2:00

The Fall Out Boys are a pop-rock

2:02

band from Illinois, formed of vocalist and

2:04

guitarist Patrick Stump, guitarist Joe Tromman, drummer

2:06

Andy Hurley and bassist Pete Wen.

2:09

With roots in the early 2000s hardcore punk

2:11

circuit in Chicago, the early days of Fall

2:13

Out Boy came when Pete and Joe decided

2:15

to venture into the realms of pop punk.

2:18

After recruiting Patrick and Andy, the group quickly

2:20

became a prominent part of the local scene.

2:23

Whilst their debut albums, take the Seal Grave

2:25

released in 2003, gained underground

2:28

acclaim, and with

2:30

2005s from under the cork tree

2:32

with producer Neil Avron that catapulted

2:34

them into mainstream success, featuring smash-it

2:36

singles including Dance Dance and Sugar

2:39

We're Going Down. Their first number

2:41

one record came in 2007, as

2:43

well as topping the charts, Infinity on

2:45

High gained the band a loyal following

2:48

and saw them solidify their presence as

2:50

major innovators across both the US and

2:52

international rock scene. Throughout the

2:54

2010s, the band began to venture

2:56

into different territories, incorporating elements of

2:59

R&B and electro-pop. But in

3:01

2023, their return to pop punk heavyweight

3:03

label Fuelled by Raman, revisiting the roots

3:05

of their sound with their eighth studio

3:07

album, So Much for Stardust. Neil

3:10

Avron is an American record producer, mixer

3:12

and musician. Neil began his musical

3:14

journey as a jazz trumpet player and

3:16

graduated with a music engineering degree from

3:18

the Frost School of Music in Miami.

3:21

Gaining experience in the prestigious studio Sunset

3:23

Sound and Criteria, he refined his skills

3:25

learning from some of the top engineers

3:27

and producers of the day. Since

3:30

his debut as a producer, on 1997's

3:32

So Much for the Afterglow by Everclear,

3:34

Neil has shared his talents with artists

3:36

including 21 Pilots, Walk the

3:38

Moon, 32nd to Mars and Blink

3:41

182. In 2010,

3:43

he created headlines when he worked

3:45

on albums that debuted at number

3:47

one on the Billboard charts for

3:49

three consecutive weeks, Disturbed Asylum, Lincoln

3:52

Park's A Thousand Sons and Sarah

3:54

Berales' Kaleidoscope Heart. For his production

3:56

work with Sarah, he also received

3:58

a Grammy nomination. Having collaborated

4:00

with Fall Out Boy on three of their earlier

4:02

albums, from Under the Cork Tree in Finis Yon

4:05

High in Folie Adder, in 2022 they reunited, setting

4:08

to work on So Much for Stada. Today

4:11

I'm at home in Warden South London,

4:13

and I'm joined by Patrick and Neil

4:15

from their respective homes across America. And

4:17

what better way to start the conversation

4:20

than by hearing something from the record?

4:22

This is Hold Me Like a Gross.

4:33

I know you'll be

4:35

well, I know you'll

4:37

be well. Oh,

4:42

am I dialing tonight? That's a

4:44

bummer. Oh, am I

4:46

freezing to feel? I'm

4:49

thinking of a jus from my side,

4:52

and I never thought I'd be like

4:54

you. I just love, love, love. I

5:27

love, love, love. I love you, I

5:29

love you. I love you, I

5:31

love you. It

5:35

is Hold Me Like a Grudge. It is Fall

5:37

Out Boy from the album So Much for Stada.

5:39

Still I'm very pleased to say that I have

5:41

Patrick Stump from Fall Out Boy connected to me

5:44

on the west coast of the United States. Hello

5:46

Patrick. How's it going? Very good,

5:48

thank you. And I also have Neil Avron, the

5:50

producer of the album, connected to me from the

5:53

east coast of the United States. Hello Neil. Hello

5:56

John. It's great to have you both

5:58

here. Now we're here to talk about how you... you

6:00

made and recorded the album so much

6:02

for Stardust. The first

6:04

song we're going to listen to is Love from

6:06

the Other Side, but before we do that, I

6:08

wondered what you wanted to do with this new

6:11

record, because there was a little bit of a

6:13

gap between this album and the last album, and

6:15

there was also a gap between the last time

6:17

you'd worked with Neil as well. Yeah,

6:20

well, it's weird. We're a

6:22

weird band in a weird place. I

6:24

feel like we've always kind of had

6:27

trouble fitting into anything

6:30

weirdly. It's

6:32

like we were part of

6:34

this whole emo thing, but we

6:36

kind of sat outside of it because

6:39

we were more into hip-hop and

6:41

R&B than the other emo kids

6:43

or whatever. But

6:46

then we weren't really a pop band

6:49

exactly. If you would

6:51

put us on pop radio shows and we'd

6:53

go in and play, and comparatively

6:55

it was like Slayer was playing, but of course we're

6:58

still a pop band. We've

7:02

always had a difficulty of landing in a place.

7:07

And because of that, it's made it

7:09

difficult to find people

7:11

to work with. It's also made it

7:13

difficult to find direction

7:17

sometimes, because you may be inspired

7:19

by something that doesn't really fit.

7:23

And so that was one of the things that we

7:25

tried for a long time in the gap there, trying

7:27

to figure out what we were going to do. We

7:29

experimented with a lot of things. We experimented with some

7:31

reggae and we experimented with some 90s

7:34

kind of shoegaze stuff. We

7:36

experimented with some more hardcore influence things

7:39

and whatever. I

7:41

always bring R&B influence

7:43

things as well. But

7:46

it kind of went back and forth and we

7:48

had talked to a few producers and frankly I

7:50

wasn't very interested. I was kind of

7:52

not feeling good about it. I didn't feel

7:54

like we had a good direction or anything. And

7:58

I kind of put my foot down and I was like... I

8:00

would love to work with Neil again. Yeah. Well,

8:03

I mean, Neil, you'd worked on three Fall

8:05

Out Boy albums before, so clearly you

8:07

and the band had a great relationship, and

8:10

it was one that you knew worked. So

8:12

maybe that was one of the reasons why

8:14

you, Patrick, thought, you know what? We

8:16

know Neil. We like Neil. We

8:18

work well with Neil. Why don't we give Neil

8:20

a call? And then were you surprised to get a

8:22

call, Neil? A little bit. I

8:25

mean, yes and no. I mean, I'd always hoped

8:27

that I'd work with them again. You know, working

8:29

with a band and getting a

8:31

chance to work on multiple records with a

8:33

band is always, for me, a feather

8:35

in my cap. I love working

8:37

on multiple records, seeing the band grow and

8:40

having a relationship grow in the music. I

8:43

think that originally I think

8:45

their manager called me to say, hey,

8:47

I know you've been only

8:49

mixing pretty much, but are you interested in

8:52

producing again? And

8:55

that kind of started the ball rolling, and then

8:57

Patrick and I got on a conversation as well.

8:59

And I think it kind of really started like,

9:01

hey, let's do a few songs together and see

9:04

how everybody's feeling. And

9:06

it seemed in my mind and obviously

9:09

from them that things were going in

9:11

a positive direction. So

9:15

we just continued on and soldiered on until

9:17

we finished the record, essentially. Yeah. And

9:19

when you came to record it, did you

9:22

go to one place specifically and just stay

9:24

there for a month and do it that

9:26

way, or is it more piecemeal? What

9:29

was the approach? We spent most of it in Neil's

9:31

house. Yeah. Really,

9:33

the approach is essentially

9:35

Patrick would come with

9:38

pretty fully formed recordings and

9:40

demos of the songs that

9:42

were... He typically writes in

9:44

this interesting way where he

9:47

writes like, here's an intro, a verse,

9:49

pre-chorus, chorus kind of a thing, and

9:51

here's the song, here's the shell of

9:53

the song. And a lot of it's pretty

9:56

well formed. And instead

9:58

of him writing the whole thing, he went... just wants

10:00

to make sure everybody's digging where the song

10:02

is at. And so he sent

10:04

those to me and we had some conversations

10:07

about these are the ones I think we

10:10

should start with or believe in. And

10:12

so we would spend time at my

10:14

studio and going through and working up

10:17

arrangements and stuff like that. So that's

10:19

really how it started for each song,

10:21

essentially. We just kept going until we had enough

10:23

songs for a record. And

10:25

was that just the two of you? Was that the rest of the

10:27

band as well? For a lot of it was

10:29

just the two of us, I'd say. So we would call everybody else

10:31

in but it was kind of one of those things where at that

10:34

stage we were kind of, if I

10:37

remember right, we were just sort of pulling

10:39

together ideas, right? At

10:41

the end of the day, everybody would come

10:43

in and listen, I think, right? At the very

10:45

beginning, yeah? Yeah, absolutely. I

10:47

think everybody had a piece either, I think

10:50

we would send some stuff to Joe or

10:52

Pete would come in to take a listen.

10:55

And there were some failed attempts at

10:58

a couple songs early on that we were like,

11:00

oh, this is cool. And then we dig into

11:02

it. And then by the time we

11:05

kind of got a fully formed idea, we're like, no, this

11:07

is not really a song that belongs

11:09

on the album. Well, the opening song

11:11

on the album is the first song we're going to

11:13

listen to today and have a look at. And it's

11:16

Love from the Other Side. So I

11:18

think maybe we should start digging into that. But

11:20

before we get digging into it, we're going to

11:22

hear the mastered version, the final version that everybody

11:24

knows and loves. So if you're able to play

11:26

that, Neil, that would be great. All right, here

11:28

we go. Thank

11:54

you. You

12:30

You You

12:55

So it is love from the other side just

12:57

a little taste of the opening song to the

13:00

album so much for stardust and There's

13:02

so much going on there It's intriguing to

13:04

know where to start because it starts in

13:06

one way and then goes off in a

13:09

different way But you manage to bring those

13:11

two worlds together so well And

13:13

you were saying neil that in many

13:15

instances patrick turns up with a demo

13:17

that is it's pretty realized in terms

13:19

of The ingredients that are going to

13:21

be in a song so Am

13:24

I thinking that all those string parts and

13:26

all those delicate? Glissandos are

13:28

all there on the demo or is

13:30

that something that gets thought about afterwards

13:32

one of the demos well actually Neil

13:34

and I are talking about this we

13:36

we'd love to play you some versions,

13:38

but So the background

13:41

of this song, you know as we were trying

13:43

to kind of crack the code of what we

13:45

were going to do With this album one

13:48

of the things that was very difficult was so,

13:50

you know For a lot

13:52

of people if they don't know, you know I tend to

13:54

write most of the music and then pete

13:56

our bass player tends to write most of the lyrics and

13:59

uh as a function of that,

14:01

you know, I'm not writing the lyrics, but I

14:03

do have a lot of control over how they

14:05

get used. And over the

14:07

course of the previous couple records, I

14:10

had gotten, I don't know

14:12

why I got obsessed with streamlining his

14:14

lyrics in choruses to be a little

14:16

bit like, Pete is very wordy. He has these ideas that

14:18

take up a lot of space, you know. And

14:21

I felt like, for whatever reason,

14:23

I had been, you know, I don't

14:26

know, just going back through 70s

14:28

records and thinking about the simplicity

14:30

of certain lyrical concepts and

14:32

kind of aiming for that. And

14:35

our manager sat me down at a lunch

14:37

and he was like, hey, don't

14:39

do that. He

14:42

said to me, he's like, you used to ramble. You

14:44

guys used to ramble a little bit. Why don't you

14:46

ramble? And I was like, okay, you know.

14:49

So this was the first

14:51

song I wrote after that conversation. I

14:53

went back and it's kind of stream

14:55

of consciousness in terms of the way

14:57

that I just followed the lyrics. But I was also playing

14:59

with a lot of things that, you

15:01

know, I was like, we haven't worked with Neil in a

15:03

long time. You know,

15:06

we're 22 years in as a band. You

15:08

know, how many how many how much

15:10

longer do you get to put out records and have anyone

15:12

care about them? And

15:15

so I was like, let's

15:17

I want to try a bunch of the things that we never

15:19

got to try. So the meat

15:21

of the song from once

15:23

the band starts. So before after that, we'll

15:25

do it the orchestral section later. But once

15:28

the band starts, that pretty much is

15:31

was established right away. And it was

15:33

established in my first demo as a

15:35

thing of like, I

15:38

kind of just followed whatever I

15:40

was feeling, you know, and basically a lot

15:42

of these things. Basically, a lot of these

15:44

things in this song were things that years

15:47

of working in pop music had

15:49

kind of scared me off of doing. You

15:52

know, once we get to the chorus, that's not what you

15:54

do in a pop song is, you know, a

15:57

very long. I mean, it's essentially a

15:59

paragraph chorus. But

16:02

then once I found that lyric of pizza, every lover's

16:04

got a little dagger in their hand. I

16:07

was like, that's just it all

16:09

tied together. And it was really funny,

16:11

I was demoing it and I remember singing

16:14

that line and eagerly

16:18

emailing Neil like, listen to this. Wow,

16:21

that sounds amazing. So are you able to share

16:24

any of that? Well, before

16:26

we do, I also want to

16:29

point out a caveat that Neil reminded

16:31

me of, I totally forgot but my

16:33

very first iteration, because you know, Fall Out Boy doesn't

16:35

get to do just as a function

16:37

of I think the way we

16:39

came up. We don't really tend to do a

16:41

lot of fun guitar stuff. So

16:44

I really wanted to do

16:46

something guitar present. So I

16:48

don't know, Neil, if you want to play my first pass. Sure.

