Mark Schenker

Anybody who knows me well enough knows what a huge Rush fan I am. It’s the music I grew up with. The songs that are burned into my memories of growing up and learning how to play music. Moving Pictures came out when I first moved back to the US and even though I was already a big fan, that album really put the hook in me. I remember when I lived in Europe, they didn’t have any Rush at the PX, it was all Supertramp, Styx and some new band called The Police. I remember taking fairly regular trips on the olive drab military shuttle bus to a German record store way off base called The Top Pop Shop. This record store also took USD so if we didn’t have Deutschmarks, we were still able to buy stuff without having to go to the exchange first. The furthest shuttle stop out at Flak Kaserne still left me with a mile walk to get there and think about what I could buy that day. I would make decision after decision assuring myself I was definitely going to get this or that, knowing full well all that debate was out the window as soon as I set foot in the store and saw all the album artwork on full display in the new releases rack. Going to the record store was such a big deal back then, it was an event, a trip, something special with a fantastic reward to be had on many levels – often times all for much less than $7.00.

One time in particular I recall having saved up $10 from allowance and since the bus was free, I had enough to buy one record and a soda. My friend and I decided to make a special trip to The Top Pop Shop one Saturday to buy a record, which is something we often did only when we had more money so we could buy more than one record. Trips out there off base were slightly frowned upon by our parents, but they always let us go anyhow.

I knew what I wanted, it was the latest Rush album called Hemispheres – one record, a 45 min bus trip and a two mile walk - $5.99. I remember walking back to the shuttle bus stop with this weird blue and pink album with a naked man on the cover in the magenta plastic bag with The Top Pop Shop logo on one side. I remember thinking about how great it was going to be when I got home and my friend and I could spend the rest of the day filling our young minds with brand new music buy guys who were so cool they had white shag carpet on their stage! We knew that because we had studied and dissected every picture in the folds of ‘All The Worlds A Stage’ and their rare appearances in Creem Magazine. Sure we liked Zeppelin, Boston and AC/DC like all the other kids over there, but if you knew about Rush, oh man you were SO in on the real deal! Rush was our band!

I been looking forward to this show for quite sometime since I missed Snakes and Arrows the first time around. Rush always seems to play in our area on a Saturday and we play every Saturday so I had been SOL on the R30 tour and the first round of S&A. This was my first experience using StubHub and it was a positive one. I used to use a ticket broker to get something in first couple of rows, but my former contact is shall we say, involuntarily “out of the business” at the moment. I bought sixth row on Geddy’s side and received my tickets promptly about three weeks before the show. Nice. I’ll be using StubHub again just for the low hassle factor alone. I had two tix, Lisa couldn’t go and isn’t a fan, Rob couldn’t go, Jimmy couldn’t go (he has yet to see Neil play live), Dean already had tickets. I decided to invite my good friend Kelly. She was a casual Rush fan who had never seen them before. She was about to be welcomed into a really special and exclusive club like no other.

We hooked up with Dean before the show, and we talked Rush talk for a while. It’s funny how real Rush fans always refer to the band members by their first names, as if we know them – nothing could be further from the truth but it’s always first names only during Rush discussions with other known Rush fans – as Kelly noted for future reference! Dean checked out all the merch I bought giving it the stamp of approval. I think he went and got a shirt later. They had some really cool stuff, dog tags, temporary tattoos, tie dye shirts, USB drives with the Rush logo, and everything was priced very reasonable. $30 for a shirt – a cool shirt with cool artwork on both sides – $5 for temp tattoos, $10 for dog tags or a baseball hat. You got a sense that the band was really trying to make the merch affordable for all the fans. Everything seemed well worth the price, not the normal rape and pillage pricing at most concerts. And there was cool stuff for women. Even though Rush concerts are mostly a sausage fest, at least the women who do show up get nice choices for merch!

I’ve seen Rush about seventeen times, sometimes twice on the same tour. I try to never miss a tour. My first Rush concert was the Moving Pictures tour in 1981-82. I still have my concert shirt! This latest album Snakes and Arrows is the best Rush album in forever. It hearkens back to the classic Rush era, the era that made me LOVE this band. For the first time since probably the Counterparts tour, I was looking forward to hearing the new material live, there are so many good songs on the S&A. Not to say that all the in between albums weren’t good, for example, I didn’t even buy Test for Echo, which I love, until after I saw the show on the ’97 tour, but this new album is OLD good. One song in particular really had my head moving sideways. A song called ‘Workin’ Them Angels’ is a good song already, but whoever is the creative mind behind the Rush visuals hit one out of the park with the imagery on the big screen for that song.

