Why Catalina Rush?

As a companion to the release of Catalina Rush  I thought it might be interesting to do a song by song rundown of the album here on the blog. Before we get into that though let's start at the beginning and see how the project came to be.

I got my first guitar when I was 15 and have been playing music ever since. I was interested in recording early on and setup my first "studio" while still in high school. It consisted of a 4-Track Tascam Portastudio and a Boss Dr. Rhythm drum machine. I fell in love with recording and after high school went to college with dreams of becoming a recording engineer. I learned on tape just as Pro Tools was starting to take off. After college I didn't pursue a career in music but maintained creating musical ideas as a hobby.

In 2015 I relocated to Las Vegas from the east coast and life got in the way of music. In March of this year like it did for everyone else my world changed. I was furloughed from my job and suddenly had lots of free time. I kept busy by starting a PODCAST and conceptualizing and editing a VIDEO SCRAPBOOK about my favorite band the Ramones. As I was finishing the Ramones project I started thinking about my own music. I'd seen lots of posts from people online about GarageBand and was impressed by what I heard. I knew it was an Apple product so I set out to see if there was a Windows equivalent. My main goal was a program that was free as I wanted to kick the tires and see what I could do. I did a quick Google search and found a program called LMMS that looked like it would fit the bill. 

After downloading and setting up LMMS I launched it and started to play around. I've never been a manual guy so I just jumped right in. It's a pretty intuitive program so I was able to figure out the basics rather quickly. Whenever I hit a roadblock I went to Google for the answer and continued on my way. The first thing about LMMS I knew I would have to adjust to is the lack of traditional inputs. Simply put this means no instruments or microphones could be plugged in as a source. The options were MIDI, samples and VST plugins. This wasn't a big roadblock as I wasn't planning to record my guitar. As a way to challenge myself I figured I would try and execute the whole thing via keyboards. I had my Korg MicroX for the MIDI portion and hundreds of drum samples from a great company called Drum Werks at my disposable. Now all I needed were some sounds. VST or Virtual Studio Technology was a new concept to me but it's opened up my musical world. My 15 year old self would be amazed by the tools I currently have at my disposal. Another Google search delivered exactly what I needed. By the way, LMMS is loaded with some pretty great sounds right out of the box but I was looking for a bit more. VST4FREE immediately became my go to resource. 

Before we get too far into VST though I think now's a good time to get into how the whole project developed into what it is. Catalina Rush jumped out at me as a band name. I've hid behind a band name in the past as a way of making my projects seem like more than just a guy producing a bunch of songs. Back in the Myspace days I had a project called Sad Sack. It's a dead page now but I still have a majoity of the songs on my digital 8 track. I might dust them off at some point... I last released music under my social media name MrCraigCohen. That track was was my first attempt at electronic music and was a lot of fun to put together. Back to Catalina Rush though. I conceptualized a band that consisted of drums, bass and a keyboard player. Kind of like a local Yacht Rock band. I found a great Electric Piano VST called the Sweetcase and after setting it up I quickly remembered that I'm not the best keyboard player. As previously stated I'm primarily a guitar player and I tend to like lots of distortion. If nothing else it can hide flaws in your playing and cover a lot of sonic space. After a quick search I found the perfect solution: Lostin70s take on a B3 Hammond organ. I downloaded it and dialed in the dirtiest sound I could find. Kind of like John Lord from Deep Purple.

I grabbed my trusty Fender Stratocaster and came up with a bass riff that got me started. After I was finished I had the start of what would become the last track on the album, "Catalina Lord". I also had the start of a loose concept for an album. Instead of Catalina Rush the band what if it was Catalina Rush the story? From that point I approached the rest of the songs with the idea of telling a story.

In the next entry I'll cover more of the album's concept and the first track "Catalina Come Up".