16:51

I'll play just a little bit of

16:53

the intro, essentially. Ready?

17:02

Ready? So

17:20

a very different intro. And

17:25

instantly, I played

17:27

it for the band, I played it for Neil,

17:29

I played it for management and unanimously everyone was

17:31

like, we love it, except the intro obviously. And

17:36

I was like, okay, no problem.

17:39

And then I was like, well, what else did I want to do? What

17:42

else was I, have I always wanted to

17:44

do? And one of the things was that the

17:46

last time Neil and I worked together on an

17:48

album was a Foley idea, which was kind

17:51

of a very weird record for the band and

17:53

I don't know, it fits in this

17:55

very weird place in our history. And

17:57

one of the things that's very strange, you know, Neil, I think, is that he's a very

18:00

and I, I think lost most of

18:02

the demos for that record. But there

18:04

was, as weird as that record is,

18:06

as the finished record is, the demos

18:08

were even weirder. And it was

18:11

so expansive and strange. It was practically

18:13

psychedelic at times. There were moments on

18:16

some of those demos

18:18

that felt more like a Herbie Hancock record

18:20

than the Fall & Point record. So

18:22

there was a thing that I wanted to

18:25

get back to of kind of that experimentation.

18:27

Because that was something that was really fun about working

18:29

with Neil in the old days. That

18:32

we would do studio

18:34

stuff in a way that a lot

18:36

of bands that I know just didn't.

18:38

And there's nothing wrong with that. And

18:41

we didn't for, we hadn't

18:43

since we worked with Neil.

18:45

Where we would spend hours trying

18:47

to dial in a synth clap delay

18:49

or whatever. But all

18:52

hardware stuff and

18:57

you know, placing mics in

18:59

weird ways to have

19:01

strange effects and just.

19:04

We went on a

19:06

shopping spree and Patrick

19:09

bought like this old PA system that

19:11

we set up. I don't know if

19:13

you remember that. And we were

19:15

using that and we were sending tons of stuff

19:17

through that. And yeah, it was a lot of

19:20

experimentation. It was a very open to experimentation. And

19:22

I was like, okay, so now we've got the

19:24

meat of a song. How do we get into

19:26

it? How do we start a record? Because that

19:28

was the other thing is that by

19:30

this point, I had felt like we had had

19:33

the beginnings of a record, but we didn't have

19:35

an opening. And I really love opening albums. You

19:37

know, I think I've been trying

19:39

to write my Baba O'Reilly, you know, for

19:42

my whole life. You know, that's like the way I see

19:44

a record starting, right? And

19:47

so I was like, okay, one

19:49

thing that I always wanted to do

19:51

when I tried on Foley and it never

19:54

happened was a piano phase. You know,

19:56

I got Steve Reich piano phase where

19:58

you have a loop looped phrase. that's

20:00

playing at the same time in multiple

20:03

different tempos. So it started

20:06

from that. I played

20:08

this one piano line four times

20:11

at different speeds and

20:13

then I took those and

20:15

I looped them for 20 minutes

20:18

or whatever. And

20:20

this isn't an

20:23

avant-garde record so I don't get to just put

20:25

out 20 minutes of piano phase. So

20:28

to kind of bridge the gap

20:30

there, then I listened through to

20:32

find a couple bars that

20:34

I thought were really exciting and

20:36

kind of transitioned between the beginning and that.

20:38

So if you listen, the piano starts out

20:41

and it's all kind of in the same

20:43

tempo and then gradually the four of them

20:45

start to cascade and get

20:47

all muddled. And

20:49

then it transitions into what sounds like delay.

20:52

It is four different performances of it

20:54

at different speeds and then

20:56

the kind of drama of the

20:59

orchestral section kind of built around

21:01

that. Very interesting. I think

21:03

we need to hear some of these pianos then

21:05

if possible. I mean, you

21:08

did a demo of that and then redid

21:10

it or was the demos kind of

21:12

strong enough that you just went with

21:14

that? No, we actually on this

21:16

record, I think we really didn't keep

21:19

much of any of the demo stuff.

21:21

You know, my demos are pretty decent but

21:24

then Neil was like, yeah, but I know Jerry

21:26

Hay. So

21:29

yeah, I can play a little bit of just the piano so you

21:31

can kind of hear where it, how it

21:34

evolves. That would be great. So

21:50

this sounds to four pianos. So it is four

21:52

pianos. They're all in there. It's always four pianos.

22:02

So, around here, I'm jumping ahead

22:05

to a much further section of it. So,

22:11

but, you know, imagine I'm playing

22:14

the same line, I'm playing

22:16

a bar of the same line at whatever

22:18

BPMs this is, if it's, I don't

22:21

remember, but if I'm

22:23

playing a piano line at 120, and then I

22:25

play the same line at 121, and then I

22:28

play the same line at 122, and

22:30

the same line at 123, and I start them at

22:32

the same time. For the first

22:35

few bars, they'll be relatively in sync, right, and

22:37

they'll sound kind of normal. By

22:39

the end of the second bar, you'll start

22:41

to notice some of them are lagging, right?

22:43

And by the fourth bar, it's like, you

22:45

hear a lot of flams and whatever. By

22:48

the, you know, 17th bar, you

22:50

start to get these really

22:52

cacophonous, strange sounds. There are these

22:55

moments in there, it's really

22:57

hypnotic. It does all these weird sonic,

23:00

almost illusions and things, where you

23:02

hear sounds that aren't there and

23:04

stuff. You hear, you know, almost

23:06

drum sounds and things, or you hear

23:08

bass frequencies that aren't there. It's

23:11

just resonating on all these things. And then it

23:13

goes on to something else. So, I

23:15

always loved phases as a thing. I

23:17

always found them very fascinating. So I was like, I'm killed

23:20

to have one on a fall play record. And this was

23:22

my little way of getting it on there. Yeah. And

23:25

who is playing all of those? So that is me. That's

23:27

Patrick. Patrick, you're playing... Yeah, I'm playing at

23:29

the end of it, yeah. So in a parallel

23:31

universe, there is a Steve Reich, Patrick

23:34

Stump album that could come out

23:36

and, you know, could be performed

23:39

with four different pianists. Yeah, maybe one of these days

23:41

when my voice

23:43

is too haggard for rock

23:45

shows, you know, that'll be where I go. And

23:48

so having got this idea and

23:50

set it up, then, you know,

23:53

you try to bring in all this other

23:55

stuff. So you want to bring in orchestration.

23:57

You also want to bring in the band.

24:00

How easy was that plan? That

24:02

was the easy part. So I've been scoring film and

24:05

TV for the past eight or nine years. So

24:07

I've been dealing with orchestras and writing

24:10

for orchestras. I

24:12

want some drama. Because that's the thing,

24:14

is that when I look back at our records, our

24:17

best ones start off with a

24:19

kind of sense of melodrama for some reason.

24:21

It's part of our milieu, part of our

24:24

vibe, I guess. And I

24:26

was like, okay, well, now this is us 22

24:28

years in. What

24:31

does that drama sound like now? If

24:33

you get the sophistication of all the

24:35

stuff that we've learned, all the abilities

24:37

that we've attained, also

24:39

not for nothing, it's

24:42

not like Neil is frozen in place either. Neil

24:44

was already a fantastic producer. But now he's... Because

24:46

one of the last record we did was, what

24:48

was it, 2008. He's

24:51

that many years wiser as well. So I

24:53

was like, we can push this. So

24:56

much farther, you know. So what should we listen

24:58

to next that would help explain

25:00

what you did? So maybe we could play... Neil,

25:03

do we have the multitracks of the

25:05

demo orchestra? And we can play that

25:07

kind of against the live orchestra stuff?

25:10

I don't have the multitracks of the demo,

25:12

but I do. I mean, I have your

25:14

original demo or the latest version of the

25:16

demo. Yeah, with the... Okay, so we can

25:18

play that and you can kind of see

25:21

to what degree I built up

25:23

the orchestra. And,

25:38

oh, we took that out. I don't

25:40

like that low-face note. But

25:47

yeah, so mostly in contact instruments, I

25:50

tend to play everything individually.

25:52

So that one trumpet line

25:54

was one path of me

25:56

playing it. The cello is

25:59

one path. I'm not doing

26:01

like a synth pad. You

26:03

can see it's pretty close to what we

26:05

hear in the finish. And

26:09

then when we went in to record it, we

26:12

recorded it twice. There's two

26:14

layers in the orchestra. We

26:17

knew that we were going to have strings in

26:19

the proper orchestra. And so we

26:21

went to Angel in

26:24

London and recorded that

26:26

and it was fantastic. I

26:28

mean, it's astounding the way it sounded. By

26:32

the way, to toot Patrick's horn,

26:34

this arrangement is incredible. And I

26:36

do think it's worth listening to

26:39

the whole thing in solo, the

26:41

strings and the horns together just to get

26:43

an idea of all

26:45

the voice leading and harmony that he's doing.

26:47

It's really, it's pretty amazing. And

27:26

so we did that with an orchestra. But

27:29

then we also had this we had

27:31

worked with Jerry Hay and his

27:33

horns, the horn section on

27:36

infinity and on folio.

27:39

Just a spectacular arranger and hell

27:42

of a trumpet player that he doesn't play as much anymore. And

27:46

so we had we had some sections

27:48

on the record that were more like

27:50

pop horns. And so we had contracted

27:53

him to do those. Well, he shows

27:55

up and he was like, you know, I went I

27:58

took the liberty of also doing of also arranging. the

28:01

orchestra stuff too. Now he had

28:03

four players, right? But those four

28:05

players were extraordinary. I mean, we're

28:07

like other level. There's a

28:10

trombone player, Bill Reichenbach, and a

28:12

trumpet player, Wayne Bergeron. So

28:15

these four guys, in addition to the orchestra

28:17

that we had, I mean, it

28:19

went with like this to this. It was

28:21

extraordinary. There was a trumpet line I think

28:23

was playing on the left channel. Now, I,

28:25

like I said, I'm doing this all in

28:28

contact. A function of that is,

28:30

you know, I'm a composer, but I, it's

28:32

not like I've spent decades

28:34

in, you know, in front

28:36

of an orchestra or, you know, I didn't go to

28:38

conservatory. I don't have committed to memory my, you

28:40

know, the comfortable ranges

28:43

for players. I know what

28:45

they physically, you know,

28:47

what's possible. So

28:49

there's a trumpet line that I had played on the

28:52

synth, and it was pushing it.

28:54

It was pretty high. And I was like,

28:56

the synth is fine. I'm not really expecting

28:58

anybody to play that. That's a, it's practically

29:00

a, it was kind of out of

29:03

human performance. And Wayne

29:05

did it, like without trying. And

29:07

it was one of those things where everybody in

29:09

the room was like shocked and, you

29:11

know, Wayne just kind of, you know, yeah, just kind of nodded

29:13

like, yeah, I can do that. And

29:15

like I said, the orchestra at

29:18

Angel was already excellent.

29:20

But then adding those guys in was just

29:22

like, it was one of

29:24

the coolest recording sessions I've ever done. May,

29:27

are we able to hear that that trumpet?

29:31

I think so. That

29:45

was a note. And

29:50

to crescendo on it. I mean, that's, yeah,

29:52

it's very hard

29:54

brass playing. And

29:57

what next? Because then of course, some in the band.

30:00

Now, you have it all set up for the band to

30:02

kick in. When did you record them? Did

30:05

you record them after you'd got all the

30:07

orchestra sorted or beforehand? The

30:10

band, I believe, was first. Yeah, I think that

30:12

was first. We recorded the, you know, essentially we

30:14

recorded, you know, from when the band

30:16

enters all the way to the end of the

30:18

song. I mean, Patrick had already

30:21

had the demo version of the intro. And

30:24

then I think we recorded, I believe

30:26

we recorded the piano intro, then

30:28

the orchestra came last pretty much.

