It began as a jam at the open mic and turned into a band recording our 1st EP and ended with a solo acoustic CD release
We began jamming at the Sarah Street grill, Ruben Ariola on drums, Freddy Wales on lead guitar, me on acoustic and singing and Janos on bass. So we went into the Soundmine Studios, owned by Danny Malsch. Dan was our engineer for the EP and we were excited to get this done. One day before a recording session I was approached by Freddy and Ruben. They wanted me to fire Janos, the bass player who had not yet arrived at the studio.
The bass player owned a music store and sold a guitar to Freddy who later checked the blue book value and discovered he paid 200 dollars over the bluebook value. They wanted him fired. When he arrived, Janos offered a refund to Freddy but the damage was done, as far as Freddy was concerned. I refused to get involved and Freddy and Ruben left. Janos left a short time afterwards after Dan, Janos, and I decided to cancel the session. Dan needed to work on editing and mixing of the songs we had already completed so it wasn't wasted time.
After my defunct band left the studio, Dan looked at me and said, "why not do a solo acoustic CD instead?" And that is what we did. But we were able to final mix 3 songs from the band recordings and here they are. -Rick
Recorded at Soundmine Studios, East Stroudsburg, PA Engineer: Dan Malsch Copyright 2002 All Rights Reserved
Ricky- Acoustic Guitar, Vocals Freddy Wales - Lead Guitar Ruben Ariola - Drums, Percussion Janos- Bass Guitar
Freddy Wales
Rueben and Yannish
Yannish
Yannish and Rueben
Dan Malsch - calm in a sea of chaos
The Farting Dog
Rueben
Could have been better, could have been worse.
It is now 2003 and my band has disbanded. I am sitting in Soundmine Studios after 3 weeks of intensive rehearsals in the mud room in our home at Paradise Falls. The studio lists East Stroudsburg as its address but it located in dense woods miles away from the town. It is quiet, isolated. Dan Malsch owns a big dog, an enormous dog who takes up every inch of the small sofa in the control room. The dog has the worst gas of any animal I have ever come in contact with.
We work quickly through the songs, the sessions are fast, productive and quickly concluded. I have it mastered at Masterdisk in NYC, work thru the cover art with CDBaby and within a few months , I receive 1000 CD's. I sell about 150, give away 250 more, and then trudge the sealed boxes of 600 CD's along every time we move.
I still have a few I didnt toss before the move from Maine to California in 2022, 19 years later.