I've known Rob Gilliland aka "Gonzo" for over 5 years. He's a total guitarist with taste and chops. Check out his new album.



Gonzo's been working on a CD of original music for over a year an a half. The band is Bat's Brew and the CD is titled "Trouble". The CD is being released by Planet Records.

The album made use of the services of session drummer extraordinaire Brent Dacus, who's located in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, and plays with the symphony there, and does session and live work as well.

http://www.planetrecords.org/batsbrew

The link above, takes you to a page with information and soundclip previews of all the songs, as well as ordering the CD.

Check out the link, give a listen, and if it tilts your fancy - support your (virtual) local musician......!

thanks for the headsup Dot!!

i hope some of the studio forum folk will check out the links, and give a listen....

help support my passion for making music...
and like dot says, support a 'virtual' local musician!

Gonzo!

I went to the link and did the tour. Thank you for the Kudos Gonzo.

Man, you have some real talent!!!

People, you should check this out.

All the best,

Peter Montessi
A Designs Audio
www.adesignsaudio.com

Nice work Gonzo!
Congrats on the release!

Very nice work indeed Gonzo!

Cool to see you've climbed this mountain. Soon, it's on to the next, but enjoy the view while you can!

peter!
so nice of you to chime in....
i just love your products, use them of course, and i don't mind at all, calling attention to your stuff in whatever little way i can!
thanks for the kind words...

dudge-
thanks man, i appreciate that!! hope you pick one up.....

fox-
this mountain, took a year and a half.

actually, more like 2 years....

that's a lot of blood, sweat and tears...

i tried to reach beyond my immediate abilities, with this set of recordings....
i tried to find emotion that i haven't tapped into successfully before...
i tried to find new sounds, and thrive in those sounds....

there's always going to be a point where the returns aren't there....
trying to do these kinds of in-depth recordings, with (mostly) cheap gear in crummy rooms, is quite the challenge...

i could have done this thing in about a month... with a proper studio at my disposal-and someone else engineering!!
.... but you know, things are the way they are....and i pretty much have to do this on my own...
sometimes the struggle, is where the good stuff comes from!

thanks for listening, fox!

a little bump,
cuz,
damn, this thing sank like a rock!!

Sound's great!
I just listened to the full album tour. That's a good idea to have it set up like that because it makes is easy for people take a listen to a sample of a lot of your songs at once.

evt

Nice work, Gonz!

My order is in!



Ed

Awesome Gonzo! Ordering!

Ordered Tonight...
Always liked your stuff Gonzo...!!
Can't Wait

wow!
so cool, you guys are here, and involved in this........!
thanks


EVT-
yeah, doing the tour, i like, cuz you can figure it out pretty quick...
granted, the tour is a bit of a gyp, and a bit misleading, cuz every song can't be boiled down to 40 seconds...

all these songs take hard right turns here and there, and the best i could do, was try to figure out where a 'hook', or interesting section was....
i'd rather be able to stream the entire songs.......
if i can get the page setup where people can just purchase song by song, that's my goal.

Mudbean-
sweet!
thanks so much, for ordering..... let me know what you think...
i tried to make the album order work from beginning to end, and it's only 40 minutes total... so not a huge chunk of time.

Fracturecomposer-
thanks for ordering... again, let me know what you think...

i'm going to put out a (super cheap)(like, 3 bucks) self produced/finished cd of nothing but instrumentals soon....
all the songs are done, just gotta compile it...

Ghia-
thanks a lot man.....
give me a review if you've got time..
and do give a listen cranked in the home stereo, and then a good listen in the cans....
i'd love to know how this comes across in systems other than what i've heard so far...

for the couple of Studio Forum guys that got the cd (you know who you are!)--
please let me know if/when you get it, and what you thought of the package/album/idea/you got the idea.....

tnkx!
rob

Hey Gonzo..Rob!
Just spoke with my wife and your CD arrived this AM. I'm looking forward to the test drive!

Peace,Ghia

Hey Gonzo got my order in!

I must say it has been a long time since looking forward to a new CD!

~Bob

O.K., so, check it out ...

Have you noticed, that's what Randy says when he's about to give a contestant a rave review (yes, I admit it, the Bean & I are addicted AI watchers!). If they tank, it's, "So, how do you think you did?"

Well, Robbie, baby, so check it out ...

WE GOT A HOT ONE IN THE HOUSE!!!



