It's a Baby Cannon nation, you just live in it.

Well, as many of you probably don't know, or some of you do, last night Baby Cannon had the privilage of recording our first studio EP- Barrel, Powder, Fuse. We recorded at Redfella records in Marquette. It's not Abbey Road, but a newb indy band on a limited budget is not going to turn down a chance to lay down some tracks for $25 an hour. The guy who was supposed to mix us got sick, so the release of the CD is going to be delayed a little bit (we were only able to get a rough mix last night).

Needless to say, I'm excited. So excited that I decided to take notes and bring you a play by play! Actually, it's not a true play by play. I made up most of the times, because, well, as it turns out, I kinda had to set up and play and that just didn't leave much time for paying attention to details. Nonetheless, here is the Artistic Liberty play by play of our studio time for our first album.

4:54- I'm just about on my way out the door to head to the studio, when I get a call from Matt. The guy who was supposed to record and mix us has come down with some rare form of flesh-eating bacteria/zombie virus that he got from taking some Krippin-wonder drug thing, or something to that effect. I may or may not have made that up.

Oh Will, so glad I found you. Listen, I think everybody else is dead or a zombie...so do you know anything about recording and/or mixing?

5:00-5:22- A series of phone calls go back and forth between me, Matt, and somebody else, trying to figure out if we still want to record or not...the owner of Redfella records (who just happened to show up I guess) said he wanted to record us, and actually shaved $10/hour off of the price. During this whole waiting game, I just really felt Peace about it...God makes all things work together for our good, ya know? Like it was weird, just sitting in the chair, feeling completely calm.

5:22- All systems go! Head to the church, where Jesse, Joe, and I waited outside in the freezing cold parking lot while Matt and Jared stopped at McDonalds...thanks a lot guys!

6:00ish- We have about an hour before we're supposed to be at Redfella, so we decide to practice some stuff. Sounds reasonable, right? Well, a little backstory. Pretty much all week, we wrestled for hours and hours on end trying to put a song together (Tower of Babel, one I wrote), and I was just thinking that we should scrap it...but Matt had other ideas. He had cooked up this other-worldly transition while he was, um, 'being inspired' (this is a band inside joke, ergo you are not privy to the meaning...but feel free to laugh if you wish), and after resisting and refusing and boycotting...we tried it, Jared reworked the chorus, and long story short I was humbled and we decided to do the song.

Somewhere around 7:00- We're all packed up, we get to Redfella, unload, and time to set things up! This is really happening!

7:37- I just finished up setting up the drums in a little room in the studio. Picture an outhouse/sauna without the smell, without the vihta, and that's pretty much what I was set up in. Well, at first it didn't smell bad, but after a few hours of being cooped up in a confined space...let's just say I marked my territory and it wasn't pretty.

7:45-8:20- Probably the most fun time of recording is the down time. I mean, playing music is fun, and we didn't pay $25 an hour to go in and shoot the bull, but down time was super awesome. Much of what was said will drift into Inside Joke territory, but I don't want to completely allienate our fan base, so I will spill the gossip beans to those who might cry themselves to sleep at night wondering, 'What does Baby Cannon talk about?'.

Well, we sat around while Jesse played Pokemon on the DS. Um...oh yeah, we talked about Fingernail Trimming etiquitte, because Joe committed the cardinal sin of Fingernail Trimming, which is starting a Trimming session and stopping before completion. We discussed facial hair, and the tendency of my son Shane to rip it off of my face. We delved into the merits of teleportation/telekenisis, and how we could use those abilities to hustle people out of money...kinda like 'White Men Can't Jump', except it'd be 'White Men Can't Traverse Portals Through Other Dimensions', or 'White Men Can't Manipulate Objects With Their Minds'.

Hey Woody, how about 'White Men Can't Wear Pink' ? Hello!

We discovered that Joe does a great Smeagol impression. The problem is, he looks more like an Uruk-hai.

I'm not making this up.

Finally, during prayer we established Matt's Car as the second most popular frequent for the presence of God. So...there. If you want to meet God, ask Matt for a ride.

8:42- Ah, some excitement! Andrew plugs in a pre-amp, and it almost catches on fire. We appreciate pyrotechnics, but I think it's a little much for a studio session...unless somehow we can make it so that everytime someone listens to our CD, things start to smoke.

Remember kids, only you can prevent Music Studio Fires

9:21- Mmmmm...Chicken McNuggets!

9:25- Go time!

10:10- After almost an hour, we have managed to slosh our way through 'Tower of Babel', and I'm impressed...it has many elements that I envisioned when I wrote the song, but Baby Cannon took it to completely new levels. I love these guys! Anyhow, Matt and I are now doing vocals. I feel like the singer guy on 'Real Men of Genius'.

10:29- We are finally done with 'Tower of Babel'. At the current rate, we will be done recording at 5:00 a.m.

From here though, it's pretty much a breeze. We practiced our other songs for many many hours, and so in the next 3 hours, we manage to nail down our other 6 songs. There isn't much to tell...partially because of our singular focus, partly because we're all so flippin' tired.

2:30- As it stands right now, the final mix is not done, and of course there are a ton of little mistakes that we (and other musicians) will be able to pick out...but overall it sounds great!

Hopefully we'll get some gigs when the next semester starts, and we can start to take this to another level...I appreciate all of you who have and will support our band...it might be cliche', but really if a band does not have fans, then it is a garage band...so thanks! We love our fans! And to show how much we love our fans, I've included some bonus Behind-The Scenes shots of Baby Cannon in the studio! Woohoo!

Me rockin' the drums. Not a posed picture at all.

Matt. Again, this picture is in no way faked or 'posed', but is obviously an intense live action moment caught on film because I am an awesome photographer.

Jesse playing Pokemon. Get that level 30 Charzard, dude!

Jared and Joe. Um, can't really think of a funny caption. Sorry guys.

Baby Cannon and our CD!

God bless, we'll see ya on the flip side