Cider Holiday - Live Studio Vocal
As you may know, our new album, Roll and Go, is out for pre-release, and the whole thing comes out in twelve days! Pre-order everything here. The new singles, “Problem” and “Cider Holiday” and “Battleford 1185” are doing great.
Singing in the studio is something you really have to learn; it’s one thing to get up in front of an audience and belt something out, once you get over any stage fright it’s actually pretty easy. The adrenaline kind of does it for you.
The studio is an entirely different thing. You’re artificially inserted into a pre-recorded set of tracks, often after 8 hours of sitting and staring lifelessly at the console. This is why so many singers (myself included) sound so much more badass live; it is extremely difficult to recreate that energy in the studio.
Fortunately, in recording “Cider Holiday”, I had two secret weapons.
Before going in for any vocal session, I always listen to James Brown’s “Night Train”. Every time.
The night before doing this, I drove two hours to Rhode Island to pick up 48 bottles of Henney’s Cider at the only place I could find them.
As you can see from this video, this potent combo had me pretty jacked. This is the take we ended up using for the album:
As I've just learned - you could have waited a few months and just ordered it on Amazon!
EDIT: ...nevermind....only in the UK...
I’d love to see you talk a little bit about cider sometime soon. You guys have sung about it so much over the years, but have never really gone in depth about the ciders you love, what appeals to you about them, and what real cider is. I’m a bartender in Michigan, and while we have ciders here, it is thought of by a lot of folks as a woman’s drink (a HUGE pet peeve of mine is when people gender drinks; what a stupid fucking concept!). We have tons of sweet ciders, but the ones that pique my interest the most are the dry ones that highlight the unique characters of each apple variety. Do you prefer sweet ciders, dry ciders, single-varietal ciders, or ciders with lots of adjuncts added? The booze nerd in me would love to know! I was surprised when I went to Ireland and Wales how many folks in the pubs would drink ciders, and how common it was to add ice.