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The Soundtrack to My Life

POSTED:Tue, December 2, 2008 @ 11:43AM

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In the Studio with Hybrid Ice

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In October, I had the incredible opportunity of spending a few hours in the recording studio with Hybrid Ice. The band is currently in Robert Richardson’s studio, After 7 Studios, in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, recording their new album, to be released early next year.

Many aspects of recording have changed since they last met in the studio over twenty years ago. Jeff Willoughby has left the band for personal reasons and has been replaced on bass by Mike Boarman. All members of the band have full-time jobs outside of Hybrid Ice and therefore can meet only on Sundays in the studio, as opposed to blocking out weeks at a time for strictly studio time. They are also recording with digital technology, instead of “magnetic tape.”

I spent some time with Robert Richardson, Rick Klinger, Rusty Foulke, and Boarman in the studio, watching them write a song as well as laying down a bass line on a nearly complete song. Throughout this process I was able to document and record Foulke and Klinger in the very beginning stages of lyric and melody brainstorming, while Richardson broke down a song, note by note, to teach Boarman so that he could add the bass line to another song.

Richardson gave me the complete tour of the studio, which included seeing a large tunnel made by a groundhog under the sidewalk behind the studio. The control room was equipped with a big sound board on which I commented, “Wow! That’s a lot of buttons!”

The first isolation booth was full of microphones, headphones, and millions of black cords, which are used to record vocals. Both of the two isolation booths were fully carpeted halfway up the wall, where the carpet then turned into black foam and traveled the entire way across the ceiling. Richardson explained they need the foam to get the best-sounding vocals, and even further explained their use of special microphones, which are so sensitive that you can hear “a fly cough” when recording.

The control room is used to record various guitar and bass parts as well as to permit pushing the millions of buttons on the console to record and adjust all the sounds coming from the performers and speakers. It is also outfitted with the most comfortable leather couches that I have ever sat in!

While Richardson sat at the control board to instruct Boarman, Klinger and Foulke went outside the studio on the sidewalk to dream up lyrics for a song that Foulke had been working on. Foulke sat with a tablet, pen, and his unplugged electric guitar as he sang a verse he had just written to Klinger, who was leaning against the back of a car.

Foulke and Klinger paid special attention to rhyming each line as they both searched for the right word to connote the desired meaning and enable the flow of the verse to go with the melody of the song. It was obvious they were in the beginning stages because as Foulke played the song, his voice was still searching for the right melody line.

Back in the studio, Richardson was playing a new song, “Only the Lonely,” that vibrated the leather couches in the control room with Foulke’s driving guitars, Klinger’s pounding drums, and a killer vocal by Richardson himself. Richardson started at the beginning by playing the first thirty seconds of the song, stopping it, and teaching Boarman the bass line by singing, “Da Da Da Da.” Boarman would then play what he felt, his fingers dancing over his strings as the bass pulsated through the room. They finished the song within two hours and as they played it back, I couldn’t help but think about how this independent album is going to make a mark on the seemingly uninspired music business that exists today.

I sat down with Klinger, Foulke, and Richardson to ask them a few questions about songwriting, the recording process, and the marketing of their up-coming release. Richardson and Foulke are the main songwriters of the band, with Klinger “always there to help out.”

When asked if they write the lyrics or music first, Richardson said, “I go for the groove, the music and all that and then I struggle with lyrics….he (Foulke) is a great lyricist…and he’ll add the rest later.” Inspiration comes quickly for Richardson, who has been formally trained as a musician. He said, “Just being a musician, you hear stuff in your head. Some people wake up and they don’t hear anything…I wake up and I hear stuff.”

Foulke said that it is very rare that a good song will come to him in only a few minutes and even in those extraordinary instances when a song does come to him quickly, he still finds strength in the editing process. He said, “You don’t write to the point where you have taken all the passion out of it, but lots of times, you need a good rewrite.” He used the Beatles as an example of a successful band that rewrote nearly every one of their songs. He said that he always wondered how they “got to the cool part” of the song.

The real reward for Foulke, as one of the two main songwriters of the band, is when he hears his own song playing from a passing vehicle. He said, “When we’re playing in Lock Haven, or a place like Lock Haven…when I’m walking with my kid, and somebody goes by in their river boat and they’re blasting out a song that you wrote and they’re having a good time—they think it’s cool enough to be played—and your kid says, ‘Hey, that’s my Daddy on there,’ that’s cool, that’s the best part for me.”

After a discussion about the band Boston covering their song, “Magdelene,” in 1994, Klinger explained, “We always thought we were competing with the Tom Pettys and Def Leppards and whoever else—Jon Bon Jovi’s. We weren’t competing with the local bar bands, in terms of songwriting. You strive to get in the same arena as them.”

When asked how they are planning on getting their new album distributed, Klinger talked about all of the tasks that had to be done once the recording process is over. He said, “First you have to get everything together and then you have to mix it all up and then you actually have to ship it all away. You have to have the CDs all made and shrink wrapped. You have to do the cover art and the printing and all that…there is a lot of avenues out there that are new, like the internet…we will promote ourselves to the best of our ability.”

Richardson said, “All the radio stations up in Lock Haven and Williamsport are going to eat it all up. Radio is…hard to get on because it is controlled by some guy who sits in L.A. saying, ‘This is what you’ll play and that’s it.’”

As the interview wound down, I asked them what their hopes for their new album are after it’s released. Klinger said, “[We] do this because [we] can. It’s so much fun. Not only the artistic aspect, but the camaraderie of hanging out with the best friends you’ll ever have…it’s rewarding no matter what.”

I’ll never forget walking into the studio for the first time hearing, “Welcome!” and receiving a big hug from Richardson. All of them had me in fits of laughter during downtime, including Foulke doing a hilarious impersonation of Tom Petty.

I left them to work on vocals in the studio as I made the long drive home with the sound of new songs and melodies running through my head. It was the first time I had ever been in a recording studio and I must admit, I can’t wait to do it again. I am very grateful to Hybrid Ice for allowing me to come and be a “fly on the wall” while they created their magic.

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