Papa Gene’s Blues – Written by Michael Nesmith, 1966, performed by The Monkees Recorded April 2011 at Great Magnet Recording, Santa Rosa, California Nathan Alfaro: Vocals, Bass Erin Sullivan: Vocals Connor Alfaro: Drums Damon Kerr: Guitars Sean Allen: Guitars, Slide Guitar Continuing with my obsession towards Michael Nesmith idolatry, I wanted to cover more of his Monkees-era tunes. I knew read more…
Many years ago, Paul and I were in a post-Impossibles band called Atomic Jones. We played a gig at the mighty Soda Hole in Napa which was also the CD release party for the Impossibles’ CD, which I spearheaded. It was a nice effort, though had Phil not left for New York before the CD’s completion, I would imagine its’ read more…
I will most likely get this story wrong, but this is really a Paul and Adam vehicle. I was asked to play bass, and I was grateful to be considered for the task. The idea was to record using vintage recording techniques and limitations to evoke a vintage sound, rather than recording with modern techniques and emulating said sound after-the-fact. read more…
Adam relocated to Petaluma around this time, which meant shutting down Blue Room in Napa and constructing what would become the early incarnation of Great Magnet Recording. Following the completion of the hammer-banging, Adam and I also began work on some early versions of his solo material, which would eventually be monikered Great Magnet (the band) as well. when the read more…
These two songs, written by my friend Monette Shirley, were first introduced to me as acoustic versions recorded by Monette. I thought that it would be nice to put a studio backline together and record a full band version for her to sing on. I asked Adam and Mitch to help out, and we secretly practiced and worked out arrangements. read more…
Previously recorded by The Impossibles (which also featured the amazing Phil Costello of Diamondsnake and Satanicide fame), this one was once again purely for our own amusement. The Impossibles version is classic, but Paul and I were able to flesh out some more vocals and I was a bit more of a bass player at this point so it came read more…
The reason for this endeavor…as with many of the recordings on Starch…was purely our own amusement. For my part, at the time I was going through a period of gorging on a lot of Abbey Road and Rubber Soul (and some other mid-60s stuff) on vinyl. Listening on an old solid-state component system from that era which sounded amazing. This read more…
Roddy Love, a friend of Adam’s, asked us to help him record this song as a potential soundtrack cut for a 2005 movie called “Window Theory”. Adam supplied the studio and the band, which was myself on bass and Mitch Norwick on electric drums (Yikes). I was pretty confident on how I was going to play the bass line, but read more…
This is the first song that Adam and I recorded at the earliest incarnation of his dedicated recording space, which at that time was called The Blue Room. He and I were playing together in a band called iiii (Four Eyes) with Brian Nash and Gordon Adams at the time, and as a band we had this acoustic rendition of read more…
And now, a brief interlude… I’m handing the mic over to guest contributor Nathan Alfaro for a volley of posts to chronicle a project ten+ years in the making, his sweeping arc of cover material entitled Festival of Starch. And you thought I was taking you out to Dim Sum. Sorry. Each new post (with a few exceptions) under Nathan’s read more…