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At Rush concerts, everybody cheers when certain things are shown on the big screen, it’s a given. Everybody always goes nuts over the same images for the same songs, for the love of the familiar and the nostalgic. The Starman is always a guaranteed roar, and we as fans just can’t get enough of that one. But there might be a new classic in the works here. ‘Workin’ Them Angels’ seems to be about how people can do things on the edge over and over without killing themselves and how those people tend to work their ‘guardian angels’ overtime. Like guardian angels have to work harder for some people than they do for others who don’t take as many risks in life. During the song, the big screen cycled through false color images of people doing dangerous jobs with long flowing sepia-toned angel wings on their backs. Then an image of two soldiers in full desert battle gear popped up, one crouching with an M-16 and the other standing beside him – both had angel wings. The crowd roared so loud it drowned out the band. It sent chills up and down my spine – the emotion was just overwhelming. THIS is why we go see Rush!! THIS is why our religion is better than yours! Most times you just expect to go to any concert and hear the songs you know and love so well, but the imagery for this song was so powerful and so moving, it far eclipsed any of my old favorites (Well, maybe not ‘The Trees’) and made me love that song so much more.  Talk about going the extra mile, this was absolutely out of this world for me. It was that moment when your brain is so overloaded with positive aural and visual stimulation that your cortex just gives up and collapses in a gelatinous mass of euphoria. I love being caught off guard like that. It does not get any better than that for me.

Since Vapor Trails tour, Rush has done a three hour show with a half hour intermission. Dean and I called each other during intermission to share our thoughts and impressions at the midway point. We agreed we were both right in the middle of being blown away! We spotted each others seats and waved like a couple of 12 year olds! Kelly was impressed at her first Rush concert and eager to be in the club from now on. A week later she had learned for herself all the band member’s real names and some of the story behind 2112 – off to a good start!

The seating up front was pretty informal, the security would let people walk up into the middle to take pics – nice touch. I got some pretty good pics of Geddy. One time he came right up to the edge where I was standing and I hurriedly got off a few shots. I had to admit to Kelly after I took a couple of strides back to my seat that my heart was beating like a little fanboy standing five feet from one of my heroes. One drawback to our seats, the keyboard rig blocked Neil. I could see his feet pretty good, but was resigned to seeing him up on the big screen when his turn came. The sound was fantastic as usual. Clear as a bell top to bottom.

Kelly made a few more observations on the religious aspect of being a Rush fan at a Rush concert. Things that we have taken for granted for a very long time. One thing that struck her the most I think, Rush has THE most air drummers per capita than any other band. When you turn around and look at the crowd, it’s quite a sight to see, everybody nailing every crash and every fill in almost perfect unison. Another, everybody sings the wailing part in 2112: Overture. Together. Loud. It’s just what you do! No need to be embarrassed to do it because everybody else is doing it too! It’s like there is a script for fan participation that we all just know, it ain’t written down anywhere, you just have to go to enough shows to know what to do. It’s kind of like going to church, where you know the Order of Mass, when to say ‘amen’ and ‘also with you’ – you learn by going and participating repeatedly!

I cannot wait for the next tour. I cannot wait for the DVD from this tour, and I can’t wait to ‘see’ those songs again. Maybe next year they will do ‘The Camera Eye’.

Obviously, quite a bit has happened since my last update. I had resolved to put all other duties aside and devote every moment of my free time to finishing the album. Duties put aside included keeping you filled in on the recording process. I figured I’d update everybody after I got everything ready to mix. So allow me to backtrack and fill in the blanks. Most people know by now through word of mouth, MySpace and our mailing list that mega-platinum producer Beau Hill is mixing our album in Los Angeles. I was only too glad to relinquish mixing duties to somebody who has mixed a hundred or so hit records!

Going back a few months for a little background, I had recorded most of the tracks on a Roland VS-2480, with the exception of a few backup vocals, all the sample loops, orchestra and some sound effects, which I recorded in Sonar. I had planned to mix using Sonar on my computer after transferring all the raw tracks from the 2480 since bouncing tracks down on the 2480 degraded the sound noticeably and it’s only 24 track mixing. Sonar has like a 256 track limit or something rediculous like that so that would have suited me just fine. However I quickly quickly realized when running a 52 track mix with a number of plugins and effects that my computer was slightly underpowered for handling the load of the massive amount of music we had tracked. The track count added up quickly from all the backup vocal tracks we did and three mics for each primary guitar rhythm track and whatnot. Although Sonar worked fairly well and I could have gotten the job done, something fortunate happened to us that made me switch over to Pro Tools HD.

