Newspaper Page Text
I
i,
i
BEDROOI
, SUITES!
fy'
Riverbend Club
A P A R T \\ ENTS.
mm.
'i **
»*•? #
LOCATION...
LOCATION...
LOCATION!
• Qranite Countertops
. • Stainless Steel Appliances '
• Tennis • 2^Hour Fitness Center
• Resort-Style Pool • Walk-In Closets
• Basketball • Sand Volleyball
• Clubhouse with Pool Table and Wi-Fi
2, 3 & 4 BEDROOM'APARTMENTS
(706) 369-0772
355 Rtverbend Pkwy. • Athens, GA 30605
www.dubp.ropertSes.com
16 FlAGPOLE.COM JUNE 16,2010
Venice Is Sinking’s
SAND & UNES
featuring special guest,
GEORGIA THEATRE
JB
W hen smoke rose above
the Georgia Theatre on
June 19, 2009, Venice
Is Sinking didn't know
what to do. It wasn't
just that they stood
to lose a favorite place, somewhere they'd
performed dozens of times and whose owner,
Wilmot Greene, had always welcomed them
warmly. It was that only the week before, the
band had begun a Kickstarter.com campaign
to raise the money for the pressing of Sand &
Lines, the group's third LP, recorded over the
course of four days in that very building (out
June 15 via One Percent Press).
"We all felt really close to the Theatre
because we had spent so much time there,"
says vocalist and viola player Karolyn Troupe.
"It was a loss for the town, but it was also a
personal loss for us."
"You didn't want to play the sympathy
card," adds drummer Lucas Jensen. "But all of
a sudden we had something on our hands that
was a really good representation of the way
the Theatre sounded."
The idea for the record came when Greene
approached the members of Venice Is Sinking
after a show they played there in January of
2008. He proposed closing down the venue
for a week so that they could record an album
in it with renowned Athens producer Da /id
Barbe, capture the sound of the room and cre
ate a sonic-memory document in the same way
that the building's facade had long stood as a
visual landmark.
Of course, VIS agreed. The band had just
spent a grueling eight months recording its
previous record, AZAR, over extended week
ends in Scott Solteris studio in North Carolina,
obsessing over every tiny detail. One of the
most appealing aspects of the offer was the
quickness of the project. The band would com
plete everything between May 20-24, 2008.
Barbe's engineering (with Andy LeMaster,
who joined for two songs) would insure the
quality of the recording. "It's not like you're
making a record in somebody's basement,"
says Jensen. "It was a unique experiment.
Everything kind of aligned, and it could've
been a disaster for us."
Far from disastrous, Sand & Lines instead
proved fortuitous. In the empty theatre, they
recorded analog from two omni-directional
microphones above the stage. The bandmem-
bers and guest musicians (like guitarist Jesse
Flavin and handfuls of other instrumental
ists and vocalists) had to physically move
themselves through the performance space to
adjust the mix.
"That was one requirement of Wil's when
we started," says vocalist and guitarist Daniel
Lawson. "He never wanted it to go into a com
puter at all, so it went from the microphones
straight to this tape deck and then from that
went into mastering and straight to vinyl."
The days of rehearsal and recording, pulling
together "orphan" material from previous ses
sions, writing new songs and readying three
covers led to a tighter, better aligned Venice
Is Sinking, especially after the AZAR sessions.
The bandmembers had to use everything
they'd so painstakingly learned.
"We realized what our process was for
getting songs together and who contributes
what, and we had to condense that," says key
boardist James Seweli. "Instead of a year, we
had to get it all figured out in a month."
In the end, though, the Georgia Theatre
became Sand & Lines' reluctant star.
"The Theatre was weird, and it was idiosyn
cratic and cavernous," Jensen says. As they
watched it bum, Venice Is Sinking came to a
decision. "I think we decided that day, any
thing we potentially make from this we're just
going to give back," says Lawson.
"As much as any of us with our contribu
tions to the record, I think the Theatre was
just as important or more important than
anything that we did," he continues. "It
really does act as a sixth or seventh or ninth
musician."
Julia Reldy
Venice Is Sinking is playing AthFest on Saturday, June
26 at the 40 Watt Club.
MIKE WHITE dei