30:32

That's right. We went to a studio in

30:34

Seattle and did the piano and Andy, I

30:36

think. I actually think

30:38

the drums for this were done in LA. We

30:41

definitely did the piano. I

30:43

don't remember what else we did for this song.

30:45

Yeah. But that was one of the weird things

30:47

was we jumped around a lot in

30:50

making this record. You know, so there's

30:52

a lot of it that was recorded on any given song.

30:55

There's stuff that was recorded and we did

30:57

a session in Seattle. We did a session

30:59

in, a handful of sessions in Los Angeles

31:01

and we did a lot of stuff at Neil's

31:03

house. So a lot of the guitars were recorded

31:05

at Neil's house. But yeah, we did

31:07

most of the band stuff first, I think. Yeah.

31:10

It would be good if we could build up through

31:13

the track maybe and introduce all these different elements,

31:15

you know, as they work together. Sure. So

31:18

we had, I can solo a few of the instruments. So

31:20

we had the drums kind of

31:22

rock roomy drums. I love

31:24

that. And

31:29

then we got bass.

31:40

One of the things on the intro, I know I

31:42

added some reverb to the guitar stabs just to give

31:44

them a little length. A

31:46

little room. And

31:49

then the guitar octave part that Gil can

31:51

use. Really

32:08

cool contrary motion going on there between

32:10

the guitars. The

32:12

octave guitar is coming down the

32:14

scale and the rhythms

32:16

are going up. In

32:24

the piano we know the piano is going through that.

32:29

That's really all that's playing. It sounds big

32:31

for that intro but that's kind of everything. Between that

32:33

and the orchestra there's a lot.

32:35

If you're listening to the guitar and the

32:38

orchestra there's a lot

32:40

of information. In

32:53

the verse I think we're coming down

32:55

to a single guitar

32:57

here. There's also an acoustic

32:59

doubling it. I

33:10

don't remember how we did that. I

33:12

feel like that was another one that we

33:14

did a lot of fun pedal stuff. Yeah

33:17

I don't have anything listed for the pedal

33:19

but I know it was a strat going

33:22

through an orange amp. One

33:24

of the things I do recall

33:26

is we had a separate

33:28

send for the riff for those to

33:31

have if you listen to just the

33:33

riff here. We

33:40

had those little reverb splashes to accent those

33:42

high notes and it kind of brought

33:44

in stereo and a little bit more otherworldly.

33:48

How is that between that and

33:50

Patrick's vocal that really just

33:53

drives that first verse. And

34:00

then the band comes back in

34:02

with the bass for this back

34:04

half. And

34:21

this is the

34:30

part I was talking about that's served

34:33

as a harmony to the vocal.

34:35

Yes. That's great. Yeah.

34:47

It sounds amazing hearing all those different parts because

34:49

the interesting thing is when you listen to the

34:51

album, Love from the Other Side really sets it

34:54

up in a nice way because on the one

34:56

hand you kind of get a little bit of

34:58

the orchestra. You think, okay, there's kind of this

35:00

spectrum of sound on this new record. But at

35:02

the same time it kicks in and it really

35:05

rocks. No, it's kind of straight ahead. And

35:07

so you're kind of told to

35:10

expect a bit of rocking

35:12

out this time around. And despite all

35:14

the information that we're processing, somehow it

35:16

cuts through. So I think it's quite

35:18

easy to grasp as a listener if

35:20

that makes sense. Yeah, that's what I

35:23

was hoping for. I kind of wanted

35:25

to do – I guess

35:27

when I talk about album intros, I think

35:29

some of the best ones I see almost

35:31

is overtures. It sets the tone for the

35:34

whole record. And

35:36

ideally you're giving people a little bit

35:38

of an element of what's going to

35:41

be – what to expect from the

35:43

whole album. The other thing is I care about

35:45

albums still. I feel like there's been – over

35:47

the course of – as cultures

35:51

kind of moved on from –

35:53

to streaming and things like that, which

35:55

is awesome too. There's interesting challenges and

35:57

artists there. But at the end of the

35:59

day, I really – really still want to make an album.

36:01

That's a whole art piece to me. So

36:04

I wanted exactly what

36:07

you said to kind of give people a hint

36:09

of what to expect, I guess. Yeah.

36:11

And it works really well as an album because

36:13

there are ups and downs. There are different things

36:15

to attract our attention.

36:17

And you kind of take us on a

36:20

little journey and you simplify things at times

36:22

so that we have a

36:24

reprieve in a way from all the information

36:27

that we're getting and you can have reset

36:29

us a couple of times. I mean, particularly

36:31

in the middle with the pink seashell track,

36:33

you know, that kind of stops

36:36

everything for a moment and then we go back

36:38

in. There's so much to talk about, so much

36:40

to listen to. So we should maybe move on

36:42

from Love from the Other Side unless there's still

36:44

some elements that you think we should hear. Yeah.

36:46

I mean, I'd say the only other thing to

36:48

note in this song, well, not only, but I'd

36:51

say, you know, the bridge is a

36:53

really cool breakdown piano

36:55

vocal string moment. And

36:57

then I think the other thing is

37:00

the way the last chorus is kind of

37:02

set up as essentially three different versions of

37:04

the kind of chorus. And

37:07

it's kind of like the main big chorus

37:09

and then it goes into this kind of

37:11

double time feel on the snare drum chorus

37:14

and then back into like this half

37:16

time version of it, of the intro. And

37:18

it's just, it really is

37:20

an epic, it makes for an epic

37:23

closing of like Patrick says the overture. Yeah.

37:25

Well, I mean, maybe we should hear that. Yeah.

37:27

I think it's worth hearing that. And

37:30

when you're composing these Patrick, do

37:32

you compose in little sections and

37:35

then put them all together or are

37:37

you thinking in terms of a whole? So

37:40

kind of what Neil was talking about earlier about the

37:42

way I demo where I tend to, I want to

37:45

get the story beat of like where

37:47

we start and then up

37:50

through the first chorus,

37:52

right? Is I feel like

37:54

that's the hardest part of writing a song.

37:56

If you're using, if you're utilizing like a

37:59

pop song format. where there's going to be

38:01

a verse and a pre-chorus and a chorus. I feel

38:03

like that part has to make sense before you can

38:05

move on. And so when I demo,

38:07

I only demo up to that first chorus. And

38:10

then it's kind of, then it's the fun

38:12

part really. Then I get to figure

38:14

out, you know, what's going to be different about this

38:16

verse and what's going to be different about this pre-chorus

38:18

and how is the transition going to

38:20

be different or what, in what way am I going

38:22

to read something from the lyric that, you know, you

38:24

want to reference musically or whatever. And

38:27

then the bridge, the bridge

38:29

is often where I'm the most freeform,

38:31

where I'm kind of, I'm really just

38:33

playing, you know, I get to play

38:35

around on bridges. And this was

38:37

one of those where in the studio, I

38:40

think we recorded vocals for most of the

38:42

song. Because I remember we were

38:44

basically planning on knocking out as much vocals

38:46

as we could get while we were there.

38:49

And so it was like, well, and then we'll track

38:51

the bridge when we figure out a bridge. And

38:53

I just sat down at the piano and wrote

38:56

it, you know, like on the

38:58

spot. There's something about that that's

39:00

like, that's like, bridges are my favorite thing

39:02

to write because that's where I get to

39:04

just play, you know, I get to have

39:06

fun. Well, yeah, once the band came in,

39:08

it's a pretty long song. Once the band

39:10

came in, it was pretty rocking. And by the

39:13

time the bridge comes around, you're ready for a

39:15

little relief. And I think this bridge kind of

39:17

provides it. Yeah, it might be nice to

39:19

hear some of the strings isolated too, because I remember you

39:21

and I went back and forth on that string arrangement a

39:23

little bit. That

39:34

one section I wish I could write

39:36

again, especially like there's a there should

39:38

have been a line going with the

39:40

celly. But otherwise, I'm happy with

39:43

that string. We

39:50

talked about making that pause longer before

39:53

the last chorus for dramatic effects. the

40:00

double time snare drum. You

40:10

know we're reprising the big intro. And

40:27

that end section, that half time, is

40:30

kind of an interesting thing for us

40:32

because, you know, I mean,

40:34

we're, I think people generally know us as a

40:36

pop band or a pop punk band or an

40:38

emo band or whatever but we all came out

40:40

of hardcore out of the hardcore scene. And

40:44

it's still very much in us on some level.

40:46

It's something that like when we're not, when we're

40:48

just messing around like we still play hardcore songs,

40:50

you know, it's sound check and that kind of

40:52

thing. And so

40:54

it was interesting to naturally find ourselves

40:56

kind of doing a mosh part. I

40:58

mean that is basically a mosh part

41:01

but with orchestra, you know, it was

41:03

kind of just this weird mix

41:06

of worlds that I thought was natural

41:09

and very fall up boy but very odd. Yeah,

41:12

well, it's great. I mean, you can really tell

41:14

that you know

41:16

what you're doing. Now that world is a

41:18

world that you could easily just concentrate on.

41:20

You know, you could forget this

41:22

pop thing and go back to

41:24

those metal hardcore roots and do

41:27

a whole concert like that

41:29

easily. No, it seems a minute and

41:32

the chops, the skills are still all there,

41:34

aren't they? And that's the interesting thing, the

41:36

way that you can bring those elements in,

41:38

control them in such a way and

41:40

still ultimately make what

41:43

you're describing as a pop record. No, but

41:45

it still is a rock record at the

41:48

same time. Well, that was the thing, like

41:50

I said, why Miele was so necessary to

41:53

the record was I don't

41:55

think I've ever met anybody else that

41:57

understands the way those things

41:59

can happen. combined. The way that you can be, I

42:02

mean, Neil's talked a lot about when he

42:05

started out in engineering

42:07

in LA and stuff and engineering

42:09

on hair metal records and funk

42:11

records and I feel like the

42:14

kind of pedigree of working with that diverse

42:18

set of doing wallflowers records

42:20

and whatever, he kind

42:22

of knows a little bit of

42:25

everything and that's kind of what we

42:27

are on some level and that's what we need

42:29

and there's very few producers that I know that

42:32

are like that, you know, are like us

42:34

really. Yeah, fascinating.

42:37

We will move on and the next song we're going

42:39

to look at is Heaven, Iowa. So

42:41

we'll take a quick break and we'll be

42:43

back with more Fallout Boy. This

42:48

episode is being supported by Audio Movers who

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43:51

On with the show. is

44:00

Heaven, Iowa and Neil will

44:02

play a little blast to the master before

44:04

we get digging into it. Kiss

44:30

my cheek, baby please,

44:32

I'm sure you're reading my

44:35

community. I'm no skill

44:37

for anything, except

44:40

the dream sweetly. I'm

44:42

no skill for anything,

44:45

except the dream sweet. Please

44:47

tell me when it's time

44:49

to stay here. Will you

44:52

still love who I

44:54

am? I am... I

44:59

can't help you, I'm

45:02

not gonna give up, I'm

45:05

not gonna give up, I'm

45:08

not gonna give up, I'm

45:11

not gonna give up,

45:13

I'm not gonna give up, I'm

45:17

not gonna give up, I'm

45:20

not gonna give up, It

45:23

really does go so big there. That is A

45:25

Little Taste of Heaven, Iowa by Fall Out Boy.

45:27

That's a pretty good example in

45:30

a way of the R&B and

45:32

rock elements coming together in a way.

45:35

That multi-track vocal before you go for

45:37

the star-crossed lovers then and when that

45:39

comes in, it sounds so rock,

45:42

but you put it in a different context so

45:44

it has a different feel. That's something you've done

45:46

for so, well, since you began really. So

45:49

where did this one start? So

45:51

typically I kind of just start

45:54

with piece lyrics and see what

45:56

that inspires me to, you know, how does this sound, you know, and what is

45:58

it? When I read this,

46:00

what do I think this sounds like? And

46:03

when he sends, when Pete sends you those

46:05

lyrics, so Pete working on lyrics all the

46:07

time, he's just working on lyrical ideas and

46:09

then does he ever put a tune to

46:11

it or does he just sends you a

46:13

blank page? He doesn't even send lyrics in

46:15

lyric form, he just sends words. And

46:18

it's interesting when you see it, it's almost like one

46:21

liner after one liner. And I'll

46:23

just get an email of those. And

46:25

then you kind of have the... Is there any young men of

46:27

lyric? Yeah. I mean, it's kind

46:29

of... I mean, it's like my dad had

46:31

a Yogi Berra quote book sitting on his

46:33

coffee table. It's kind of like that where

46:35

it's like just one liner, one liner, one

46:37

liner. And you have to figure out what

46:40

thematically goes together, what feels like

46:43

the same song. But

46:45

then also, I do try to kind of keep

46:47

things together as much as possible where... Because I

46:49

feel like he's in a place where it

46:52

does feel like one thought, you know? But

46:56

yeah, when he sends it, that's all he sends.

