack, Jauhar and myself were in the studio. In a discussion with Jauhar, Donnell had said he was surprised after reading an interview of Marc Cary, about just how smart he was.

Today's sessions focused on mixing/editing the live recording from Wednesday. FF's album, which Donnell said with work on the packaging and all should drop in the top of September, has been worked on for two years. Mike and Adia will overdub their vocals on the studio tracks on Monday to reflect the changes in personnel since the tracks were originally laid down. In addition three tracks from the live recording will be included on the album, and Donnell is considering including the entire live performance (Scotty was present and working the sound at the performance) as a bonus with the album.

Bojack was not present at the recorded performance, so he was here play the congas and bongos for overdubbing onto the the live mix. Apparently Dwayne had a bad cord, since his feed went in and out on the recording. It turns out that BJ played the grand piano on Wednesday because his keyboard did not work. Scotty and Donnell had a conversation about it. BJ said the Ensoniq ASR-10 (which belongs to Familiar Faces, not BJ) worked properly at home, but did not function at Tuesday's rehearsal. Donnell told him to bring the Yamaha keyboard which works, but he ended up bringing the Ensoniq on Wednesday, and it did not work. Scotty said that they don't make or even REPAIR that model anymore; he suggested that BJ come by and copy his sounds on to Scotty's ASR-10, which he can then transfer to a sampler to preserve them in case the ASR-10 ceases functioning altogether. BJ also played the mini-moog on Wednesday, but for some reason it was not recorded. Also, Donnell's tenor Sax had squeaked during Wednesday's performance- he talked about how he was so angry, he wanted to break it in half. So Scotty edited to remove some of that as well.

Jauhar left and later Nephew and Mike came in. Mike only stayed for a little while - I guess he was there in case he would be recorded in that session, but it did not happen.

When Nephew came in, he wanted Donnell to settle an argument he had had earlier in the day with some girl over whether Patti Labelle is a better singer than Chaka Khan. Donnell said that he had this discussion with the late Ms. Mack (Rare Essence's manager) years ago. She had said that you can't really compare Patti, Chaka, and Aretha Franklin. They come from different musical backgrounds (Gospel, Jazz and R&B) and are so good at what they do respectively that you can't really rank them. Donnell said that Whitney Houston and Beyonce (Knowles). Nephew said that prior to Beyonce's solo album (Dangerously in Love); he didn't know she could sing. Donnell said people just see her as hot and don't realize she has real talent. They turned to Scotty to settle it. He said that Beyonce really is talented in that vein, although she has to "create power", but that she is very talented. However, he said someone who will blow up is Fantasia (Barrino) from American Idol. He said that he's never seen American Idol, but that he heard her on in his hotel room in New York and that her singing so affected him that he cried. Donnell also talked about Lalah Hathaway, the singer and daughter of DC native singer Donny Hathaway. Scotty talked about how Donny met Roberta Flack at Howard University. Donny was an undergraduate and Roberta a grad student. Donny would play the piano and sing outside and that caught Roberta's attention. Shortly after this conversation, Nephew went to sleep and slept until the end of the session.

Donnell told Scotty that Adia "Would be a star for this market, she has the personality, she just needs to work on her intonation."

Googie came in later and assisted on the mixing - Donnell said, "Googie help Scotty, he doesn't know anything about GoGo." As soon as Bojack finished, he left. While working on this, a number of musical discussions went on. Bojack thought Saturday's performance at Reggie's was terrible. Donnell said that "Bojack just hears what's going on around the congos, he doesn't hear what the audience hears in total." I told him I thought it was really crankin', but that I still thought that Club Levels was their best performance this summer. Donnell said that he hated it. He also told me that while it appeared that Go-Go Mickey just happened to be there (which is what I thought), it was pre-arranged, that "He was paid to be there and you can print that." (It makes me wonder how many other of the sit-in performances by other artists are pre-arranged vs. happenstance). He said that it was like "Michael Jordan with a bunch of senior citizens. Go-Go Mickey is so talented and dominating, he is a like an octopus, with his hands a thousand places at once."

I talked about how Rare Essence is releasing a live album with DVD on August 3rd. He was well aware of it and said that "It was a mistake." I asked him why and he said that "Rare Essence is a group known for its innovation and original songs, and that for them at their high level to do covers unless they do it at the highest level (in terms of quality music) will lower them in terms of prestige in the eyes of GoGo fans." He went on to say that "L!ssen does the best covers." He did say that he heard the RE album and DVD was good. I mentioned how I heard L!ssen was reverting back to more GoGo, Googie asked Donnell about that because he hadn't heard about it. Donnell said that "L!ssen had been doing 70% covers and 30% GoGo and now there reversing the ratio." He said, "That was a mistake too."

I asked why Familiar Faces had only put out one PA release this year (and only six total the previous three years); Donnell said, "That with the care that Backyard and Rare Essence have taken with their PA releases, it has really raised the bar on quality. This makes substandard releases highly noticeable. Old PA's have had fights and other things that aren't being included now."

Donnell and Scotty also talked about other studios in the area, Cue, Central Recording Studio (Bladensburg, MD) and Sheffield. Cue offered to buy any equipment/software required by Scotty as an incentive to try to keep his cousin, producer Rich Harrison, as a client. He asked for Pro Tools HD, and they declined (I can't print why here). Donnell talked about how Rare Essence had used the studio before with another engineer known as "Face".

They discussed of how studio speakers "lie" - that the recordings sound differently in regular speakers. Donnell talked about how they recorded eighteen different mixes of Lock It - they would go to the one band member's Saab in order to listen to it, but later it would sound differently. It turns out the band member had tuned his car stereo so that it would sound like the studio's stereo, thus defeating the purpose.

They only got through the mixing the Jazz set of the recording, so we all left at a little before 3 AM. Scotty arranged a time with Googie for Monday to resume working on the mixing and Mike & Adia's overdubs.