Two band members describe recording their album with Nine Inch Nails drummer Chris Renner, getting rejected, re-recording with producer Howard Benson, then waiting months while their label stalled. After September 11, the label offered a buyout. One member, Ken, threatened to release it independently and quit.
And the label just dragging their feet like crazy.
This is a great story. One of my favorite stories about our band. Well, first of all, we. We made a. We made some giant mistakes. Once we got the money from Grand Royal, they sent us to LA for a couple weeks to make a record with Chris Renner, who was the drummer from Nine Inch Nails, who was also like, you know, kind of like a Pro Tools Beta dude. He was a great engineer. He was okay at producing. Good guy. But we went out there and we did, you know, what ultimately was a demo. And for real, it was such garbage that it was scary. The label said no. Even the band was like, no splat sounding. It was. So when we got back, it was like we had talked with Howard Benson Pryor, and then we kind of had to grovel and be like, hey, Howard, we made a mistake. Would you mind, you know, fixing this? So he said, yeah, we went out for, you know, whatever it was can, like maybe just under two months or whatever. We made a record with Howard. And Howard was hell bent on helping his artists as well. So he was, like, kind of involved in making sure things happened, even though there was some serious resistance. But when that album came out, well.
This is really how it was. Like, in the can.
Yeah.
And then the label was dragging their feet like crazy.
This is a great story, One of my favorite stories about our band. The label was dragging their feet almost to the point where they were like, we're not going to put this out. And I remember me and ken flew into LAX. Our A& R guy picked us up, and we're driving to the hotel, and Ken's like, what's going on with this record? I have the rough mixes, I have the masters. I'm going to put it out in this ra. And our guy was like, you're going to what? He's like, yeah, I'm going to put this out. Our fans want it already. Like, he's. He's telling the label that we have our own copy and we don't care about you anymore. We're going to put it out no matter what. And this dude, he was literally head.
Like he could spun off his food. And then, you know, when 911 happened, they, you know, they were like, I want to say a block from Ground Zero was their headquarters. And they were just like, all right, let's just. Let's just blow this up. We'll let it. We'll let, you know, the bands kind of walk. They didn't make it difficult for us to continue. They said, if you guys can find something, we'll, you know, we'll let you go for 50 cents on the dollar or whatever. You know, we. They didn't want to hold us back, but they were also like, you know, the gig's up. So, you know, at that time, the market was changing. You know, planes flying in the buildings. I think labels were like, oh, shit. You know, we need more John Mayer, less corn.
You know, if it's not fun anymore, I'm leaving. He's always said it, so it's hard to hate on him for it, but it wasn't being fun anymore and Ken left.
It was frustrating going through that whole process. It was frustrating that happened was like, it was just kind of like, I don't really want to go another three years of going through this process when there's no, you know, guarantee like this could happen again.
