Chewbacca’s Habachi 2002

Sometime in early November of that year I started trying to get some gear together for recording season. It’s kinda foggy, but I guess I didn’t own my own computer yet, or maybe it was that I didn’t have the software or something?

Anyway, I wound up borrowing a computer from Juce that belonged to a friend of his, from that techno side project he did. So I had maybe 5 days with it. In a whirlwind of smokin’ and composition, not only did I achieve my 11 song quota, but managed to mix and master the whole thing in that timeframe.

In retrospect, I’m just now realizing that this was the first album I did completely in the digital format and pretty much said farewell to analog recording.

Well I had an album, now I needed a cover. Back then I was a huge pain coming up with artwork for a cd. Juce had the advantage of his art school material, so if he needed something he’d just dip into his portfolio. I mostly drew on paper plates, or scratch paper that was laying around. So not really an option for me.

One afternoon I came by his workplace to dupe some copies,(he worked at a local studio and we would use their shit after hours). One of the main sources of income for the studio was restoration, duplication, and transfers. It just so happened that someone bought in their prized barbershop quartet collection for digital transfer. There were so many records. So I was flipping through them and came across one of the same year as I was born. The instant I pulled it out of the milk crate, all the pieces came together. I excused myself and walked across the street to Walgreens, where I purchased the nerdiest pair of glasses for a dollar I could find. Upon returning I explained my intentions with him and after we laughed for half an hour, the photoshoot began. The angle and lighting were crucial to pull this illusion off.

As you can see it’s flawless.

So a little bit of history on the record. There were moments on there that I attempted to redo some vocal tracks, but the fact that there was barely enough memory on this pos computer to function, it was prone to locking up. It did that a lot. So between that and the loan time, I was forced to release it , flaws and all. Nowhere more noticeable than on the track,” Re-Connect “.

It was also at this time I I noticed more people responded to each song in positive way , due to the looped drum tracks and sound clips via Fruity Loops studio. I used that fomular for a few albums , until “The Ninja’s Handbook”…