Houston rock oddballs Only Beast have a unique almost prog-ish kinda sound that is hard to describe, but the band is so magnetic to watch you become mesmerized just the same.

Only Beast plays the Outside Revolution Stage Friday May 18th @ 10:45pm
http://www.myspace.com/onlybeast

Imagine if Veruca Salt was reincarnated as a hard-riffing groove-oriented stoner metal band. If so, they’d only be pretenders to the Modok throne. These punk rock lifers remembered what was great about classic heavy metal and instill a new heartbeat into it, blending ‘90s alt-rock, prog rock musical alchemy and straight-on thrash.

Modok plays the Stagecenter Stage Saturday May 19th @ 10pm
http://modok.bandcamp.com

For many punk rockers crossing 40 means it’s time to mellow out, maybe set the Les Pauls and Marshalls down and explore something, you know, a little more mature…Houston’s Chelsea Hotel says fuck that. And they mean FUCK THAT emphatically. Amps are cranked, drums are slammed, vocal chords are shredded and power chord punk rock anthems are lofted to the sky in praise to living life and surviving on your own terms.

Chelsea Hotel plays the Stagecenter Stage Saturday May 19 @ 11PM
http://reverbnation.com/chelseahotel

Houston metal band Venomous Maximus straddles the line between ultra-heavy stoner rock and the punk-influenced gallop of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. Heshers of a certain age will flip the fuck out when these days raise up the devil horns and turn up the Marshalls. These guys have played with High On Fire, Mastodon, and Fu Manchu in the last year. Come see them in a small venue before they blow up nationally.

Venomous Maximus headlines the Stagecenter Stage Saturday May 19th @ 12am
http://facebook.com/VenomousMaximus

OK, so you’ve seen other two-person bands and you feel that format has been done to death.  Wait until you see San Antonio’s Cavegirl.  These two dudes NEVER stop moving.  The drummer is a Tasmanian Devil-cum-Keith Moon whirlwind of flying sticks and wavering cymbals, and the singer-guitarist guy looks like your local reference library assistant on some serious crack for rockunroll.  Together they blister rock and blooze in a way that people just don’t do anymore, and certainly not around here.

Cavegirl plays the Revolution Stage Saturday May 19th at 12:30pm

http://woepol.com

We drove over late on a Wednesday night with quite possibly a ton of gear plus all four X-Ops.  We made it to the studio by 11:30pm.   Chico has been operating this studio for nearly 10 years, and his collection of gear and the studio’s layout shows that commitment.  We are all directed to our individual corners of the studio and we unload the van and supply our corners with all the gear we brought.  We head out to a local bar for a nightcap and then back to Chico’s 100-year old house.

The next morning we head out for some food truck action, as that is what Austin locals do, and the lot of us have some manner of Izzoz Tacos eating (except Jess & Michael, who share this goddawful lump of blue balls from the gourmet donut truck).   I think the rest of us did much better with our tempura-battered and fried avocado tacos.  Anyhow, we get the day nice and started, energized and whatnot, and then back to Ohm for the day.  Our first task is to help Jessica get her drums together.  We opted not to bring her kit in favor of using the studio’s in-house stuff.  Figured we could use the space in the van plus we thought that Chico would know better what to do with his own drums than ours.  So we cobbled the good sounds together with Jessica’s 14×5 Keller shell custom maple snare and Sabian cymbals, my K dark thin crash, and Chico’s 1960′s keystone badge Ludwig 22×14 kick and 90s Tama Starclassic birch 16×16 floor tom.  Chico gets her all mic’ed up, with two sets of room mics, three different kick mics (including a subwoofer mic) and several mics on the snare and tom.

I pop into my little corner of the studio and get my guitar rig up to speed.  I used my regular gigging set-up: a 1990s Mesa Boogie Mark I reissue 100w tube amp head and Peavey Classic 410E 4×10 speaker cabinet.  I expected to just use my stuff, but Chico wanted to bi-amp me, so we set up the studio’s Handwired Vox AC30 2×12 tube combo and get it all mic’ed and EQ’ed up. 

Michael had already planned on using multiple amps, and set up his Fender Deluxe Reverb reissue 22w 1×12 tube combo, Fender Twin 80w tube head + Avatar 2×12 speaker cabinet and his Fargen Decade 50w tube head (A handwired Marshall JMP/JMT/JCM clone) + Avatar 2×12 speaker cabinet.  Michael A-B switched between two amps at a time, depending on which song we were recording. 

Steve brought a small SWR solid state amp that he liked to record with, but we wound up using the studio’s ampeg SVT tube bass head plus a couple of 4×10 cabinets that really gave Steve a full and meaty sound.  Then we were onto the lengthy process of mic’ing everything up, wiring it all, and then getting us all situated in the live tracking room with our headphone amps and pedalboards.  After four hours of set-up we were finally amplified to rock.

The first song up at bat was “Portrait of an Artist In Flames”, a very simple hard rocking song that started more Nirvana-esque but the band had arranged now more towards a Husker Du approach.  Michael chose his Les Paul Tribute with P90s and a blend of the Fargen and Twin.  I chose my SG-1 with a burstbucker on the bridge.  After about a dozen attempts the band achieved an acceptable take.