46:58

There's no music, anything. And so when

47:00

I read it, there's kind of a... For

47:02

me, almost a passive thing where I read

47:04

it and just imagine what it sounds

47:06

like to me. And so this one

47:09

scared me a lot because it

47:11

felt kind of sparse. And

47:14

I don't really like sparse. I don't really like singing

47:16

by myself. I don't really like... You know, I like

47:18

orchestras. I like being one

47:21

musician out of hundreds. I don't really

47:23

like being so front and center. And

47:25

I could tell that there was something

47:27

really intimate about the song. And that

47:30

was a big challenge for us because... Well, for me,

47:32

I don't know. Everybody else seemed convinced.

47:34

But I was like, as soon as I finished demoing

47:36

it and I sent it in, I sent

47:39

it out to everybody. Everybody went for

47:41

it. This I think is the first song that

47:44

we started or one of the

47:46

first songs that we started, you know, when you and I got together.

47:48

It's from the first session. I think it's the... And,

47:51

you know, we had done, like I said, that first

47:54

session of, you know, are we going to

47:56

work together or whatever? This came from that session. But

47:58

I think we also spent the long... longest on

48:01

figuring out how to actualize it because I wasn't

48:04

satisfied with just my voice. Like, with

48:07

just my voice over keys, I couldn't...

48:10

It was killing me. It was too naked

48:12

or something. So I needed... And

48:14

I needed more of a story happening with

48:16

the synths and the guitars and all of

48:18

that. So that took us a long time.

48:21

Interesting. And is Heaven, Iowa,

48:23

a place? I believe

48:25

so. I believe it's... I don't know if it's real

48:28

or not. I believe it's the place from Field

48:30

of Dreams. Pete was really obsessed with Field of

48:32

Dreams. There's something in that

48:35

story that really like

48:37

set his vision for the

48:40

whole record lyrically, I guess. So

48:43

I think that's what it is. But I don't ask.

48:45

I try not to ask about his lyrics because I

48:47

feel like there's a thing about it

48:50

where first off he doesn't... He gives you...

48:53

He will not explain things. But

48:55

second off, it also kind of... I think

48:58

there's something to that, you know?

49:01

Where I'll read something, I'll read

49:03

his lyrics and I'll interpret it

49:05

one way and years later I'll

49:07

realize it's another way. There's so

49:09

many double entendres that I've only

49:11

gotten decades later. I'll

49:13

be singing him, I'm like, oh, it's a sex thing.

49:15

I didn't catch that. That's

49:19

great. I mean, that's really interesting because, you

49:21

know, he has this great ability to come

49:23

out with these great lines, you

49:25

know, that usually have a double entendre

49:27

but also contrast. You know, they start

49:29

at one place and they end in

49:32

another. There's always a reverse

49:34

switch going on in so much of

49:36

what he does. But it's fascinating to

49:38

think that, you know, you don't question

49:40

or don't ask, but at the same

49:42

time you are performing the task of

49:44

an editor because you're taking them, rearranging

49:46

them, coming up with musical ideas inspired

49:48

by them and then, you know, working

49:51

to make the most out of the

49:53

combination. I try to understand them as

49:56

much as I can, but... Yeah, Patrick, I don't know

49:58

what your thought is, but certainly the three songs... that

50:00

we chose lyrically, they all feel

50:02

like in a

50:04

way a singular person, yet anybody

50:07

can relate to the idea of issues

50:10

that you might be having or in how

50:12

they're affecting your relationship and they're all pretty

50:14

deep. In

50:16

fact, I texted Pete before we got

50:18

started today and just calling

50:21

up some of these songs and listening to the

50:23

lyrics again. And I

50:25

know, obviously, Patrick, you as the editor,

50:27

putting it all together, but there's really

50:30

some deep stuff in there. When

50:32

I mixed the Linkin Park record, Minutes

50:34

to Midnight, I mixed that record and it was

50:37

only more later that I really thought

50:39

about how painful some

50:41

of those lyrics were. And

50:43

so I think looking back

50:46

on it and not being in the

50:48

minutia of the record in a

50:50

way and just kind of seeing it

50:52

more big picture, it just really struck

50:55

me. It's funny you mentioned that because I

50:57

feel like a lot of times I'll be, I'm looking for a

50:59

story. I'm looking for the story of

51:01

a song and where it goes. And so lyrically,

51:03

I'm playing with that and I'm

51:05

just attaching to the craft of like

51:07

the story

51:10

part. And then it'll be like,

51:12

yeah, years later, I'm like, wow, that's a heavy

51:14

lyric. I never really, you know, like

51:17

Pete must have felt that thing.

51:19

And I don't really question it when I'm

51:21

writing. You know, it's kind of unfair to

51:23

him probably because I'm like, you know, should

51:25

I check on him? Like he'll

51:27

put these things in a lyrics, but I

51:29

just I get so focused on the on

51:31

the like, oh, that's a really

51:33

good lyric to set up his next line here.

51:36

You know, whatever. I'm more

51:38

thinking in the in the craft of a song, you

51:40

know, story of a song kind of thing. Yeah.

51:44

Amazing. So I'm going to share

51:46

how you put Heaven, Iowa together then. Okay,

51:49

so Patrick, if you don't mind, I'll

51:52

just run through a few things here. Yeah, please. So

51:54

I think the thing that starts

51:57

the song is this loop. And I think Patrick

51:59

had this is the demo loop that

52:01

originally came to us. And

52:11

I think that demo loop was some

52:14

loop, with some splice

52:16

loop or something that I had. I

52:19

was just looking for... I was literally

52:21

at this stage of demoing. So

52:23

it's interesting. Sometimes I demo things out fully.

52:25

This song I had a little bit less

52:27

of a sense of, because as I said,

52:30

I was a little bit scared of it.

52:32

So I wasn't really thinking

52:35

that strictly about what it was going to sound like.

52:37

So I just put in some loop. I didn't really

52:39

think twice about it. And we

52:41

found as we were going through recording

52:43

that that specific rhythm

52:46

worked really well. But then I didn't want

52:48

to just use some stock loop from a

52:51

sample pack or something. So Neil

52:53

and I kind of meticulously made

52:56

our own. Yeah. So I'll just

52:58

quickly go through it. This

53:00

is the original recreation of the

53:02

loop here. Some

53:04

of this are other sounds or loops

53:07

and other things are us playing live

53:09

instruments or Patrick playing a shaker or

53:11

something. So

53:13

there was this loop. And

53:19

then on top of that and all these

53:21

elements is a shaker and

53:24

then like an atmosphere and

53:28

all these just different... If

53:33

I remember right, that was something that I

53:35

had found like an atmospheric sound, like a

53:39

white noise sound kind of thing. And I played it

53:41

on a synth. Yeah.

53:45

So altogether they kind of made this

53:47

kind of interesting atmospheric version of that

53:49

kind of concept of the loop.

53:53

And then we also did kind of

53:55

a maraca loop to go with it

53:57

to add a little bit more percussion.

54:00

attack to it. And

54:04

as you can see if you're looking at the screen you

54:07

can see it's all cut up because we wanted to

54:09

have all these different panning going on. So

54:11

we put each little maraca hit in

54:13

there so they would pan to different places.

54:15

Kind of unnaturally tight too. Yep and then

54:18

mixing that with a loop that

54:21

we created. That's

54:23

kind of the whole basis of the intro.

54:25

So it was actually quite a bit of

54:27

work to make what sounds

54:29

like a little

54:31

loop. But it's kind of

54:33

funny in looking back of the

54:35

history of that loop. So that kind

54:38

of started it. And then

54:41

this is... I think

54:43

actually a lot of these... Maybe

54:46

this is an original loop or a pad.

54:49

Is this original from the demo? Yeah

54:54

so basically we just

54:57

kept layering. We just kept adding things. So

54:59

I did my my

55:01

synths on the demo.

55:04

But then over the course of it we

55:06

would just... I was

55:08

just never satisfied with the the journey

55:12

of the sound. I wanted things

55:14

to kind of appear in

55:16

and out and kind of swell

55:18

in. And I just

55:20

couldn't get enough things in there. And I would...

55:22

Every day I would tell Joe I was like

55:25

go nuts. You know send what you have.

55:27

And so Joe would do like a kind

55:30

of thing. Or I would go through the

55:32

synths. Neil has some synthesizers at his house.

55:35

I have a lot of synthesizers in my house.

55:37

And I would kind of just find noises. I

55:39

would spend like every day on the recording. At

55:41

least once a day I would just fiddle with

55:44

something and see if I got a layer

55:46

that we could add to this song. I felt like I

55:49

just wasn't getting enough

55:51

noise. Enough emotion. I wanted it to feel

55:53

like... I always liked... I

55:56

mean everybody likes Peter Gabriel. One

56:00

of the things that I love about that record is

56:02

when you listen to it, there's all these little moments

56:04

that just pop in and out. And

56:06

it's a little bit more, I don't

56:08

know, it's a fascinating, it's a challenge

56:11

to mix, but it's a fascinating journey

56:13

as a producer and I wanted

56:16

to do something like that. But then again, of

56:18

course, I put a lot on Neil to have

56:20

to sift through that. Yeah.

56:24

So the original demo, Patrick, you

56:26

probably remember this, the first course

56:28

is actually a big drum, it's

56:32

a big full band chorus.

56:35

And Patrick said to me, and I

56:37

think we even demoed, the original, us

56:39

putting together the full arrangement was like

56:42

that. And then at some point

56:44

you would call me and say, hey, you

56:46

know what, I really see this song kind

56:48

of building more and maybe we

56:50

don't have drums in the first course or something.

56:52

Yeah. Well, the thing was

56:54

that it forced us into a weird place

56:57

with the second verse because then once you

56:59

go to drums, once you go to like

57:01

big rock drums, then it

57:03

comes down again for the second verse. And

57:05

it felt like a sudden loss of

57:07

motion. It felt like the whole song just kind of lost

57:10

it. And so we were trying to

57:12

figure it out. Yeah. And

57:14

then it became an idea of, so what now

57:16

is the second chorus with the full band and

57:19

drums and heavy guitar, that

57:21

was both choruses originally, or

57:24

the first two choruses originally. And

57:27

yeah, we thought that maybe it just

57:29

wasn't adding the motion that

57:31

we wanted. So

57:33

then Neil made up a, he

57:35

basically took out everything that was there except

57:38

my vocal pass. And

57:40

I recorded piano, I think. So

57:42

it was just piano pad. And

57:45

then I think Neil added a synth bass or something.

57:47

And that was what we worked with for a while. But

57:50

I still wasn't convinced of that section. That

57:52

first chorus was vital to me

57:55

of getting that right. And it

57:57

took us a long time to get that right. I

58:00

put in that program kick

58:02

and some reverse stuff, and just

58:04

to kind of get a vibe for

58:06

that first chorus. And

58:09

it was very late. I think we were

58:11

actually in Seattle when we did a lot

58:13

of that polyevolver. Yeah, well, that

58:15

was when they moved it. Yeah. Eventually, it

58:17

was the polyevolver. One of the things, just

58:20

backing up real quickly here, in

58:23

the verse that I thought was cool was the

58:26

way Joe was playing

58:28

this very ambient guitar pedal. And

58:31

I thought it really worked so nicely

58:33

with the vocal and how it interplayed

58:35

in between all the

58:37

lyrics. So I just wanted to play a

58:39

little bit of that. I thought it was cool. Yeah. Yeah. And

58:42

these are the kind of things that

58:44

I thought saved a lot of it.

58:46

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

58:49

With solo Joe. And it's. So

59:01

it's really this beautiful, soundscape-y

59:04

sound. But just where he

59:06

placed them, I thought was really cool.

59:08

I'm going to ask

59:10

you for anything except

59:12

the dream sweet. I'm

59:14

going to ask you

59:16

for anything except the

59:18

dream sweet. But me,

59:20

tell me when. Yeah.

59:22

I just thought those placements were super cool.

59:24

Yeah. He's just really paying attention to the

59:27

vocal. And I thought that was something

59:30

you see when bands have kind of grown up. It's

59:32

not just about I'm the guitar player. I'm playing

59:35

attention to my guitar. I'm paying attention to other

59:37

things around me in the arrangement to make the

59:39

whole thing better. Yeah.

