This was a shitty day. When nothing goes the way I planned, I usually write lyrics and make myself feel better by getting all of my anger out. I am going to try something different and write about one of the best times of my life. That would be when we recorded our album inside a barn in Grand Bend, ON. This is a long story but one that I feel truly defined HTV.
It all started at the end of a very split rope and the most desperate of times. We had just finished a record under the name "FARENHEIT" called "Disconnected" which we thought was good but not great. Joe had sold his '67 Camaro for a worthless $6000 to make the record happen and we took out a large bank loan to finish the rest of the costs. There was pressure to make a breakout album that I think we buckled under by analyzing the songs so much that we squished the life out of them. Slow tempos, weak structures and a misguided view of who we wanted to be was the result of our efforts, and we felt that things had pretty much come to a stand still shortly after we released it. Not only that, but my voice under performed and I felt like maybe I just didn't have the pipes to lead a band to a real career. This put us in a position to make some heavy choices and really examine our future as a group. We were now in debt, so making a new record was not exactly an option, and things were getting more hopeless for a band that had already been through a ton of heartbreak.
We never said that it was time to pack it in but the vibe in the jam space was echoing just that. Without a miracle the future didn't look good. We had a meeting like we normally do but this time Joe had an option that meant heading down a road that we had been down before. There was a producer who spent most of his time in Vancouver and he had liked something about our band. It was good news knowing that he had done previous work with GGGarth Richardson, but we were tentative to trust anyone we didn't know from our previous experiences. However, this guy was different. He wasn't a star in the industry and he had just as much to prove as we did. We met Darryl Romphf a few weeks later and this is where things started to change.
Darryl flew in from Vancouver and sat in on a jam session. I remember distinctly rocking thirteen songs and then sitting down for the hardest pill I ever had to swallow. Darryl addressed the band by saying that he thought we were great. Then he looked at me and said "but the band is kicking your ass 90% of the time. I began to sweat because the thought of me being the one that would cost the band this chance was more than I could ever bare. He then said "but I can help you change that and then nothing will stop you guys!". I had no idea how he could help me raise my game but ten minutes later we were back at work. Over the next few hours we would finish the song "My Reward" and begin to work on "Take Back The Fear" and the excitement grew as our sound began to take shape. We sped up tempos, worked through some melodies, changed some beats, re-wrote some parts, and we clicked like we did in the early days of our band. It was a huge moment that was only supposed to be a meet and greet. This demo was going to be awesome!
As i said before, we still had no money and recording costs big coin. Not only that but if we were going to give it one last go it was going to be all or nothing. That meant doing the drums at a big studio and renting a ton of really expensive gear to get the tones we wanted. Darryl wanted his friend from Vancouver, Engineer Alex "Condor" Aligizakis to do the tracking but that was going to double our costs. You only live once though and if we were going to go down it was going to be epic, maybe a bit stupid but huge none the less. It was time to make our dream record!
Pre-production began and the six of us got really excited. The tunes were great and they included "Take Back The Fear, My Reward, Runaway, Try Hating The World, Glad To Be and Mission Control as the first six we would hit the studio with. It was a week filled with a ton of drinking, constant smoking, backyard bbq's and a shit load of fireworks. We shifted gears to Metal Works Studio in Mississauga, ON to track drums and bass which got really interesting on the last night of recording. Drew and I were heading back to the studio after an evening bank withdrawal and grabbing a bite to eat. We got mugged. Drew actually had a shank put up to his neck but we refused to give our wallets. Not exactly the best decision but we could ill afford to lose anymore cash. Without heroics we caught a break a ran from our inexperienced attacker. It was intense and this possibly horrible scenario turned out to add more fuel to a fire that was out of control. We were heading to Grand Bend to finish the first six songs.
None of us had ever been to "The Bend". It was a small place of a few hundred people but in the summer when we arrived it was littered with tourists mostly from the US. We took a drive the first day we got there and saw the sandy beach and thousands of party goers relaxing in the bright sun. We were all dressed in black and took a stroll by the water to soak in the sights obviously gaining attention due to our improper appearance. Nothing but ease and a calming of the senses was on our minds. Our producer had found the perfect spot for a band that had surrendered itself to the constant view of metal walls, smoke stacks and cars. We no longer cared about making a breakout record or signing deals or even what we had done before this album. It was a chance to make music for the simple reason of loving music and that was as pure and raw as being in a band should be.
There were problems, setbacks and torturous days of tracking guitars and laying down vocals so it was still not an easy task. Eventually we finished those six songs and with some gracious investment money we were able to return to Grand Bend a few months later with six new songs. This time we would be given a cottage on the beach but things had changed. It was fall and it was cold. All the tourists had left and the place felt dead. The vibe got angrier as did the music when the final pieces of our record were coming together. The calmness turned to jitters, the ease changed to aggression, and the birth of our sound was not only complete, but also an emotional journey of everything that it took to get to this point. Many bands can say that they put all they had into a record and I believe it, but this album was going to show what our music had taken out of us. We could now sit back listen to the raw nature of what we strived desperately to accomplish.
Maybe it's called Population: Declining because of the drop in people that Grand Bend saw from the first time we were there to the last time. We might of called it that because it sounded cool or because of all the things we lost trying to make the record. When I look back on everything I would like to think that it doesn't matter what we decided to call our first album. The way it sounds is all that matters and we live that record every day.
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