Stand Along is a collection of songs created in 2020 once quarantine happened. I had been using my tape recorder to record many walks I had taken around Vancouver as well as some walks and hikes in Cowichan Valley. I took those field recordings and ran them through numerous guitar pedals while slowing down and speeding up the playback of the tape and recorded that. Gritty, spacious, psychedelic, nostalgic sounds. On top of those recordings, I just started jamming and building soundtracks for each tape recording. I felt it important to box myself in, to limit myself to only using my Guitars, Korg Microkorg synth, Roland SPD-SX sampler pad, and vocals (save for a couple tracks that have Spencer’s beautiful drumming on). Everything was recorded as audio into Logic Pro in my home studio (my basement). I did not want to use any MIDI as I wanted to keep everything as raw and human as possible. No quantizing, no fixing notes in post, just whatever was recorded is what I got. I’d always been amazed and intrigued at the mixing process of producing music so I decided I’d go for it with my own recordings. Tons of feedback sessions with fellow musicians and friends and shared tips and tricks with those in the community helped me along the way. I can’t say thank you enough to all of you who helped me finish this. I also want to disclaim that this project sounds pretty much nothing like my live gigs around town. It’s not Funky/R&B jams. Just in case you might have been expecting that.

I'd like to thank my Mother for not allowing me to tell her the idea of the project I had and instead told me to use that energy and motivation within me and get down to business. She told me if you have an idea for an artistic project, the moment you speak out loud about it, the motivation to actually do it starts to dissipate. Instead, keep it in your head and let the burning desire to tell everyone about it fester into motivation and work ethic, and to only start telling people about the project when it is 90% complete. Being someone who spewed out endless ideas about projects and never came close to 20% completing them, this was extremely hard and fun for me. Actually finishing a project. Thank you mama!

Thank you to my Father for the musical genes, endless ego boosts and inspiration, life lessons, insight on achieving piece of mind, and vinyl listening sessions on your fantastic sound system allowing me to truly hear what music is meant to sound like.

**Starts to get a bit NeRdY here**

Everything was recorded as audio into Logic Pro. I did not want to use any MIDI as I wanted to keep everything as raw and human as possible. No quantizing, no fixing notes in post, just whatever was recorded is what I got. For all delay, reverb, and spaciousness I primarily used Line 6 Echo Park Delay pedal paired with EarthQuaker Devices Avalanche Run Stereo Reverb and Delay pedal. Vocals, Guitars, Synths, pretty much all went through those two psychedelic babes at some point. For extra grittiness I tacked on the Fulltone OCD drive pedal on some bass synths and some vocal tracks. I used my VOX AC15 amplifier for the guitars.