Our amazing drummer Cal Beaudoin has entered into a drumming competition and this is his submission video. He has already made it into the Semifinals and has been voted by the judges to be one of the Top 10 in Western Canada. The drum solo is pretty bad ass if I do say so myself. Be sure to check it out!
As most of you know I have been playing guitar this summer for the wicked band Long Way Down. I haven’t really posted a whole lot about it on the Living Illusion site (aside from Boonstock stuff) but there have been some pretty amazing shows I’ve played and I feel that it would be stupid not to write a post about them. That being said I’m gonna keep it short and just mention the shows and also a couple upcoming gigs as well.
June 18th2010 – Taphouse – St Albert, Alberta – We were a surprise headliner at the Alberta Last Band Standing Competition. We played with Hollywood Assassyn, The Flash Jam, R.C Sindicate, Oldbury, Heaviside, White Lightning, Apresnos
June 25th 2010 – Boonstock – Gibbons, Alberta – There are far to many bands to mention but here’s a bunch: Matthew Good, Ill Scarlet, Shout out out out out, Christian Hansen and the Autistics, Static in the Stars, The Offspring, Papa Roach, Chevelle, Age of Daze, Hollywood Assassyn, No Heat Tomorrow.
July 1st 2010 – Sawfest – Canada Day – Slave Lake, Alberta – We got the opportunity to play and hang out with Wide Mouth Mason and Kim Mitchell. It was a wild party after we played and the backstage treatment of the bands was incredible. The people up in Slave Lake really appreciate having live bands up there.
July 15th & 16th 2010 – Opening for Crash Karma – Union Hall – Edmonton, Alberta – The Taphouse – St Albert, Alberta – These we’re two amazing shows to play. We had an awesome time opening for a rock group with some of the members from bands we’ve been listening to since we were kids. If you don’t know who Crash Karma is, it consists of Edwin from I Mother Earth, Mike Turner from Our Lady Peace, Amir Epstein from Zygote and Jeff Burrows from the Tea Party. And yes, they’re fucking awesome.
August 14th 2010 - 3rd Annual Day of Destruction – Grande Prairie, AB – Long Way Down performs live along side 50cc Dirtbike races, Car & Truck Stunt Show, & a 125 Foot Waterslide with kicker for launching pedal bikes into the lake!
Well that’s all for now I’ll probably do one more Long Way Down update at the end of the summer if I play any more cool gigs with them.
Special thanks to Spoony for using our hard rock cover of his theme song, Break Me by the Irresponsible’s, on his most recent show/episode/review on The Spoony Experiment. It was super fun to record the song adding all the new changes and melody line tweaks. Spoony also did a wicked job as well editing the intro video to fit the badassness of the song. Definitely heavier and darker than the usual theme, but still awesome none the less. Let’s just hope he uses it again, maybe on a Halloween episode
Credits:
Engineering/Producing: Kevin Hoskin
Bass Guitar/Programming: Dave Stoten
Vocals: Jason Lamotte
Guitars: Shane Lamotte
The rewriting of the song was done by all of the above.
Original version of the song is called Break Me by The Irresponsibles.
Want a FREE copy of the new Living Illusion: Suffering CD? Well then go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fst7qv8NME4 and listen to what MrTyBoze has to say and he’ll hook you up! Special thanks for Ty for making the video and supporting the band.
We all really appreciate the people who get behind independent music, especially when it’s ours Be sure to subscribe to Ty’s Channel which can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/user/MrTYBOZE because well, he’s pretty freaking awesome.
Okay so here’s a music video for the track Let’s Start Over from our new album “Suffering”. It is again comprised of footage from the Living Illusion CD Release Party at the Starlite Room in Edmonton Alberta. Edited and filmed by Dan Holden of Phase Productions. Surprisingly people have said they actually like this video a little better than the video for Suffering, but I think that is up for debate. Hope you enjoy the song and like the video.
Initially I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to post this or not, but in the end I decided I should. I wanted to let everyone know what it takes financially to do a high production studio album, and keep in mind this is just an EP. Maybe this will help other bands make decisions on what they choose to do and how they choose to spend they’re money. Either way here it is:
Living Illusion Suffering Album Budget
Studio/Producer: $7,500
Mixing: $2,700
Mastering: $2,400
CD Duplication: $2,200
Remixes: $700
Drummer: $600
Pre-Pro Jam Space: $600
Album Cover Art: $400
Hard Drives: $350
Album Layout Design: $300
Drum Skins: $200
Cello Player: $150
Barcode: $50
Subtotal: $18,150
Additional Expenses:
Marketing Videos (EPK, Suffering): $900
T-Shirt Artwork: $390
CD Release Party Live Drummer: $300
T-Shirts & Hoodies Printing: $1,500
Subtotal: $3,090
Total: $21,240
So there it is. That is the money that was actually spent on the album. Yah, there were some other costs in there that weren’t directly related to the album itself ie. T-Shirts, but that being said you get the gist of it. You roughly need 15 – 20k to do an album with high end production values.
Last weekend I had the pleasure of playing with Long Way Down at Boonstock 2010. Boonstock has quickly become one of the premiere summer rock events in Alberta with over 25 bands including local and national acts (Past bands to play Boonstock include Three Days Grace, Shine Down, Offspring, Chevelle, Mathew Good, Papa Roach plus many more). It grows every year and this year was no different.
