I arrived on Protection Island with so many things. The weight of David’s amp on one arm was only marginally balanced by my old, weathered guitar case in the other. I strapped a pedalboard around my front and hefted Julia’s MEC backpack onto my back (that totally fits her trumpet inside for bikeriding or, in my case, 2 weeks worth of clothes, 700 pages of Game Of Thrones, a handful of pens, 2 notebooks, and a Korg Kaoss Pad)
Julia and I started sweating while relaying all of this musical equipment from the 30 person foot passenger ferry. How would this work? It took about 10-15 minutes to walk to the cabin from the dock, and we were easily carrying 60 pounds of gear. Luckily, Derek saw us on the roadway and told us to throw it all in the back of his electric golf cart. We said our thank you’s and moved our things up the hill to the cabin. I would be living here for the next half-month.
Josh and Brock came later, we filmed Friendly Fires at 4:30 in the morning as the sun came over Gabriola. I found out there was no salt in the cabin, and readied myself for a week of cooking tasteless food. I opted to cook everything in bacon instead. I took the Greyhound home for 1 night to help the guys pack everything and head back up to meet Jon (who produced Versicolour) and sail across again. This time we crossed with a 24 channel console, 3 racks of mic preamps and recording gear, 2 amplifiers, 2 Trumpets, 2 Flugelhorns, Microphones, Micstands rolled in a moving blanket, Backpacks, Guitars, Bass and Viola. The ferry workers kept a watchful eye and a careful smile on their faces as we loaded an impossible amount of gear onto the little boat.
Over the next 8 days, we swam in the ocean between Newcastle and Protection Island daily, ate incredible gluten-free meals, woke up at 10am to play music until Midnight, and started plotting out the next record over the course of 16 songs. Music that we haven’t fully heard yet ourselves. Jon recorded us using a system called RADAR (kind of like a digital tape-machine). We recorded bed-tracks and arranged 11 entirely new songs. It’s begun.
