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I think what I really appreciate about Greg and Jack's collaboration is that I think they really kind of stretch each other
because they certainly are similar in terms of their influences from music
but they each kind of approach music and the lyrics they write, the songs they want to put together
and I think they're good for just kind of stretching each other's boundaries.
We are not a band that plays out, we only played out a few times at a few parties
and have never really aspired to be a band
but what we have done is become studio rats
and we've become very, very good at it.
You sit down and it's appreciation right?
So it's just about done, you've got a lemon cello, you've got a beer
and you're just sitting listening to the song through an awesome system in the studio
and that's where we're kind of patting each other on the back and going, no, it's you, no, it's you.
It's you, it's got to be you, I'm right there.
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The music they produce is fun and accessible and creative and rich.
In terms of collaboration, Jack has been the kind of guy that I just go,
thank you Lord for bringing him to me. We both love similar things about the process of making music.
One of us will bring a song idea in, chord structure, some lyrics and then the fun begins.
We start to figure out, okay, what's the instrumentation going to be?
Who plays electric? Who plays acoustic?
Are we going to put some keyboards in there?
You want to play bass? I'll play bass.
What kind of ear candy do we want to put in there for the people who are going to listen to this song
and get headphones on and get a special treat?
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It's like between the two of us, we've got all the basses covered.
He and I both sing and play bass, we both play guitar.
I'll feature an acoustic guitar a little bit more than he will
and the percussion he handles most of that, keyboards, I can cover that pretty well.
As far as the drums, 95% of what you hear is programmed drums, those are all thanks to Greg.
I'll do a live kit from time to time, Monterey Blues and Defenders are a couple of those tracks.
Once Greg moved out to Phoenix, I began to get CDs of songs written by he and Jack
and that was my connection with Jack.
I got to watch their development as a collaborative team
and hear how they complemented one another and the years they've stayed after it has been pretty interesting.
It's all grown and developed.
And this is what I love about their collaboration is those songs have stories to them and humor.
You know, I always kind of thought if there was one kid in a basement in Cleveland, Ohio
listening to our stuff and being inspired, I think we've done our job.
One of the things that makes Greg and Jack a good team is they have different skills.
That's really, Greg's always very interested in the production aspect
and we always work together on learning to record the technical aspect of it.
Another aspect of putting out an album and putting these songs out was the artwork itself.
So we're thinking about things like the photography, the selection of the image, the font,
the sequence of the songs, color scheme, really the graphic design
was all part of the message that we were putting out.
I'd say one of the trademarks of our collaboration would be building a song from a visual perspective.
So we would have characters, a setting, and a mood.
And that would show up in songs like Break Them Out through Jupiter and Fever
but probably the best example would be Smogler and that had shady characters, deals going down,
plot twists, screeching tires, all very visual.
Venice Beach, those guys can play down there easily, right next to those sandcastle people.
They'd be perfect right there.
We did this, did we do this vocal live?
Well, I made an attempt to replace this vocal.
So this is a vocal part I've added since we did the original recording.
Yours is live and I've got a version of it that we did live.
I think one of the ideas was, or our concept was to do it as a live feel where we're both doing it at the same time.
So I don't know if that made sense to keep it that way.
It's just a question of whether you want the notes to be on pitch or not, really, because that's the job.