59:42

And I think I also

59:44

love what he does

59:47

with pedals and sounds and

59:49

things. He spends a really

59:52

long amount of time figuring out.

59:55

It makes for a really interesting thing in a

59:57

scenario like this, where I say, I need something.

1:00:00

I need something atmospheric. I'm

1:00:02

hitting a wall. I'm not finding the

1:00:04

thing to add. And then he

1:00:06

comes with something like that and it's perfect.

1:00:08

It's great. It really stepped it

1:00:10

up. Yeah. And then going

1:00:13

to the first chorus, let's

1:00:15

see if I can kind of just

1:00:17

play musically what's happening. So

1:00:23

there's some Joe coming

1:00:26

on the

1:00:28

downbeat. And then

1:00:30

the piano. But

1:00:37

the synth elements were

1:00:39

really important to me in landing this.

1:00:42

Because I feel like it just wasn't right.

1:00:44

We tried it with guitars.

1:00:47

We tried it with any

1:00:49

number of synths. And so there

1:00:51

were a lot of plug-in synths and things that

1:00:53

I was using. But we had

1:00:55

gone up to Seattle and I had brought

1:00:58

out my polyevolver

1:01:00

and my fizmo. And

1:01:03

just because they're two very odd

1:01:05

sounding synths or specific sounding

1:01:07

synths. And we just

1:01:10

basically went through presets one

1:01:12

at a time, seeing

1:01:14

if anything laying on

1:01:17

this section of the song. And we

1:01:19

did like, I don't know, 20 or 30 things

1:01:22

before we landed on what we landed on. Yeah,

1:01:24

these are some of the ones we chose.

1:01:44

I forgot about this one. Yeah,

1:01:48

is that the fizmo? I think

1:01:51

so. It says polyevolver, but I'm not sure I

1:01:53

agree with that. Yeah, I know. It sounds more

1:01:55

fizmo to me. It's cool. And

1:02:06

then on top of that Joe's guitar. Yeah. And

1:02:17

we had the kick drum. And

1:02:19

that was

1:02:24

a kick sample you had, you know? Yeah.

1:02:34

It's interesting this combination of sounds because

1:02:37

it creates a certain kind of atmosphere that's

1:02:39

really quite hard to place because it

1:02:42

conjures up church maybe. It could be

1:02:44

a church organ but it also conjures

1:02:46

up horror movie soundtracks, I think.

1:02:49

And it's interesting because it adds this feeling

1:02:52

of jeopardy, possibly, with these

1:02:54

star-crossed lovers, you know, that it could

1:02:56

all collapse. You know, this destiny that

1:02:58

has brought them together is going to

1:03:00

pull them apart. And it has that

1:03:03

almost edgy, sinister element to it

1:03:05

that adds to the tension of

1:03:07

the story of the song somehow,

1:03:10

I think. It's a whole challenge.

1:03:13

It took us, like I said, so long

1:03:15

to find that right

1:03:18

level. It's almost like when I listen

1:03:20

to Thriller, there's like

1:03:22

a loop, like a two-bar loop

1:03:25

right before Vincent Price starts. Right,

1:03:28

that. And the specific

1:03:30

layers of synth in

1:03:32

that are like,

1:03:36

I could write a thesis on how special that is, you know? It's

1:03:39

like, it just is

1:03:41

perfect. It's the perfect layering

1:03:44

of sounds. And so

1:03:46

you kind of, this one needed the

1:03:48

right layer of elements that achieved that

1:03:50

same kind of thing where if you

1:03:53

took out any one layer of it,

1:03:55

it just wouldn't do the thing, you

1:03:57

know? feeling.

1:04:01

Yeah, I think normally when I'm producing, I

1:04:03

try to have as few elements in as

1:04:05

possible, especially if they're not adding

1:04:07

really to the party. If you have, you know what I mean?

1:04:11

And all those elements are adding to the party

1:04:13

in a way that it like Kratzak said, if

1:04:15

you take one out, it really feels very different.

1:04:18

And so I love that about that despite the fact that

1:04:20

there are a lot of elements going on there. So

1:04:24

just I guess I'm kind of interested in

1:04:26

moving, if it's okay with you to move

1:04:28

through just like the different sections because this

1:04:30

song is a real journey. So

1:04:33

in the second verse, there

1:04:36

are some kind of, I had

1:04:39

this little box called a Rhythm Arranger at

1:04:41

my house. And it's basically like the percussion

1:04:43

section of an old like

1:04:46

Wurlitzer organ kind of thing that people would

1:04:48

have in their house. And

1:04:50

we use that, we took a sample

1:04:53

of each sound and arranged it into a

1:04:55

pattern. So

1:05:02

that was kind of a basis for the

1:05:04

rhythm section for the second verse,

1:05:08

along with the bass thing. And

1:05:13

of course the loop is still going through here. And

1:05:19

then we had some guitar. It's

1:05:23

got some kind of pedal on it, maybe a phaser. Was

1:05:25

that your strat again? It

1:05:27

doesn't say, but it might be. And

1:05:30

then there's a couple other effects. Those

1:05:34

are Joe. So

1:05:39

that's the big stop. And then there's also the

1:05:41

same pad, I believe, going through there. And

1:05:54

then there's a little... Oh

1:06:02

yeah, Joe does his dual harmony thing there. And

1:06:09

then that, I think is synth. Is

1:06:11

that show or is that synth? No, I think that's

1:06:13

Joe's synth that he added at the end. I'm pretty

1:06:16

sure. And then halfway through the verse,

1:06:18

we added these drums. And

1:06:25

when we did this, we set up Andy

1:06:27

and I with... Is

1:06:30

it concert toms or is it really like roto toms

1:06:32

almost? One guy had roto

1:06:34

toms and the other

1:06:36

guy had concert toms. Yeah, so

1:06:38

we played that together, which

1:06:42

I really love the way it

1:06:44

sang in the room, you know, that we were playing.

1:06:46

It wasn't like an overdub, it was that we played

1:06:48

it all at the same time. So that's the two

1:06:51

of you. That's you, Patrick and

1:06:53

Andy together, double drummer. One of the

1:06:55

cool things is we used a harmonizer

1:06:57

to tune the drums down so

1:06:59

that they would sound even

1:07:01

more just kind of affected and cool. You

1:07:10

can hear one of the guys playing more constant A notes

1:07:12

and the other guy... And

1:07:24

so that was

1:07:26

fun, adding that into the

1:07:28

second half. So that whole verse is a

1:07:30

real journey of all those different

1:07:32

elements. And then you can kind

1:07:34

of play everything together with the

1:07:37

vocal. And I think at

1:07:39

least for a substantial part of

1:07:41

the recording, whether

1:07:43

or not it ended up all

1:07:46

the way to the end, I

1:07:48

think it was a really good

1:07:50

idea. I

1:08:00

don't remember, but I'm pretty

1:08:02

sure this is one where we used the backing

1:08:04

vocals that I had tracked because we were basically

1:08:06

using the same setup. I have a

1:08:09

47 that I run through like an 1176 and

1:08:11

some kind of neevy pre and I think an LA2A.

1:08:20

And that was pretty much what we did for

1:08:22

the whole chain for everything. So some

1:08:25

of the background vocals I

1:08:27

was doing at home and I ended

1:08:29

up making them all the way to the record. Right.

1:08:32

Andrew, do you use that for your lead vocal

1:08:34

as well? Yes. I pretty

1:08:36

much... Yeah. That's like my standard.

1:08:38

And depending on the performance, I'll change attack

1:08:41

times and things like that. But otherwise, it's pretty

1:08:43

much that. Very

1:08:45

interesting. Is there

1:08:47

anything else that we should hear from Heavenoa, Iowa?

1:08:50

I guess you could play the last chorus just

1:08:52

showing what's there. I mean,

1:08:54

this is the original idea of what

1:08:56

the chorus was. It was like

1:08:58

a big heavy guitar

1:09:00

thing. Okay. I'd also love to check out the

1:09:02

show The Bridge a little bit because I think

1:09:05

the part in there is really cool. Yeah, Joe...

1:09:07

So that was a... So Joe,

1:09:09

like I said, he was sick

1:09:11

and he couldn't really come into the studio

1:09:13

all that often and whatever. And

1:09:16

so he was a little bit of the at-home player. And

1:09:19

on this song in particular, I told him

1:09:21

to just go nuts because I had an

1:09:24

idea, but I needed

1:09:26

more layers than I could possibly

1:09:29

think of. I

1:09:32

just wanted so many layers of things

1:09:34

for this little journey. And The Bridge,

1:09:36

I think, was a really great confluence

1:09:38

of the synth thing and

1:09:40

the guitar thing that I was doing. And

1:09:42

then what Joe brought in, it really came

1:09:44

together. There

1:10:00

might have been one layer of

1:10:02

the harmonies, I remember right? Yeah,

1:10:04

there's this, there's

1:10:07

those layers, and there's another harmony.

1:10:10

There's that and... Is

1:10:19

that you or Joe? I don't remember. I

1:10:22

think, if I remember right, that was Joe.

1:10:25

That was one of Joe's... I

1:10:27

had had something playing an identical part,

1:10:29

but I liked his sound

1:10:31

better. And then another thing that's

1:10:33

interesting, just backing up to slightly, the fill

1:10:36

going into the second chorus was

1:10:38

this, was from Patrick's

1:10:40

demo, I believe. So

1:10:44

it was kind of this synthy

1:10:46

drums, and the one

1:10:48

going into the chorus,

1:10:52

the third chorus was a combination

1:10:54

of that with the roto toms

1:10:57

and concert toms that Patrick and

1:10:59

Andy were playing. So

1:11:08

those harmonized drums, which I thought was cool to

1:11:10

kind of bring everybody together before

1:11:12

the last chorus. Now,

1:11:14

Neil, when you harmonized it, did you

1:11:16

harmonize the entire chain or is

1:11:19

the room, because it almost sounded like

1:11:21

one of the, like maybe a room

1:11:23

mic or something was in the original

1:11:25

tuning or something. I'm pretty sure the

1:11:27

whole kit is just harmonized. I think

1:11:29

we mixed it down to a stereo

1:11:31

track and then harmonized

1:11:33

it. All right. So,

1:11:36

yeah, let's talk, I guess let's go

1:11:38

through the last chorus. There's not much

1:11:40

to it. It's just kind of, again,

1:11:42

kind of an example of what

1:11:45

else we do on this record,

1:11:47

but also just in general, you know, to Neil's point,

1:11:50

usually Neil likes to work with very

1:11:52

few elements and just blow them up. And

1:11:54

so that was kind of the choruses were like that,

1:11:56

the latter choruses. I'm

1:12:01

a woman

1:12:07

I'm a woman

1:12:11

I'm

1:12:14

a woman Here

1:12:16

we are I'm

1:12:18

a woman

1:12:24

I'm a woman

1:12:27

I'm a woman And

1:12:31

then he can send a joke to

1:12:35

go full flash. That was Pete's

1:12:37

idea. Yep. We'll

1:12:40

just have a flash moment at the very end. I'm

1:12:43

a woman I'm

1:12:48

a woman I'm

1:12:53

a woman And

1:12:55

then just to finish up the song, just went

1:12:57

back to the intro of that first line of

1:12:59

the song. Just to kind of bookend it.

1:13:03

Yeah. Sounding amazing. We

1:13:05

will have another break and the next song we're going to

1:13:07

look at is a title track. So Much

1:13:10

for Starter. Hello.

1:13:13

Sorry to interrupt your listening. I hope you've

1:13:15

been enjoying the episode. As I mentioned earlier,

1:13:18

I wanted to let you know more about

1:13:20

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1:13:22

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on the Take Notes Patreon. Thank you.

1:13:40

And now, on with the show. The

1:13:44

next song we're going to look at from

1:13:46

the new album by Fall Out Boy is

1:13:48

the title track So Much for Stardust. And

1:13:51

I think Neil's going to give us a blast of

1:13:53

the master now before we get digging in. I'm

1:14:24

in the water moving in

1:14:26

the spring now Rolling

1:14:29

my self down, rolling my

1:14:31

self down All

1:14:34

the lights on me stand, just

1:14:36

down the road Can't help me,

1:14:39

I'm not the man, you're the

1:14:41

best Baby, why don't you

1:14:43

go back right now? Oh, yeah, the

1:14:46

pain is up I don't have enough, the cheap

1:14:48

is the gun You're

1:14:51

the one I'm the one, you're

1:14:53

the one The

1:14:57

pain is just a game Baby,

1:15:00

I'm so young, oh

1:15:02

yeah Baby, why

1:15:05

don't you

1:15:07

go back right now?