"TROUBLE" has been living in my car CD player for the last week or so ... damn, dude - you worked your ass off on this project, and it shows! I'm diggin the hell out of it ... I've said before 'round here that I'm a big fan of your work, from singing to playing (obviously!) to writing, you've got it goin' on!

Don't have a fave cut or review yet - there's alot to digest ... I'll get back to y'all.

mud

ghia
oh great!
hope you dig it....
let me know what you think....

FractureComposer
hey, thanks for playing the buy gonzo's cd game!
LOL
again, let me know what you think.....
and crank it up!

MudBean
LOL
AI watchers.... i dig it too... once they weed out the wanabes, and get down to the ones that are really hungry for it, it starts getting fun!
You know, the CAR is the only place, i haven't listened to this thing yet...
and really, i shoulda done that, while i was mixing.
self imposed mixing schedules, and feeling like i was polishing a turd, led me to give it up very early....
i could have spent a year mixing this thing, and still not been happy with it!!

please, let me know how it ends up translating to the car....
i got no stereo in my car, and listen to my mp3 player while driving now!

thanks again, for supporting a virtual musician...

I received the cd and I really think it sounds great. I need to listen to it some more, but I'm diggin what I've heard so far.

Can you tell me more about how you mic'd the drums, and what you ran the mics through. Where did you record the drums?

evt

drummer56, EVT, thanks for listening!
and evt, thanks for getting one....

the drums, were all done in ft. worth (i'm in salt lake city)

a friend/acquantence was putting together a 'drums for hire' project, and used me as his guinea pig!

so, i don't have a lot of details, but in my studio forums 'studio journal', i have detailed some of the drum particulars.

the idea in short was, i had demos of 7 songs, recorded on a roland daw.... the engineer that recorded the drums for me had a 2480 (same line of recorders) and so i sent him my backup data, and he stripped off my drum machine, made tempo maps for the drummer to follow, then recorded his performance on 8 different tracks (kik, snare, 3 toms, 2 overheads, hi hat) and then sent me just the drum tracks back via snail mail...

i then started from scratch, playing to the new drum tracks.

the drummer's name is brent dacus. the engineer's name is mike musgrove.

Here’s what Mike has to say about Brent:

”He’s one of the degreed SOBs. I met him about 20 yrs ago. We played in a couple of non-descript C/W bands (or as we called it - haaat music). He does gig stew around here. Does some sessions, stays busy taking calls. He’s doing the next few weeks with the symphony doing “Annie” at the concert hall. A little of everything. He toured with Reba McIntyre for a little while then decided he’d rather have a root canal.
Super nice guy.”


some notes from Mike on the recording thingy-

Mike: "Cheap PG81s have been replace by rode ntks for overheads. Senn 421s on all toms.. Different front head on the kick drum to make it easier to mic...huge difference. Separate mic on the hi-hat.
I'm using 2 Rode NTKs for overheads……Micing the hi-hat seperately just in case you want to add in some sizzle on it. I'm going to swap out the snare mic (sm57) for a betas sm57. Its got better rejection to knock the hi-hat down some and much higher proximity effect to bring out the lows in the snare."

as i understand it, there's a room that's particularly dead, that mike used.
the overheads, really just gave me the cymbals and sizzle, not a lot of room sound.

i experimented forever! on what kind of reverb...
i tweaked every parameter a dozen ways to sunday, and finally ended up with mostly ambient reverb, with a 14-20 meter sized room, and a lot of diffusion, and not much tail, and a little pre-delay.

i think the best captures of the drums, are the tunes "choices", "yesterday", and "Long Journey", though they all kicked ass, and if there's any issues with any of it, it's my crummy mixing errors.

but i set a time limit, and when i hit it, i walked away from it.

a better engineer (just about anybody here!) could have done a lot better job than i did, but i had to do it on the cheap, so there it is.
i just hope the arrangments, lyrics, and performances, make up for crummy mixing.
but, at least i'm into it, i'm trying to learn, and it was fun for me to do...

Gonz,
I had a chance to listen to your CD this weekend during my 3 hour drive up to PennState to see me daughter. You are truly amazing!
I totally dig what you do. The guitar chops are amazing! I listened to the whole album 5 or six times. It was really hard to pick out any cues that this was not an extrememly high budget project. The mix transfered extremely well to the car. Your arrangements were phenominal. Great Riffage, loved the guitar sounds throughout. I really like "Take it All" (Yes meets Triumph , meets Satch)
I hope others will support your effort!
Awesome job, you should be extremely proud!!



Peace ghiA