The Hurricane Personnel Manny Perez Tim Austin Jones Carl Hayden The Hurricane Project also includes Cara Hayden George Ziemann Audio Production George Ziemann

Important Note: July 5 -- The Hurricane is reportedly on the verge of recording an album of original rock songs. Actually, the recording was supposed to have started a month ago, but they're still rehearsing and testing the material on club audiences. No other details have been provided. Hurricane Project -- Latest Updates by George Ziemann July 5, 2008 -- Fortunately, I remembered to make a back-up of my back-up. The only things truly "lost" were the master tracks of the cover songs from January. June 24, 2008 -- While going back to correct the drum problem in "Hold On," I discovered that my wife accidentally erased all 70-plus master sessions from our back-up hard drive. All of the work from this project is gone, as well as the masters for Hayden's Wall, Lazy Tiger, TrainWreck and my solo work. The only thing to survive was "Strawberry Fields," which had not yet been moved to the back-up drive. June 14, 2008 -- DMusic was asking for Beatles' songs, so I decided to do some more work on Strawberry Fields Forever (Download), which was stuck on the last verse for about 2 months because there was no way to even approach what George Martin did there. Ultimately, I decided to forget my preconceptions and wing it, using whatever instrumentation felt good. It seems to have worked out okay. January 24, 2008 -- Down to the last few songs from the Jan 4 & 5 recordings and I'm running out of steam, which is going to slow me down a little, but since less than three weeks has passed since the songs were played, I think we're making good time. January 9 -- Last week, I said indies should record some cover songs. Then I went to Tucson and spent the next two nights doing exactly that with The Hurricane. A few more days getting the ADAT tracks into ProTools, and the first finished tune has appeared, with another 20 or so in the pipeline. Here's the handy listening guide for the tracks as they appear, as well as some amusing stories from the weekend. October 19, 2007 -- Upgraded Masquerade again. After listening to the mp3, I could hear Carl's voice being limited, which took away the edge. Fixed that, repositioned cymbals, faded in the keyboards and made a few other small adjustments. There's a moment of weird at 1:23, but other than that, this one came out pretty well, I thought. October 17 -- Upgraded Masquerade (Stream.....Download), which was written by Ron Kimble of, uh, somewhere around Seattle, I think. Or at least that's where he was when he wrote this tune. October 15 -- Finally got the drum track done for Eve of Destruction. Which is nice because today is Barry McGuire's 70th birthday. October 11 -- Added a bass track to Strawberry Fields. Yes, it does have two bad notes. They're both A. I'll fix that later, probably when the bass line turns into trombones and low strings. Did some work on Eve of Destruction, but it still needs a drum track before I post it. October 6 -- Sat and listened back to the whole collection play in iTunes, which makes me realize that the compression over-emphasizes the vocal effects, which were supposed to be more subtle. I need to go back through and correct this. October 5 -- We had three takes of the song "Out of Love". I made Carl and Cara decide which one I should work on. I think Tim wrote this one, but Cara made it her own, and she's got this cute little Minnie Ripperton-ish thing going on. Tim and Carl both play guitar on this track. The orchestration just wrote itself, one piece at a time. (Stream.....Download) October 4 -- Got a CD in the mail from Tim, with a note saying to replace "Take Me Down" on the site with Track 22 on the CD. So I did. It's our first Category 1. (Stream.....Download). Now I've gotta go listen to the other 21 tracks... October 3 -- Added "The Bloodletting", which is a cover of a Concrete Blonde song that I've never actually heard anyone (including Concrete Blonde) do except Carl. I really like this song and I don't know why, other than it's really fun to play. This was a one-take vocal and acoustic guitar track and Carl was kind enough to leave a space for a keyboard lead. But I really needed that full band sound to do the kind of lead I wanted. The Origin of The Hurricane Project On September 16 and 17, 2007, I (GZ) went to see Carl and Cara Hayden and record some songwriting demos for them, along with another member of The Hurricane, Tim Austin Jones. The purpose of this session was to get 30 songs down so "the guy" could take them to "the place" and get the added to "the library" that people go to when they need one more song to fill the album and just haven't found the right one yet. Over the two-day span, we recorded 43 separate guitar and vocal takes, sometimes re-doing the same song with a different vocalist. I took those tracks back home and listened to them repeatedly, getting rid of noise, touching up vocal tracks, adding effects and automation. The result, after dropping out the cover songs and pulling in a few Lazy Tiger tracks, was 2 CD set of songwriting demos, for the express purpose of licensing. Took 7 full days, but I said I could do it in a week and deadlines are very motivational, especially when I am being paid. So we had a mission and accomplished it in the alloted time. Cara and Carl still have another 20 or so songs waiting for the next time I travel to see them, and I'm sure Tim has more, too. Then we'll start recording the band, which does not include myself and Cara does do a few songs with them, but still gets "guest singer" billing because she doesn't stay on stage all night. Looking at the number of songs, it was obvious that getting band recordings of all these tunes would probably take significantly longer than another two-day session. After listening to all these songs for a week, I sort of grew attached to them all. Then I listened to them all again to make mp3 files, backed up all the sessions and got them added to the site. You have to understand that I've been waiting years to get exactly these sort of recordings out of Carl and Cara, but it never really happened before and the bulk of what we recorded I had never even heard before. Sept. 28 -- Carl had done "Strawberry Fields Forever" and you've gotta have that intro. So I learned the part and updated the recording. I'll come back to this one because it seems there may be another track or two it could use. Sept. 29 -- Built on to "Hold On", during which I learned how difficult it is to put in drums after the fact, especially when one is not that great of a drummer to begin with. But it smoothed out right after Cara sings a line with "...the timing wasn't right." Sept. 30 -- Moved on to "See the Fire" because it was kind of haunting me. There are two versions, one with Carl doing vocals, the other with Cara singing. Took Cara's version first and added bass and strings. Which brings me to today, October 1, 2007. That's how all of this came together.