The second song we recorded was “Gay For Satan”, a Sebadoh-ish garage-y rocker with nonsense words and a chorus inspired by a slogan we had read on the back of a stop sign in north Austin a couple of years back.  Michael used his 52 Wildwood Telecaster, and I opted for my MIJ Jazzmaster.  This one came together rather quick, and we recorded two good takes to build from.

Third, the band went after “Let’s Go To Sleep and Dream”, a really short burst of a love song that reminded me of a Superchunk song.  Normally this song roars, but in January as we began rehearsing for recording, the song became more and more controlled, to the point that we began to use space more.  I dialed a cleaner sound on my amp and plugged in my AmSpec Telecaster; Michael plugged in his new MIJ 12-string Stratocaster.  We recorded two acceptable takes and moved on.

The next song at bat was “Postcards”, a rocking indie-rock song.  At first, this song was a bit more jangly, but I opted for the SG to give it a more meaty sound.  Michael plugged in his US Stratocaster and away we went, catching a couple of good takes.

By this time we began to fatigue a bit and took a break for playbacks, meanwhile Chico’s better half Whitney (Black Cock’s vocalist/keyboardist) showed up to take a few in-studio pictures (she is a professional wedding photographer).  So with new energy we tackled two complete takes of “Dead Eyes”, the album’s centerpiece and more improvised song.  I was afraid we’d scotch this one a few times but the first two takes were keepers (we grafted the beginning of take two onto take one).  Jess grabbed her maracas for this one, Michael picked up his J Mascis Jazzmaster and I went back after my Jazzmaster.

Upon completing of basic tracking, we dove in immediately into overdubs.  We planned on very minimal overdubbing and everything had been mapped previously, so I knew what we’d do.  During the noise breakdown for “Dead Eyes” we overdubbed some transient radio noise, courtesy of one of Steve’s interesting devices, run through the studio’s Fulltune Tube Tape Echo.  After some trial and error we get a winning take, with Steve operating his noise box and me twisting knobs on the tape echo.

I added a second guitar to the choruses of “Portrait of an Artist In Flames”.  The intent was to get a ratted out overdriven small amp (Michael’s Deluxe) sound hit by a Stratocasters #2 pickup position, referred to loving as “the Strat quack”.  First take through I’m not feeling the sound.  I ask Chico and Michael for more gain out of the amp and I get none from the amp side.  Chico hooked me up with an MXR Micro Amp pedal and all his well.  Quickly discover I like the bridge pickup better with more powerful toe with the Deluxe so we took one pass through and I nailed it.

The last song to take an overdub was “Postcards”, and that song added a big burly RAWK guitar sound courtesy of the studio’s 1970′s Les Paul into Michael’s Fargen set for JCM tones.  What a heavy frickin’ guitar tonally AND weight-wise!  I plugged in directly in the amp room so I could let it feedback real nice.  And that concluded basic tracking.  An hour ahead of schedule.

I was able to con Chico into throwing up a vocal mic so we could get a quick and dirty rough mix for one song, so I opt to finish “Let’s Go To Sleep & Dream”.  Chico put me in the vocal booth with some manner of tube mic and after some trial and error I captured about 6 takes of the vocal.  I’ve been sick recently and my voice was thrashed, so these tracks aren’t keepers, just mainly for reference.  Chico attempts to autotune me and throws some tube echo on the vocal.  And voila!  We are finally done.  We pack  up as much as we can, then head out for some dinner at 24 Diner plus a quick duck into Waterloo Records (always a treat for me).  Then back to Chico’s to load up and see about getting some mixes, but those will not be forthcoming as there was a complication in bit rate for the recording that requires Chico to dump allour tracks to his Otari 24-track 2″ tape machine then back into the computer at a full 96k.

From here we will need to go back for a half day for vocal overdubs and anything else (I may add organ to the verses of “Let’s Go To Sleep and Dream”) and a full day for mixing.  Then we will be halfway done with the album!

We share with you a rough vocal mix of “Let’s Go To Sleep & Dream” from this session.  It may surprise some of you to note there are songs lying beneath all that racket we make.
http://soundcloud.com/kellyminnis/the-ex-optimists-lets-go-to

See Rock City (ATX), Only Beast (HTX), Skyacre Spyplane (ATX), Girl Band (BCS), ASS (BCS), Stout City Luchadores (Victoria), Modern Convenience (Memphis), The Ex-Optimists (BCS), Sea of Wolves (BCS), Lee Bucker & The River Bends (Corpus Christi), Labs (ATX), Modok (ATX), Chelsea Hotel (HTX), Venomous Maximus (HTX), Alkari (HTX), Strike Threagles (BCS), Mike the Engineer (BCS), The Stand Alones (ATX), Come And Take It (ATX), Angel Sluts (Memphis), Rubella Muti (ATX), The Hangouts (BCS)

Friday May 18th 2 stages @ Revolution Cafe & Bar, Bryan.  Doors at 8pm.
Saturday May 19th 2 stages @ Revolution Cafe & Bar + Stagecenter, Bryan.  Doors at 6pm.
One $5 wristband gets you into all shows both days.
Sponsored by Arsenal Tattoo, 979Represent, Sinkhole Texas Inc., Cutthroat Records, KEOS FM, Fuzzy’s Tacos, Cutler 2 Salon, Bill Allen Motorcycles, Rock 103.9 FM