Mo Lowda and The Humble Full Length “Creature” is out!
For the past year or so, when people have asked me what I’ve been excited about working on, this new record has always been at the tip of my tongue, and its finally out for everyone besides me to hear! The album was recorded by the bass player, Jeff Lucci, and the drummer, our very own Shane Woods. Shane holds the record for longest employee at The Headroom, and is currently our studio manager. He started out as a self-proclaimed “college recording student who didn’t know anything” who would skip class to come hang out with Joe and I. Its really rewarding to see someone go from hitting record on the tape machine to tracking and producing a truly superb sounding record. Shane has been playing with Mo Lowda and the Humble since before he joined us at The Headroom, and although they may not get the same kind of hype as some other philly bands, they’ve been playing sold out shows in and out of the city for the past couple years and tour like crazy!
I love the whole record, but the song, “Tied Up” is my favorite. Shane tracked the drums with 1 mic on the kick, 1 mic on the snare, 1 mic in from of the drums as a “kit” mic, and 1 mic on the hi hat. The drum beat was apparently something Shane was messing around with in between songs at a rehearsal. Jordan Caoila, the singer/songwriter of the trio recorded a snippet on his phone unbeknowst to Shane. He wrote a song to the a beat some time later and played the drum beat back to Shane, who apparently said something to the effect of “Cool drumbeat! who played that?” When the band brought the song to me, they had a few Steven Slate plug ins on the drum bus that totally blew the sound out in a really cool way. I more or less kept the settings the same and just accentuated what was already there, with some eq, transient designer, and a parallel compression track going through the Distressor, probably on the “nuke” setting. The verse mainly consists of our rhodes piano that Jeff Lucci played through his effects board, with some accents on an Omnichord and a Prophet 08 synthesizer swirling under the washed out guitar chords. I wasn’t there for the guitar and bass tracking but I’m pretty sure the bass is a Gibson Grabber, and the guitar is our Rickenbacker! My favorite part of the production however, are the tom fills, which are samples that were programmed to be in between the drum beat. They sound totally cohesive in the track but have huge low end that makes them stand out! SO COOL!
Their album Creatures can be streamed everywhere right now, and will be available in vinyl in April.