It’s hard to believe it has been 2 and a half weeks!
All this time spent here with Dane and Jordan has been such a memorable experience that I will never forget. We accomplished so much and we cannot wait for everyone to hear everything! At the same time I cannot wait to get home to see my girlfriend, family and friends!
See everyone soon!
Hey friends/family,
We are currently in the studio and Dane is tracking more vocals. We are getting closer and closer to getting everything tracked! We will be in here tomorrow (Friday) and then have Saturday off, before heading back in Sunday and Monday, and then head home on Tuesday.
Monday and Tuesday Mr. Sasaji, who worked with us on our Christmas CD is going to be in arranging strings and directing a quartet for a selection of our songs that we feel string accompaniments would work great with.
This trip has been a blast and I am very excited with how everything is turning out, but at the same time I can’t wait to get home!
Hello Friends,
We are back in the studio just about to wrap up day 3 of our second week recording and things are going amazing! Today we have been recording vocals, as well as had a guest guitarist in for some special solos, etc.. This was the guy that did some stuff on Winter Wonderland on “A Jamestown Story Christmas”. Lets just say the stuff he did today even topped that!
Besides that, today I spent lots of time updating our Purevolume page (http://www.purevolume.com/jamestownstory) and prepping our web server for our new website which we are launching soon! So excited to get that up and running!
Oh! We also released a second new merch item which will be coming soon! The block letter t-shirt and now the new JS hooded sweatshirt are both now in production being printed and will be ready in time for our holiday show! They will also of course be available at jamestownstorymerch.com.
Yesterday was my Grandma Barton’s annual Christmas party. I was really bummed out to miss it because I have always been there since I can remember! But an opportunity like this was clearly a good enough reason this year. Fortunately my brother Joey brought his mac and I was even able to skype with my mom’s whole side of the family! It was awesome!
Look! They even still took a family photo with me in it!! lol
Gnight folks!
My pizza came! I couldn’t understand anything the delivery guy said, but I got it haha!
Sizes are definitely different here! This was a medium and it’s about the size of a party pizza back home!
Today we were back in the studio to do some more work on the new album! We will be in working all week through Friday again before an off day on Saturday, and then our last three days before heading home.
Today we tracked electric guitars and some percussion. As I’ve been saying in pretty much every post, things are going fantastic. The only downfall came today as I am not feeling the greatest, but I think it has to do with pushing myself so hard outside yesterday and then getting to bed so late.
Tonight we are just relaxing and I am trying to feel better for tomorrow. I just ordered myself a Domino’s pizza online and it was quite challenging, but I think I got it all right! Can’t wait to dive into a pepperoni pizza!
Gnight Folks!
We did it! We made it through our first week at Onkio Haus and I couldn’t be happier with how things have turned out thus far! We now have an off day and will resume back to recording on Sunday our time to track some more vocals.
Yesterday Dane tracked drums and it went really well, except for now his hands seem pretty much mangled all full of blisters haha. Nevertheless the drums sound amazing and will round out the songs extremely well!
Last night after the studio, the three of us went out to get some drinks and had the entire bar chanting Tokyo! Tokyo! Tokyo! It was definitely an experience to remember hahaha.
Today we had to checkout of our hotel for just one day as the hotel had already been at capacity for that day before we booked it. So Dane headed with Tadashi to go checkin to the new hotel and Jordan and I decided to go do some sightseeing.
We headed over to the Tokyo tower and back to the Ropongi district. The Tokyo tower was unreal!!! It is a little bigger than the Eiffel Tower and looks pretty much the same, but orange. We bought tickets and went up to the main observation area to get the full experience. The weather was spectacular today and perfect for this! We could see for miles and miles, and even had an amazing view of the snow covered Mt. Fuji in the distance! Really awesome.
Now I am not usually afraid of heights at all, but there was something about the glass-door elevator ride up to the deck and the ability to feel the tower slightly moving/swaying that got to my nerves! There were even a few glass looking windows that were on the floor that you could stand on and look down through! I gathered up the courage and did it and it was creepy but really cool! I couldn’t believe how some little kids would just run to it and didn’t seem phased at all by the height!
Outside of the Tokyo tower there were a few performers with monkeys that put on one of the coolest little shows I have ever seen! They even let us get our picture taken with the little one!! So cool! Who ever thinks they will have a chance to hold a little baby monkey?! It was like holding a baby! He did have a little freakout though while I was holding him and they had to take him down haha.
After all of this we walked to the Hard Rock and then started our long walk to the new hotel which we’re at now for the night. On the way we did a little window shopping through the extremely fancy Ginza district which was REALLY busy. The had the streets closed down and there were thousands and thousands of people. Reminded me of the State Fair!
Now I am relaxing in a full massage chair in our new hotel. This hotel has amazing views!!! It’s a corner room and out of one window you can see Mt. Fuji once again.
Below are some of the pictures and a few videos of what we saw today!
So happy I got to do this! So Cool!! This was outside of Tokyo Tower.
Another photo from the main deck.
Stopped by a bookstore in Ginza and found a stack of Car Graphic Magazines! This is the one that we are in!
Some cool looking trees in Ginza
A view from our hotel room window
And here is a video of the monkey show! Enjoy!
Yesterday was our 5th day in the studio and things have been going very well! We got vocals tracked for one of my favorite songs, and what I think will definitely be a hit! We also did a live stream via stickam and jamestownstory.com/live while Dane was tracking, but then opened it up to a live chat with lots of people. It was pretty awesome! It’s crazy that we can be talking and video chatting with people back home so seamlessly. It was also great to be able to vid chat with Jacqui for the first time on the trip! :)
After a while we then ventured out for some lunch and grabbed some good ol McDonalds. I found one of my new favorite things there, that they don’t have back home! It’s called the Shaka Shaka Chicken. It is a boneless chicken filet that comes in a little paper pouch and a seasoning flavor packet of your choice that you pour in, shake it up, then rip the top half of the paper off and enjoy! I have a feeling I will be eating lots of these during the rest of our stay! They’re cheap and they’re not that terrible for ya. If they get these back home, my ability of staying away from fast food would surely be diminished!
I’ll follow with a photoset of some of the pictures throughout the day. Some of my favorites were on our walk home from the studio through the fancier part of the Ginza district. It looks awesome all lit up at night! Kind of reminds me of when I was in Times Square. Sayonara!
The new issue of Car Graphic magazine that we were featured in, which also includes a Christmas CD, hit the stores and was sent out to subscribers today!
Hello friends! We’re in the studio again, Day 4, and everything is going great! Yesterday we pretty much wrapped up all the initial acoustic guitars and piano for the songs and today we are focusing on tracking vocals for two songs.
One of the greatest things I enjoy about this time around here in Tokyo is that we aren’t taking a cab everywhere we go. Our hotel is about 1.5 miles from the studio, which makes for a great morning and evening walk each day. Here are a few photos from yesterday morning’s walk!
-Started the day off with a Chai Tea Latte. Look how small their small is here!
-These karaoke places are EVERYWHERE!
This is the superstore that we found that has literally EVERYTHING
-Here’s a little view of the craziness inside.