1:15:12

Oh, yeah, the pain

1:15:14

is up Oh,

1:15:17

yeah, the pain

1:15:20

is up Oh,

1:15:28

yeah, the pain is up I'm

1:15:47

not the one, I'm not the one be

1:16:00

like a big soul band and so

1:16:02

much is going on. And it's fascinating

1:16:05

because each member of the band

1:16:07

could be following

1:16:09

these particular avenues for

1:16:11

a lifetime career. And

1:16:15

at the same time, you're all bringing them all

1:16:17

together and you're a Fallout boy. Yeah, we couldn't

1:16:20

do it without each other like I said. Yeah,

1:16:23

but this one was weird. This one, I

1:16:26

barely sent the demo. I was

1:16:28

sure no one was going to like this one. I

1:16:30

had made it and I liked it,

1:16:33

but it was just kind of fairly

1:16:35

far afield of our kind

1:16:38

of repertoire, I guess. And

1:16:40

so I was like, you know, I probably don't need to send this one.

1:16:43

But I did and it kept

1:16:45

surviving. I actually remember Neil and I

1:16:47

were talking about this too because Neil

1:16:50

and I have this interesting report where generally

1:16:53

we like the same stuff. We

1:16:55

like the same music

1:16:58

that we're working on. But there's also

1:17:00

every so often this intellectual part of you that

1:17:02

goes, well, but we can't do this because no

1:17:04

one's going to like this, whatever. And so I

1:17:06

think both of us had kind of struck this

1:17:08

song off the record and it

1:17:10

was really Pete that was like, no,

1:17:13

that's a priority. And

1:17:15

I was kind of surprised. I didn't think

1:17:17

he was going to go for it. But

1:17:20

yeah, it worked. As I

1:17:22

recall, Patrick, the very

1:17:24

original demo, which I can't find anywhere, I

1:17:26

don't think had a chorus. I think it

1:17:29

was just a verse. Yeah, I think you're

1:17:31

right. I think it was just

1:17:33

a verse. But I always found the thing

1:17:35

kind of hypnotic in this

1:17:37

very cool hip hop way, the verse

1:17:40

that I loved with the beat and

1:17:43

the rhythm of the soul, soulful

1:17:45

vocal and everything. And I just thought that

1:17:47

was super cool, but it just was never

1:17:50

really a completed song. And then at some

1:17:52

point you finished, put a chorus to it.

1:17:54

Yeah. And I don't think we kind of

1:17:56

imagined it being a fit. Like I said, I was kind of like, this

1:17:58

was one of the. you know, I would demo

1:18:02

a bunch of songs and you know, maybe in

1:18:04

a day I'd kind of play around

1:18:06

with like four or five ideas or something.

1:18:09

And at the end of the day, you

1:18:11

know, I'll send out an email, you know,

1:18:13

with all the songs and this was kind

1:18:15

of just in, you know, it was an

1:18:18

afterthought to put it in there and

1:18:20

ended up naming the record after it. So, it

1:18:24

was great. It's just I really didn't

1:18:26

see it coming. Yeah. So,

1:18:28

what are we going to listen to first? So,

1:18:31

I guess, you know, just to

1:18:33

talk briefly through this, the string

1:18:35

intro, which is very different

1:18:37

from Love from the Other

1:18:39

Side. This is an octet. So, it's a much

1:18:42

smaller and, you know, in the

1:18:44

mix, I wanted this to feel like a chamber string

1:18:47

group as opposed to a big orchestra.

1:18:50

And so, I wanted it to be more intimate. I

1:19:01

mean, you can imagine kind of

1:19:03

being in somebody's chambers listening to

1:19:05

this, you know, in the 1700s

1:19:07

or something. And it's

1:19:09

really beautiful. If I remember right,

1:19:12

we have the octet track on everything, on

1:19:14

all the songs. And then pretty

1:19:17

quickly, there were a handful of them where like,

1:19:19

this just isn't going to work. This just isn't

1:19:21

going to be enough because it felt like a

1:19:23

chamber, you know, and something like

1:19:25

Other Side feels so massive, you know.

1:19:28

And so, we scrapped most of

1:19:30

those strings, unfortunately,

1:19:33

on those songs. But then this one, it really

1:19:36

was this intimate thing. And we

1:19:38

recorded it to Igloo. Igloo has

1:19:40

a really great sound for kind

1:19:43

of chamber-y stuff. And

1:19:45

where is Igloo? Igloo was in

1:19:48

Burbank, a great studio in

1:19:50

Burbank that we did strings there. I'm

1:19:53

trying to remember if we did anything else there. I think we

1:19:55

only did strings there on this. And

1:19:58

then, alright, so then... The piano comes

1:20:00

in with the rhythm section. This is

1:20:02

Patrick playing the piano. And

1:20:15

then one of the cool things, just

1:20:17

from a production engineering side of things

1:20:19

for this song, is the drums that

1:20:21

Andy played on, as we were

1:20:23

recording it, the

1:20:26

concept was, in my mind, to have

1:20:28

two very different sounding vibes for the

1:20:30

verse. Of course, it just needed to.

1:20:34

Kind of like what you said, Patrick really

1:20:36

writes these journeys, and each section can be

1:20:38

very different, but the trick is making them

1:20:40

feel like they belong. Arms Race was a

1:20:42

song like that as well, where

1:20:44

it was a real challenge to

1:20:46

make the chorus feel like it blended

1:20:49

to that hip-hop verse. It was related to

1:20:51

the same song. Yeah, exactly. And I think,

1:20:53

again, that's what makes Fall Out Boy uniquely

1:20:55

Fall Out Boy, which is cool.

1:20:58

Anyway, so when we were recording the

1:21:00

drums, the verse drums,

1:21:03

we were getting the sounds for, and

1:21:05

as we were doing it, my engineer,

1:21:07

Eric, we were talking through the sounds and

1:21:09

was getting close as we were working

1:21:11

through all the mics, but I just kept feeling like

1:21:14

the snare was not doing the thing

1:21:16

that I wanted it to do. So

1:21:19

I just reached over and turned the preamp all

1:21:21

the way up, or nearly all the way up,

1:21:23

on the snare mic, so it started to distort

1:21:25

in this really cool, overtone way. And

1:21:28

that's when I was like, oh, okay, now it's

1:21:30

alive. Now I'm feeling like that separation of the

1:21:32

kick and the snare, and so you'll

1:21:34

hear that when I solo the drums. So

1:21:43

it's, you know, it's still, it's

1:21:46

a live kit, but it's got a totally

1:21:48

different spark than a rock kit.

1:21:50

And there's no room mics in there, or

1:21:52

very little. It's really close mics,

1:21:55

just kind of doing that thing. And

1:21:58

I had on the demo. When

1:22:00

I played it, I think I just put up

1:22:02

one mic or something. I was being very lazy. My

1:22:05

drums, I had this slinger link kit and it

1:22:07

was kind of dead. It

1:22:11

was interesting trying. It took us a while

1:22:13

to find because it sounded bad. I mean,

1:22:15

it was a demo. But

1:22:17

it kind of put us into this place where what

1:22:20

is the matured version of that? What does that

1:22:22

sound like? It

1:22:24

really took us out of rock

1:22:26

kit stuff. Maybe

1:22:28

we could play it. We could compare those if we wanted

1:22:31

to hear that too. The

1:22:41

way that I kind of lazily

1:22:44

liked it, we found ourselves wanting

1:22:46

to do that. Or doing something like that

1:22:49

or evoke that feel. And

1:22:54

then, so we ended up in a

1:22:56

different kind of lane with a more distorted...

1:22:59

Let me go back just a little bit here. But

1:23:05

yeah, so I think because it was a smaller attack

1:23:08

thing, it kind of allowed

1:23:10

for more of those ghost notes, more of

1:23:13

the intricacies of those

1:23:15

high hat ends, even the

1:23:17

volume of the kicks. I

1:23:19

think it was that kind of trying

1:23:21

to find a tone that really matched that.

1:23:24

And yeah, I love what Neil did

1:23:27

with the distorted snare. I

1:23:29

think it nails it perfectly.

1:23:32

Yeah, as we transition into the chorus, it

1:23:34

turns into rock drums. And we'll... So

1:23:40

we're still here in this distorted

1:23:43

land, first distorted, with the patterns

1:23:45

changing. So

1:23:55

those are different drum passes? Different

1:23:58

drum recordings? Yes, on different... completely

1:24:00

different kit than two. And

1:24:03

different players or is it Andy? No, it's all Andy. It's

1:24:05

all Andy. Yeah, we

1:24:07

changed out various drums in the set. All

1:24:13

of a sudden the room mics are coming in and

1:24:16

the snare is getting deeper. And

1:24:18

again, that's kind of the trick is you

1:24:21

can hear it soloed, but in the song

1:24:23

you also hear it, but it doesn't sound

1:24:25

foreign. They feel like they blend and

1:24:28

work together. Yeah, but they

1:24:30

really help make that transition as the

1:24:32

whole sound and shape of the song

1:24:35

changes and it evolves it in

1:24:38

a way that doesn't draw attention to

1:24:40

itself. Now one

1:24:42

thing I would love to play is, Neil, can

1:24:44

you play the chorus of the demo? And I

1:24:46

think the biggest change that

1:24:48

we made from the demo was

1:24:50

kind of simplifying the drums

1:24:53

a lot because I was just

1:24:55

kind of going nuts, you know, and

1:24:58

I didn't really have and idea for a groove for

1:25:00

the chorus. And I think that was

1:25:02

probably one of the most significant changes was finding

1:25:04

a proper kick snare

1:25:06

pattern. Yeah. So this is the

1:25:09

demo. Yes, the demo. And

1:25:11

this is me playing

1:25:13

drums and flopily filling

1:25:15

the whole time. And

1:25:21

it was kind of like a balance

1:25:23

of finding that urgency that I was

1:25:25

playing with, but then

1:25:37

having something that's more... Andy is a... It's

1:25:40

funny because I'm a drummer too, but Andy and I

1:25:42

are very different drummers and it's always

1:25:44

cool translating our things between

1:25:47

each other because he comes

1:25:49

from metal. Like proper, right?

1:25:52

And metal is very strict, you know? You

1:25:56

play like you're a metronome. You played with bridge, you

1:25:58

know? And I'm more of like a... I

1:26:00

guess, funk drummer or something. And

1:26:03

because of that, it

1:26:05

was very important that we had a

1:26:07

more established, you know, this is the

1:26:09

part, you know, you can fill on

1:26:12

this end of it, but like

1:26:14

this is the part because that's how Andy's comfortable

1:26:16

playing. He likes to have parts, you know. Right.

1:26:19

So I think another thing to note is

1:26:21

the guitar arrangement kind of throughout and how

1:26:23

that evolves through the song, the

1:26:26

stuff that Patrick and Joe did together. So

1:26:29

playing it from like part of the verse. And

1:26:55

then the wow, that effect is definitely

1:26:57

Joe. And I know rhythms.