Long Way Down played on the main stage on Friday and we scored a backstage pass for the whole weekend. We had a wicked set even though playing outdoors at festivals can sometimes be a little hectic and crazy… very in and out, no sound check, use the festivals backline, etc. Although we did have an awesome sound guy and stage crew, those guys are amazing!
After our set on Friday we ended up coming back that day as it started raining and we had no desire to sleep in a tent in the rain. We went back to the city, ate dinner, power napped, and headed to the Taphouse in St Albert to watch Econoline Crush! They put on a great show as always, and we all drank enough to drown a school of fish. It was an awesome day all in all… and the next day was even better.
So come Saturday we headed back out to Boonstock in the afternoon, making sure to be there with enough time to catch Chevelle’s entire set. Our backstage pass was extremely handy at this point. We brought our cooler full of beer backstage and patiently awaited for Chevelle to hit the stage. When the band started playing we went out the front backstage area (the stage viewing area for people backstage I guess you could call it).
There set was AMAZING! Thoroughly rocked my face right off. After they were done we got to hang out and drink with their bass player, although this didn’t stop me from introducing myself to all of the boys from Chevelle and got them all to sign a copy of the New Living Illusion Disc (Also gave them a copy of it as well!). Needless to say… one of the best weekends of my life…
Alright, well after many months of waiting for the album to be finished we have finally gotten our video editor/camera man extraordinaire to make a video for our title track Suffering, from our new album of the same name, using the footage from our CD Release Party show at the Starlite Room in Edmonton (That’s totally a run on sentence but I am in too much of a hurry to fix it). The video looks awesome, I could not have made it look any where this good on my own.
Hope you guys enjoy the video and like the new song!
The boys from Long Way Down have asked me to join them for a couple shows this summer playing guitar with them. Honestly, I should be focusing more on Living Illusion gigs but let me tell you, it is going to be freaking awesome to take a break from LI to play some shows this summer and only have to worry about playing. I’m so used to having to book the shows, promote the shows, get the band together, schedule every one, sell tickets, online marketing etc that not having to do that for a change and just having to worry about performing my parts is going to be awesome!
To kick off playing this summer with Long Way Down we’re going to be playing at Boonstock just outside of Edmonton at the end of June. Notable bands we will be playing with include: Matthew Good, Papa Roach, Chevelle, Offspring, Ill Scarlett, Swollen Members, Age of Days and Hail the Villian. Needless to say it’s going to kick some serious ass. I’m super stoked to be playing Boonstock and did I mention I get a backstage pass! Here’s to hoping I can party and hang out with the boys from Chevelle (one of my favorite bands of all time!).
Beyond that there are a bunch of additional wicked shows in the pipeline although I don’t want to mention anything until they’re 100% confirmed.
Wow. Who would’ve thought that it would take a year and a half to complete a CD with only 9 songs on it. It’s been a long haul. We started Pre-Production in January of 2009 and now the chapter which is the follow up album to our first record is finally here. Why did it take so long you ask, well let’s do a recap.
Back in 2009 when we started this journey the biggest difficulty was finding a place to rehearse. Luckily our good friend Ryan had a house to himself in the little town of Leduc which was perfect for us to jam and write songs at (aside from the noise complaints from the neighbours that is). With regular rehearsals going off with out a hitch and our producer Kevin Hoskin working with us at the Jam space by April we were ready to hit the studio.
We moved all of our gear into Beta Sound Recording Studio and got pumped to start laying shit down. After some extra pre-production at the studio itself we started recording drums in May. Tracking drums was a breeze, Cal nailed all the songs in less than a day and you could really tell that all of our prior rehearsing paid off. Once that was done we took a little break for editing and had to regroup due to loss of our bass player.
Fast forward about a month and a half and we got back on track. Time to record guitars. This was by far my favorite part of the process. I basically hunted for all of the best amps that I could find. I did have a general guitar sound that I was going for, and seeing as I got all the amps I needed, our guitars sound freaking amazing and exactly how I wanted them to. Recording took a few days, we blew up an amp, all in all it was awesome.
By this time we ended up finding our new bass player, Dave Stoten, and all the pieces came together for recording bass. It actually went by really fast, Dave is a machine. With only being given the gig to track bass for us with about 10 days notice Dave pulled through on all fronts. Also he is a perfect fit for the band.
Now for the last part of the recording process. Vocals. Vocals again were surprisingly quick, it helps that Jay has an amazing ear. It only took a couple nights to get it all done up. So by this time when vocals got completed it was getting into August 2009 and we made the executive decision to hold off on releasing the album until Summer 2010. No one wants to tour in the winter in Canada.
Now it’s June 2010 and the time has finally come. After remixing and remastering the record between September 2009 and May 2010 on three occasions with three different mixers and 2 different mastering guys we have finally finished. It’s done. There is nothing else that we need to do, it’s time to release the damn thing (especially because our CD release party was 2 months ago!!). All I can say is that I don’t regret taking the extra time, and spending the extra money to get it to sound exactly how it needed to.
If I have any advice to give here it is, don’t ever assume that mixing is less important or easier than any other part of the recording process. It is probably the MOST important. I have learned more about compression, EQ’s and SSL consoles than I have thought I would ever need to. Take your time with the whole process. Listen to multiple versions of your mixes and trust your ears.
AND THE MOST IMPORTANT THING: Never Set a Release Date Until the Album is DONE!
So that is that. It’s done, it’ll be up on iTunes and I’ll have physical discs to flog in the next couple weeks. Special thanks to Nathan Kidd for coming on board and mixing the shit out of the album.
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