Leland

Jon Thwaits and I both attended Sahuaro High School (his senior year and my junior year). We ended up having the same class for 6th period. I remember every day we would wait outside the classroom door for each other and have a debate whether or not to ditch the class. One day we decided to ditch the class and head over to “sauna studios.” We walked to the studio stopping at the circle K on the way. We picked up a 64oz drink and a king size Resees to feast on. When we reached my house Jon proceeded to teach me a song he had been working on. Leland. We pulled out the trusty four track recorder and began recording. Leland had a fair number of changes, pattern changes and stops. Jon seemed to have a good idea what he wanted it to sound like, and for some reason I picked up pretty fast on this one. We had a great time recording the guitar and drum tracks. We had a pretty good recording of the guitar and drums, not flawless, but good. Jon took the recording home and added a few other tracks and parts. A day or two later we were adding another guitar solo at ‘the studio’ and we recorded over the wrong track, accidently erasing a needed track. (I am sure we can all remember a different time when we all hit the record button on the wrong track, or forgetting to push record on the ‘perfect’ time we played it) We were sad that we had lost that really good take. But we soon realized that we needed to start all over again. Jon picked up his guitar and I sat down and we then played the song even better than the original. This was one of my favorite memories recording songs and favorite time spent in sauna studios. This experience is one reason why Leland is one of my favorite songs.

Check out what I mean here: Leland

Professor percussion
Joe Richins