1:27:02

Yep. So

1:27:05

there's a lot of interesting layers. And

1:27:21

also this high layer. And I

1:27:23

think that was me on your strap. There's

1:27:26

a Strat and a Tele on that. And

1:27:30

that's the thing. So

1:27:33

the rhythm, I mean, if anyone cares, a

1:27:36

lot of the jangly stuff was Tele's

1:27:38

and Strat. And then the rhythm stuff

1:27:40

was mostly like those guilds. I would

1:27:43

do either a guild like

1:27:45

S100 or I think

1:27:47

I did have an old Les

1:27:50

Paul that we would double with sometimes. But

1:27:52

it was just, I think the, if I remember right,

1:27:54

the guild was a little like held tune better than

1:27:56

that particular Les Paul. So that was what

1:27:58

we used. And then

1:28:00

in the verses we've got some horn stabs. And

1:28:06

that's the Jerry Hay sessions. And the

1:28:08

thing about that was on

1:28:11

the demo I played

1:28:13

trumpet and trombone and that, and

1:28:15

poorly. And I

1:28:18

knew we were going to replace it. I didn't know we were going to

1:28:20

replace it with them. And so

1:28:22

it really took the song to another

1:28:24

level too because Jerry really went for

1:28:26

it in the arrangement too. He arranged,

1:28:28

did the chorus arrangement, brass arrangement make

1:28:31

it to the record? Because he, we

1:28:33

didn't have to do this. What

1:28:35

a good moment. And

1:28:53

then he opened up, when we get to the

1:28:55

last chorus. And

1:29:10

just that, that was one of the things

1:29:12

that Jerry that was so amazing is he

1:29:14

had these notes, very fast

1:29:16

notes, where he'd be like, okay, we're

1:29:19

going to do a pass. I want you to put this

1:29:21

on the right channel. And then we're going to do another

1:29:23

pass. And he put different sheet music in front of the

1:29:25

players. And he's like, we're going to put this on the

1:29:27

left channel. And he had this

1:29:29

just incredible blend. So what the

1:29:31

trumpet's doing on the right side

1:29:34

versus I think it's one of the saxophones on the

1:29:36

left side. It's magic

1:29:38

to me. He's one of those guys who

1:29:40

understands horn arrangement, but also for recording in

1:29:42

a specific way, that it was really

1:29:46

like this. It was the

1:29:48

kind of stuff that I was so

1:29:50

grateful to be there for because I don't

1:29:53

necessarily hate

1:29:56

making things in box. I think there's

1:29:58

plenty of awesome, brilliant records

1:30:00

that are made in box these days too,

1:30:03

but it was really neat to like hear

1:30:05

that because I'm like, then I'm going back

1:30:07

and listening to Toto records and being like,

1:30:10

Oh, that's why, you know, I mean, like

1:30:12

he just had this, uh, it

1:30:14

made the job very easy for us. And then also

1:30:17

it made the, you know, as we were kind of figuring

1:30:19

out the guitars and what the guitars were going

1:30:21

to do, because this song was a very

1:30:23

strange place for guitars. Originally it didn't really have

1:30:25

much guitar when I wrote it originally. It

1:30:28

was great because then the horn section filled

1:30:30

in a substantial

1:30:32

chunk of the midsection. So we

1:30:35

didn't need head like necessarily the

1:30:37

wall of, of heavy distorted guitars that

1:30:39

was kind of fighting with the piano

1:30:41

anyway. Yeah. And then, um,

1:30:45

I guess the other thing to note is,

1:30:47

I mean, there's plenty of other stuff we

1:30:49

could talk about, but the song is this

1:30:51

really cool kind of circular chord progression

1:30:54

that one of the things that just kind of keeps

1:30:56

coming around and it can literally just keep coming up

1:30:58

over and over. And I think, you know,

1:31:01

that partially drove us to the idea of a fade

1:31:03

out, but, um, you

1:31:05

know, the end has the Waters

1:31:08

family as doing choir stuff with

1:31:10

Patrick ad living along with

1:31:12

them. And I think it's really cool. Yeah. I

1:31:34

remember that being a little tripped up by your rhythms.

1:31:37

Patrick, as we were doing that, I mean, it

1:31:39

was incredible. I sat at

1:31:41

the piano and play and we, and

1:31:43

there was this moment where we got out of

1:31:45

work and the five of us

1:31:47

were just having a lot of fun, me and the

1:31:49

waters and, um, or,

1:31:52

and kept having this idea of kind

1:31:54

of heightening the syncopation in

1:31:56

it. And we played that

1:31:59

like. loop for probably like 20 minutes

1:32:02

or something. And it was one of these

1:32:04

things where once he started doing that, everybody

1:32:06

in the room, our

1:32:09

faces all lit up and there was this really musical

1:32:11

moment where as

1:32:14

a collective, we were like, oh yeah, we got

1:32:16

something. That was when it

1:32:18

really landed for me. And I

1:32:20

remember being like, it was such a pinch me

1:32:22

thing. I think there's some

1:32:24

synth stuff at the end to talk, you know, I don't

1:32:26

know what to talk about. The

1:32:40

synth, after we had done Heaven Iowa,

1:32:42

I was so

1:32:44

happy with the polyevolver that I

1:32:47

was like, okay, let's see what you got. And

1:32:50

that was what I pulled together, I think. It's mostly

1:32:52

polyevolver. And then I think that I

1:32:56

think that's an inbox, like plug-in

1:32:58

synths, soft synths. But yeah, I think I

1:33:00

made that that night before we went in

1:33:02

to record it. And I think

1:33:04

to note, I think cool lyrically is that Patrick,

1:33:07

I don't know if it was your idea or Pete's

1:33:09

idea to incorporate some of

1:33:11

the lyric from Love from the Other Side

1:33:13

that was into this song. That was mine

1:33:16

and he was kind of hesitant about it.

1:33:18

He was like, we'll change that obviously. And

1:33:20

I was like, no, I think we should

1:33:22

do it. Because I had kind of by

1:33:24

that point, because these were, Stardust and Love

1:33:27

from the Other Side were really completed

1:33:29

towards the end of the recording. And

1:33:32

by that point, I was like, Other

1:33:35

Side's got to open Stardust has to close. I

1:33:37

just felt like they were as story beats.

1:33:40

They were so great. There's

1:33:42

something about the pessimism and

1:33:44

resignation of his lyrics in Stardust

1:33:47

that I was like, I

1:33:50

don't know. I loved doing it

1:33:52

that way. I loved ending. It's like Empire

1:33:54

Strikes Back. It's like ending on a down

1:33:56

note. So

1:33:58

because of that, I wanted it to bookend. And so

1:34:00

I wanted the lyrics to be it's

1:34:02

also a kind of similar thing where it goes to that piano

1:34:06

and string and vocal moment

1:34:08

and Is

1:34:10

this the one? where my

1:34:13

original string arrangement was all off where

1:34:15

I had sent in the string arrangement and then

1:34:18

Neil you went because I it was

1:34:20

all working with itself and I

1:34:23

had just totally because I wrote it like

1:34:25

late one night and I totally didn't think

1:34:27

about the vocal melody And so the

1:34:29

strings worked with each other and with the piano

1:34:31

and stuff But it didn't like my vocal melody

1:34:33

made a minor second somewhere and so like last

1:34:36

yeah Yeah, we spent a lot of time just

1:34:38

kind of trying to figure that out Yeah, last

1:34:40

minute like while they're while this is so embarrassing

1:34:42

as a composer this the string players are in

1:34:45

the room And I'm like, okay, you know, thanks

1:34:47

whatever. So we can play the string arrangement for

1:34:49

the bridge there if you want to yeah,

1:34:51

sure Are

1:34:54

you gonna run professionally In

1:34:58

another life, you were my babe

1:35:01

in another life And

1:35:08

there's still a couple like

1:35:10

kind of fuzzy Harmonic

1:35:12

moments in there, but I really that that

1:35:15

ascending melody in the violins was real important

1:35:17

to me for some reason just with

1:35:19

the lyric So I had to

1:35:22

figure out how to make that work, you know, yeah,

1:35:24

it's awesome Should we round

1:35:26

up with another blast of the master or do you

1:35:28

want to play that crescendo that you were talking about?

1:35:30

And that would be a sure to finish

1:35:32

off this song And

1:36:00

I felt so good. I

1:36:32

felt so good. I

1:36:38

felt so good.

1:36:46

I felt so good.

1:36:53

I felt so

1:36:57

good. I

1:37:03

felt so

1:37:09

good. How

1:37:12

many are in the Waters family? There's

1:37:14

the four. They

1:37:17

kind of naturally and kind

1:37:20

of quickly divvy up parts. I

1:37:22

mean, they're legends

1:37:25

in the studio

1:37:27

world in Los Angeles for sure. So it

1:37:30

was really cool. It was really cool getting to

1:37:32

do it with them. And then as a singer,

1:37:34

because I'm not the

1:37:37

most confident singer all the time. And

1:37:40

they were so encouraging and I got so much

1:37:42

energy from them. So when I'm doing the riffing

1:37:44

at the end, the Waters are on

1:37:46

the other side of the window in the control room.

1:37:51

And they're like, you know, they were cheering me

1:37:53

on. And that really, you can almost hear it

1:37:56

in the performance, I feel like, is that I

1:37:58

was getting a lot of like... I

1:38:00

was getting inspired by them being

1:38:02

like, yeah, you got it, you know. And

1:38:05

recording in the pandemic, I mean, did you have

1:38:07

to stop and start? A lot of times were

1:38:09

you able to continue in the way that we're

1:38:11

doing now by, you know, communicating online? So we

1:38:13

did do some online stuff. We used, like, you

1:38:15

know, audio movers and listened to and that sort

1:38:18

of thing. But then

1:38:20

by the end of it, it was kind of essentially

1:38:23

back to normal, session-wise. And

1:38:26

yeah, it was interesting because this is definitely

1:38:28

the most globe-treading

1:38:30

record we've made in that regard.

1:38:32

You know, the strings, like

1:38:35

I said, the orchestra stuff was done at Angel

1:38:37

in London. I didn't go

1:38:39

there, I just, you know, audio

1:38:41

movers, whatever. But because

1:38:43

of that, I think it kind of when it came together,

1:38:47

it's pretty amazing. It feels more,

1:38:49

I don't know, it's more

1:38:51

of a journey. It's more of a surprise to

1:38:53

as a writer, because I feel like when

1:38:55

you do everything in your, it sounds a certain way in your

1:38:57

head. I mean, the demos, you hear what it sounds like to

1:39:00

me. But then when you get

1:39:02

to the finest, the finished product, you wouldn't

1:39:04

get those things if it were still in

1:39:06

your head, you know, you wouldn't get what

1:39:08

the waters did. You wouldn't get what Jerry

1:39:10

Hay did with the horns, that kind of

1:39:12

stuff. So, yeah, just neat, neat to do.

1:39:14

Yeah, we have questions. I'm going to let

1:39:16

you go in a minute, but we have

1:39:18

questions that we ask everybody when they come

1:39:20

on Take Notes. And the first of them

1:39:22

is about gear or tech, anything

1:39:24

that may be relating to this project that

1:39:26

you feel was vital to the whole

1:39:28

process or any piece of equipment or

1:39:30

a plug in or something that you're

1:39:33

particularly excited about at the moment. I

1:39:35

mean, the poly evolver came up quite

1:39:37

a lot in that conversation. Yeah, the

1:39:39

poly evolver was a

1:39:41

synthesizer made, I

1:39:44

want to say early 2000s, but

1:39:47

it has a very weird kind of... It

1:39:51

has a very weird kind of set of... I

1:39:55

want to say it's like an obligate

1:39:57

stereo out and a lot of the

1:39:59

patches are... Like you can't

1:40:01

really control What's happening in

1:40:03

stereo and it does a lot of really strange

1:40:05

things. It's a it has it's hard.

1:40:07

It's a hard to describe sound I'm

1:40:11

drawing a blank on the guy's name the

1:40:13

sequential circuits guy. Oh,

1:40:15

I'm a bad since oh my god I can't

1:40:17

remember his name either. Anyway, it

1:40:19

was something he had designed when when he got the company

1:40:21

back so it has a lot

1:40:23

of his like weirdest ideas and If

1:40:27

I remember right it didn't do very well and so it kind

1:40:29

of has a very very Strange

1:40:32

hidden gem kind of quality to it

1:40:34

with the day a lot of those. Yes.