As I said in my last blog, a guy named Scott Spelbring happened to see my Backing Vocals II blog entry and dropped me a note on MySpace saying he liked my tracking writeups and offered to help with anything if we needed any. Scott runs a big studio not far from my house called Dragonfly Studios and he extended an invitation to have us bring a song or two down and mix it there. I’m sure you’ve heard Scott’s work before – Dave Matthews, SR-71, Bowling for Soup, Nikki Barr and of course he engineered and produced Plunge’s Hometown Hero – a great sounding record through and through. Jimmy and I decided we’d go down there together and bring two songs to mix, “Crush” and “Hot on Your Heels” and if we liked what we heard, we’d hire Scott to mix it for us which Scott was totally in to. Rob couldn’t make it that particular Sunday and the only way to get Steve to a mix session is to shoot him, throw him in the back of the truck, take him down there and prop him in a chair – Weekend at Bernie’s style! I exported all the tracks to broadcast wav files, burned them to a data disc and Jimmy and I drove down to Dragonfly one Sunday about 30 mins south of my house to a real, kickass professional recording studio.

Scott gave us a nice tour of the facility – top notch in every respect. Lot’s of great outboard gear, a Digidesign Pro Control fully automated desk and a killer live room. We spent all day there, most of the time was spent importing tracks into Pro Tools, explaining to Scott my mad methods on what was what, and setting up the mix, way more time than actual mixing. Regardless, at the end of the day we did get a mix and we really liked what we heard, Scott did an outstanding job on “Heels.” Scott is a freaking Jedi Master with Pro Tools and being in the software/computer business, I’ve been around computers long enough to have a keen sense of when somebody really knows what they are doing on a piece of software. Scott knows how to leverage all the nuances of Pro Tools, he moved about with ease and knew exactly what he was doing at all times. His wizardry was most impressive! Not only that, he has to be the world’s nicest most genuine guy too and he loves to talk tech so all three of us really hit it off. And above all else – he’s a dog person! Anyhow, when I compared Scott’s mix to my roughs from Sonar, levels, effects and EQ aside, there was something that was just better about the general sound and basic quality of Scott’s mix. It was difficult to explain. We didn’t do a whole lot of EQ at Scott’s – it just plain sounded better coming off Scott’s gear. I did a little research and found some white papers on Digidesign’s web site about the Pro Tools 48-bit mix bus and that helped explain why the Pro Tools mix was elementally much fatter and pro-sounding that the Sonar mixes. Sonar does not use a 48 bit mix bus and the difference was audible to me.

Jimmy and I decided we’d talk to the other guys and see what they thought about Scott mixing our record. We still had some tracking to do and Scott was going away for a month in May to do a USO tour running front of house for Plunge. So we agreed to talk when Scott got back and made a plan to have everything done ready to bring to Scott to mix by June 1st. I had a ton of work to do to export all our tracks and get them ready to be mixed in Pro Tools. I was ecstatic at the prospect of having Scott mix our record and so were the other guys.

In the mean time, as most everybody knows, Dean had put in his notice that he was leaving the band. He still had some rhythm tracks to do and all of his solos. Steve, Jimmy, Rob and I, while we regret Deans decision to leave, decided we would not release a new CD with guitar tracks played by a person who was no longer in the band. So all Dean’s tracks were scrapped. Luckily though, when Rob and I recorded all his rhythm tracks, we had to sort out all our guitar parts from the demos and right after Rob would finish his tracks for any song we were working on, we immediately recorded Dean’s parts as guide track so Dean could learn all the guitar parts he was supposed to play. Then we would run mixes of Rob playing the parts intended for Dean without Rob’s main tracks so Dean could come in prepared and there would be no question about what parts he was supposed to play. It worked out great for two reasons, Dean always came in prepared, and when he decided to leave, much by accident we already had good, well-engineered, produced guitar guide tracks that Rob had tracked for Dean. So I just flipped the virtual tracks labeled ‘Dean’ over to the ones labeled ‘Rob’ and we were done! Almost. Rob had to redo a few tracks as we did some of them slopplily because we thought Dean would be playing them anyhow so there was not much point in punching in and tightening things up here and there. So we left some stuff a little sloppy, one pass tracking style, thinking the only purpose they would serve was for Dean to learn his parts. Those rhythm tracks were retracked.

Turns out we needed those guide tracks after all and we only had to redo like three rhythm ‘Dean guide tracks’ of Rob’s, and Rob had to do all the solos that were earmarked for Dean. We knocked that stuff out in about two weeks of hard work and we were very happy with the result.

