Trying to record with no space and noise everywhere was driving me crazy and for the first time since coming from Taipei I felt jealous of those living in big houses in Ohio, Montana, or the place in Georgia where they shot the movie Deliverance. I wanted to be in a place where I could bang the drums or howl in the woods, and nobody would argue about it. Anywhere but New York City. So when Eric suggested we record at his grandma’s house in the mountains upstate New York, (almost a two hour drive) I saw an illusion of a floodlit studio luring me in a silent picture.

We hired a Man with a Van from east village and shipped every music related object imaginable to the site including an African whistle. I know, I know, we were making a rock record and we had only 4 days. But the idea of having a garage and a house on 14 acres of property, makes you want to spread every toy you have all around the place.

We planned to use the two car garage next to the house as our live room. With cement floors and plywood walls, the ambiance was ideal for the drum sounds we wanted –and with the weather getting warm the lack of heat and insulation were not a concern. Our goal for this trip was to record at least 5 songs of drum tracks. By now we could assemble a portable recording studio pretty fast and were ready to record in no time.

We focused on drum parts and song arrangements. But at one point when Eric was rehearsing with the click track, I sneaked to the upstairs of the garage and checked out Mr. Miranda’s (Eric’s dad) adventure book collection, American Indian wardrobe, and bows and arrows. I just could not resist. When I appeared from behind a tall file cabinet dressed like the Apache Warrior Geronimo, Eric jumped through the back window and grabbed an ax on his way out. He stood behind a tree waiting to ambush the stray Injun, until I yelled to him that it was me.

With all the space and quiet for free, and the generosity of nature soaked in the April sun, we were relaxed and the recording process became pure fun! We flew with time and all the drum tracks were done in one and half days. We began adding other instruments to the songs. In the garage, Eric lined his guitars up - a Les Paul custom, a Les Paul standard, Telecasters, and acoustic and 12 string guitars, all waiting to be plugged in. Behind them was a wall of amplifiers both vintage and new. The floor was covered with effects pedals. We worked late into the nights to get rhythm guitars done. For the next day and a half we listened to Cd’s for inspiration, rewrote parts and ate Sunchips. The game was on!

Rumor had it that bears were out lately, and Mr. Miranda also saw a wolf hanging right outside of the house a few days earlier. On our last night of recording we decided to move the studio into the house right before midnight so we didn’t have to expose ourselves in the wild when we needed food or to use the bathroom in the house. By the time we resumed it was 1 am. Late as it was, there was an immense mystical energy from the endless forest, bright stars, owls and darkness. Eric played electric guitars on full volume, and we got the American Dream done in one take.

Compared to the sorts of problems we had in the city, the home made studio in Millbrook was really a blessing for us. We decided to mope around on the last day and inhaled as much oxygen as we could. We may have transformed into creatures of nature - when the Man with a Van came back again he looked at us as if we had just come from the Himalayas. The frustration of recording in a noisy city was behind us and we returned home with renewed optimism.