A new wheel

In January charter member Gary Lauzon left the band and we have been auditioning bassists since. Last week we had out last audition and we are excited to announce bassist Claude Prince will be the newest wheel. Claude has immaculate prog credentials having been a member for Nathan Mahl for their arguably most popular albums "Clever Use of Shadows" and "Heretic". As well he was the bassist for their now famous live gig at Nearfest, back in 2002, when they blew away many prog fans.

We had auditioned quite a few players, both formally and informally and were getting a little worried that we mightn't find the right fit. Quite a few had expressed interest but most of them balked when they realized both the work involved playing the tunes, and the distances needed to travel to rehearsals, (while we are basically an Ottawa-based band, we rehearse outside of the city). No matter, as it turns out, Claude came along and blew us all away with his chops and his personality. Not only had he learned the requiste tunes (pretty tricky ones at that), but he had also taken a trial drive by our rehearsal spot just so that he would know the way on the day of the actual audition.

Given his lineage, all of us felt that his audition was more a matter of finding whether the personalities were a fit. Nevertheless he played the pieces with such aplomb that even if they weren't, we would still have been eager to have him join. As it turns out though Claude fit right in regardless, so the band is now poised to enter what all of us feel as being our strongest phase yet.

In other news, we are still tracking parts for our new CD, as well as another tune for a 10T complilation of twisted cover tunes called Undercover. The idea here is for every band on 10T to submit a re-worked version of an influential tune. We have chosen Cross-Eyed Mary and have almost finished it. Quite fun that.

So here are some pictures of various recording sessions we have done lately. We have used Shattered Wings, my studio and our rehearsal spot for the various tracking sessions. The mix is to be done in my studio (as before) and the mastering is tentatively set to be done at Raven.