1:40:37

Yeah, thank you and But

1:40:40

it sounds great It's just there's so much

1:40:42

movement and life in so many of the

1:40:45

in so many of the patches to start with and

1:40:47

so many Of the presets but then you know, we

1:40:49

spent a lot of you know, we were tweaking knobs

1:40:51

and things So that was kind of part of the

1:40:53

fun of working on it. Also the

1:40:56

in sonic fismo was my partner

1:40:58

in crime with the polyevolver the

1:41:00

fismo has a very I Don't

1:41:04

even know at times unpleasant kind of

1:41:06

modulation that it does. It's a

1:41:08

very odd Kind of

1:41:10

sense. I'm not even sure how it produces It

1:41:13

sounds I'm not sure what what

1:41:16

kind of synthesis it is. It's

1:41:18

one of the weirdest sounding synths I've ever

1:41:20

heard It really

1:41:22

never works in your

1:41:24

song unless it does and then it makes the song

1:41:26

it's one of those ones where I try I try

1:41:28

out on everything now that I have it because Every

1:41:31

once in a while you find something and it and

1:41:34

you're like wow that made this thing sing but

1:41:36

if it doesn't make it sing it's like it

1:41:39

ruins everything and then yeah, I

1:41:42

was using a lot of It

1:41:44

was using that guild S100 70s S100

1:41:46

that Just

1:41:49

really sounded great. We

1:41:52

use that all over the record and Yeah,

1:41:54

I'm trying to think if there's anything else Neil if

1:41:56

there's anything you were using that you're loving. Yeah, I

1:41:59

mean lot of what I use is I have

1:42:02

a Neve console that we use

1:42:04

for recording and some

1:42:06

vintage mics between Patrick and stuff that

1:42:08

I had but also you

1:42:10

know for guitar gear we were not shy

1:42:13

to use pedals where especially Joe he really

1:42:15

digs in on that stuff and I have

1:42:18

some amps at my place that for that I

1:42:20

like to use so we mic up everything and

1:42:22

we can quickly kind of go between whatever

1:42:25

sounds and make combinations of amps and

1:42:28

in addition we might even you know bring

1:42:30

up something like a guitar rig or something

1:42:32

and use that as an effect to

1:42:35

blend into an original guitar

1:42:37

sound so it might be me saying hey Joe

1:42:39

what if we make this more ambient

1:42:42

or maybe let's have something

1:42:44

modulating or Joe would just you

1:42:47

know if he's doing it he'll just come up with

1:42:49

you know I'm hearing this and he just we find a

1:42:51

way to kind of get the sound he's hearing in his

1:42:53

head and we'll spend like Patrick said we

1:42:56

really we would spend an hour or more on

1:42:58

a guitar tone kind of just dialing it in

1:43:00

perfectly so I don't think it's

1:43:02

any one thing it's in and with the drums it

1:43:04

was it was always talking through

1:43:06

with my engineer this is what I'm hearing this

1:43:08

is what we're hearing Patrick and I might talk

1:43:11

before I even talk with my engineer you

1:43:13

know this is what cutting you know more rock

1:43:15

sound more hip-hop sound more you

1:43:17

know high tuned snare drum more 22-inch

1:43:19

kick more 24-inch kick or what you

1:43:21

know we would really go through those

1:43:23

kind of elements and

1:43:25

then we'd start to work on the

1:43:27

drum sounds individually for songs we would

1:43:29

change out snare drums and toms and

1:43:31

whatever for each song to

1:43:34

fashion the drum kit for

1:43:37

each song individually yeah in

1:43:39

a lot of ways you're almost like mixing a little bit

1:43:42

as you're picking out those

1:43:44

things it's like part of the process of

1:43:46

it because you know what's gonna fit where

1:43:48

you know such attention to

1:43:50

detail it's so impressive and you can

1:43:52

really hear it in the record do

1:43:55

you have a routine either of you that

1:43:58

you stick to that helps you creates

1:44:00

or helps you work? I

1:44:02

don't know. For me, I think my

1:44:07

routine is trying to do some exercise

1:44:09

in the morning and clear my head

1:44:11

and then coming in and just being

1:44:13

as attentive to Patrick,

1:44:16

Pete, the band, you know, where

1:44:18

we're at. Sometimes I'll have a little bit of

1:44:20

a plan like, hey, let's do some

1:44:23

guitars this morning and then sing in the

1:44:25

afternoon when your voice is kind of warmed

1:44:27

up and those kinds of things. Some of

1:44:29

the nuts and bolts of production which is just

1:44:31

kind of arranging the day but also

1:44:33

just trying to feel where Patrick's at. Sometimes he

1:44:35

comes in and is like, I want to try

1:44:37

a synth on something. So we just kind of

1:44:39

start going down that road and we're plugging in

1:44:41

every synth and it can be

1:44:44

a little bit of a free-for-all and sometimes we're

1:44:46

like, what should we do? And then it's like,

1:44:48

well, let's try and muddle through something like this,

1:44:50

maybe something's stumping us. Well, no pun

1:44:52

intended. And

1:44:54

we'll go and we'll fight through

1:44:56

something maybe that day or maybe we won't even get

1:44:58

something that day very much or maybe Patrick's voice

1:45:00

is tired so we can't sing or whatever. So we

1:45:03

go into something else. Yeah, that was,

1:45:05

well, that's not the question but yeah, when

1:45:07

my voice craps out and then

1:45:09

it like changes my whole perspective.

1:45:13

Yeah, I don't really have

1:45:15

much of a routine other than

1:45:17

I'm going to go and I'm going to work,

1:45:19

you know. So I like

1:45:21

to when, you know, we would start

1:45:23

at like 11 or something and basically,

1:45:26

you know, there's some, you

1:45:28

know, hey, how you doing? You just, you know,

1:45:30

watch this thing last night, whatever. But then

1:45:32

we kind of just go in. I don't

1:45:35

really like to putz around in the studio all

1:45:37

that much. I really

1:45:40

like to be recording something or

1:45:42

dialing something, you know. We really, really

1:45:44

my routine was just, you know, make it to

1:45:47

the studio as on time as I can be.

1:45:49

I have ADHD, it's very difficult but I, you

1:45:51

know, I'd be there within 10, 15 minutes of

1:45:53

whenever I was supposed to be there and

1:45:55

then we just work through it. That's

1:45:57

kind of, that's my routine. Yeah,

1:46:00

yeah, and do you

1:46:02

have any advice that you could pass on to

1:46:05

people listening? So this could be

1:46:07

advice that you've picked up along the way Through

1:46:10

your personal experience or advice that you've

1:46:12

had passed on to you Words

1:46:14

of wisdom that you've carried with you ever

1:46:17

since you heard them. I mean you've

1:46:19

got a lot of Experience between

1:46:21

the two of you know you've both

1:46:23

been doing this music thing for a

1:46:26

long time And and there's got

1:46:28

to be some kind of secret to how you've been

1:46:30

able to juggle that and make that work Well

1:46:33

one piece of advice that I got one

1:46:35

time was from you know

1:46:37

Total name drop but Elton John we

1:46:39

did a song with Elton John and

1:46:41

he said he just kind of apropos of nothing He said

1:46:43

you know he's like when you find your

1:46:45

producer stick with him Like yeah, he's

1:46:48

like when you find the producer that understands you

1:46:50

stick with him It's like all my friends that

1:46:52

didn't do that it ruined their careers. It's like

1:46:54

okay Thank you That

1:46:58

was on a record we didn't do with Neil and

1:47:00

I remember thinking like oh, yeah but

1:47:05

The other one was just my

1:47:07

advice I guess is

1:47:09

that you know obviously when you're under a time

1:47:11

crunch prioritize you know There's

1:47:13

a great mixing book that I read

1:47:16

one time that had a it had

1:47:18

some really funny chapters One

1:47:20

was about like you know you're gonna have to deal

1:47:22

with people even though you're a you're a you know

1:47:24

Mix engineer and you're in a studio all day and

1:47:26

that's what you're good at You're occasionally gonna have to

1:47:28

talk to human beings one of the

1:47:30

tips that really was so important

1:47:32

to me was Really

1:47:36

prioritizing in the short

1:47:38

term What's

1:47:40

important so? When

1:47:42

Neil and I get together we have time

1:47:44

and we can play around or whatever and

1:47:46

that's part of the game That's part of

1:47:48

like what the plan is but when you're

1:47:51

Working and it's like time like when Neil's

1:47:53

mixing for example. I'm sure there's a certain

1:47:55

level of like What's the

1:47:58

more important thing is like? First

1:48:01

and foremost, those vocals have to sound

1:48:03

right. Those drums have to be

1:48:05

right. When you get those

1:48:07

two things where they need to be, you're

1:48:09

already so much closer to

1:48:11

the finish line than you

1:48:14

were when you started, right? Not

1:48:16

to say that everything else doesn't matter, but it's like those

1:48:18

are the things that are jumping out to the audience first.

1:48:21

So when you find yourself spending

1:48:24

hours trying to get that one, you

1:48:27

know, triangle part to sound

1:48:29

perfect, you know, and we all do this

1:48:31

where you're like, no, it just doesn't sound

1:48:33

like you take a step back and go like,

1:48:36

this isn't the thing. This isn't

1:48:38

the thing that everyone's going to notice. So Neil

1:48:40

and I will make that triangle part sound

1:48:43

perfect. But otherwise,

1:48:45

like, you don't have to do that. Like when I

1:48:48

demo, I don't do that. And

1:48:50

you can kind of hear the demos are kind of

1:48:52

crunchy and stuff, but they're not like terrible, you know,

1:48:54

like there's a thing there. And

1:48:56

it's like you can get your idea out

1:48:58

without killing yourself, I guess is the

1:49:00

thing. Yeah. Neil,

1:49:04

you've worked with so many different people

1:49:06

and you've taken on so many different

1:49:08

roles within recording. Yeah.

1:49:12

Honestly, I struggle with this all the time

1:49:14

because people do ask me. And

1:49:18

you know, for me, I guess my

1:49:20

path was started out

1:49:23

as an electrical engineer,

1:49:25

always played instruments growing up.

1:49:28

My main instrument was trumpet. And when

1:49:31

I went to college, I kind of gave up music

1:49:33

and went into electrical engineering because that seemed like the

1:49:36

more stable concept to

1:49:38

do. And after a year of being

1:49:40

in college, I was like, I miss music too much.

1:49:42

And my favorite class was my elective and a music

1:49:44

class. So I switched majors to

1:49:46

music and much to the chagrin of my

1:49:48

parents. And I think the thing for me

1:49:50

was that I just had to follow my passion.

1:49:52

And it was more important to me that

1:49:56

I did what I loved than, you

1:49:58

know, maybe a more steady a monetary

1:50:00

gig. So my advice

1:50:03

is do the thing that's really passionate for

1:50:05

you and if music is the thing that's

1:50:07

passionate for you, do it

1:50:09

and do it all the time. It's

1:50:11

that 10,000 hour kind of mantra

1:50:15

of that Outliers book where it's like

1:50:17

you just have to spend all your

1:50:19

time. There is no shortcut. I

1:50:21

mean, yeah, you can try and watch some YouTube

1:50:23

videos and stuff like that. But until you actually

1:50:26

get behind a fader and have to

1:50:28

decide how loud the vocal is going to be

1:50:31

or how it's processed or how it fits in

1:50:33

with all the other instruments, it

1:50:35

can be daunting. I was just talking to

1:50:37

somebody the other day who had

1:50:39

an instrumental track and they were trying to mix the vocal into

1:50:41

the already done instrumental track

1:50:43

and how hard that was for them to

1:50:45

get that level right. And it just goes

1:50:48

to show you that even the simplest things can

1:50:51

take practice and that goes for anything.

1:50:53

So I would just say love

1:50:56

what you do and practice and practice

1:50:58

and practice and fail. That

1:51:00

makes me think of another thing too which is to

1:51:03

just do what you are. There's always this

1:51:06

saying that they talk about, write what you

1:51:08

know. It's kind of like

1:51:10

an addendum to that is like I feel like as

1:51:12

a player, as a musician, I think sometimes

1:51:14

it's more important to be yourself

1:51:17

than it is to be good sometimes.

1:51:19

I mean, practice is

1:51:21

so important but the

1:51:23

x factor I think is also kind of

1:51:26

being yourself. I was scared of that

1:51:28

meeting that I had with my manager

1:51:30

when he said, you kind of used to ramble

1:51:33

more. Why don't you ramble again?

1:51:35

And I was like, oh, because I was scared

1:51:37

of that. I thought people didn't like that. That

1:51:39

was honest to me. That's a natural way of

1:51:41

writing for me and I was terrified of doing

1:51:43

it again. I thought people wouldn't like it and

1:51:46

then of course, other side is very

1:51:48

well received song and it's

1:51:50

pretty rambly. And that's

1:51:52

kind of just, yeah, like I

1:51:54

said, it's me. And

1:51:57

so don't subvert yourself.

1:52:00

so much even if you're scared of it or you

1:52:02

think you're not the thing or whatever like, don't

1:52:05

let practice iron

1:52:07

that out of you. It should be a partner to

1:52:10

whatever you are innately instead

1:52:15

of replacing it. Yeah. It's

1:52:18

been so great talking to you. Thank you so much for your

1:52:20

time. Thanks so much. Thank you, John.

1:52:22

It's been brilliant to have you on tape notes.

1:52:24

We should have one more piece of music, like

1:52:26

an outro piece from the album

1:52:29

that we could play a bit of now. What would

1:52:32

you like to go for? I'd

1:52:36

love to do What a Time to Be Alive because that

1:52:38

was another one of those true. I would love

1:52:41

to talk about that one if we had time, but we don't. But

1:52:44

we can just hear it. Yeah. Okay.

1:52:46

Excellent. Thanks again, Neil. Yeah.

1:52:49

Patrick, brilliant to talk to you. Sure. Full

1:52:52

out boy with What a Time to Be

1:52:54

Alive. Thank

1:53:14

you for listening. And in particular, thanks to

1:53:16

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1:54:31

hear you're moving in, and

1:54:33

we're ready for live streaming

1:54:35

apocalypse And I'm going to

1:54:37

go to all your loves And baby I

1:54:39

can talk on your echelise, oh, so echelise

1:54:44

Oh, cause I was in a meeting just to pop on my phone