I also decided that since we spent the bulk of our time at Scott’s importing raw tracks and organizing data, and since I had witnessed the brilliance and amazing workflow of Pro Tools first hand, that I would get the software and get the projects ready in Pro Tools so all Scott would have to do was EQ and mix rather than organize my mess! It’s really tough to explain the difference a well engineered workflow makes in a software program – when you see it, it seems like everything just makes sense and everything is done so easily and intuitively. (The MIDI implmentation in Pro Tools has a long way to go but that’s a whole other story) So since I was way overdue for a new PC anyhow, I went and built myself a dual core Athlon 64 for about $1000 (tax deductable of course!) and got my new Pro Tools HD up and running in no time. I was importing raw wav files from Sonar and the VS-2480 like a mad scientist, finishing up bass parts here and there, reading the 750 page Pro Tools manual front to back and generally working like Edward Scissorhands trimming the hedges, every single night, every free moment – except for during Soprano’s and 24! I really wanted to be ready for when Scott came back to go right in and mix.

Then something quite remarkable and unexpected happened out of the blue one day – Beau Hill called!

Last Friday 2/10 we were off the day before the Blizzard of ’06 and decided to squeeze in some backup vocals. Rob, Jimmy and Steve all came down to yell into some mics for a while. Unfortunately Dean’s playing schedule doesn’t allow him to come down and yell with the other guys as its most convenient for everybody to do these kinds of things on an off weekend night. Dean will definitely make his statement on the album with his six-stringers though so fear not!

We had to get some backups on “Crush” for a good reason. We had an opportunity to go to a big studio to mix a couple of songs and I wanted “Crush” to be one of the ones we took down so it had to get done pronto.

A guy called Scott Spelbring dropped me an email one day via MySpace and we got to talking and he offered to help out if we needed it. Scott has worked with a number of national artists and big producers, Dave Matthews, Drew Mazurak (Linkin Park, Nothingface), SR-71, Jim Ebert (Butch Walker), Jason Mraz and Plunge just to name a few. Scott has a very impressive list of clients and an even more impressive state-of-the-art Pro Tools-based studio. And his studio is only about 25 minutes from my house, it could not have been a more ideal situation for us. After thinking about it for roughly two seconds , I took him up on his offer to mix a couple of songs for us. Check him out at Dragonfly Recording Studios. Jimmy and I went down to Dragonfly to let Scott put the magic touch on our songs this past Sunday – we were very excited with the results, more on that in the next edition . . .

I had everything setup ahead of time to maximize the time available before everybody got burned out from singing. They all three rode together and got down my way about 5:30. Steve did his usual warmups and we got down to tracking. I think we had five songs to complete, the biggest one requiring the most work was “Crush.” For those who have seen us perform this song live you’ll understand this part. We did about 10 tracks of all three guys yelling “Crush” (you know that part right? Each track with a different guy standing in the middle of the three so no one particular voice becomes dominant in the mix. I really think we nailed the arena gang vocal feel. The desired effect of course is the gigantic crowd of people yelling (or singing) “Crush.” With that many voices, it can’t possibly go wrong and it sounds nice and huge just like the idea Steve originally came up with.

A couple of times Steve had to man the cell phone as he was trying to work out with the club owner of Memories (our Saturday show venue) if we all collectively thought we should cancel the show or not due to the snow. In typical fashion here around D.C., the weathermen can never say if something is going to be real bad or just OK, so we were keeping an eye on the TV and trying to determine if we were going to get dumped on or not. Obviously we ended up playing the show on Saturday and everybody eventually made it home OK.

We burned through five songs in about four hours and at the end, there were a couple of lines for Steve to redo in some other songs that for one reason or another were not quite right. One of them was a line in “Hot On Your Heels” which is the other song I wanted to take down to Dragonfly to mix. Steve still had some juice left in the old voice box and so we went in and fixed a couple of lines here and there on a few songs.

In the previous weeks and weeks since my last installment here, we have been working on guitar and bass tracks whenever schedules and time permits. Rob has started his final phases by doing solos, Dean has a couple of his rhythm tracks to fix up, mostly because I had him play the wrong part on a couple of songs and about four more basic rhythm tracks to do. He also has to do almost all of his solos. I’ve got four more songs to lay bass tracks on and there are three more songs to do lead and backup vocals on.

Hopefully, we can proceed with mixing songs at Dragonfly with Scott Spelbring as we finish up tracking the rest of the album, so we’ll sort of have two things going at once and we won’t have to wait for all the tracks to be done before mixing starts. Damn good idea!