New Web Store

We're launching a new web shop where you can buy the following items:

State Cows - s/t (signed by Daniel & Stefan)
Daniel Andersson - Days in L.A.
Stefan Olofsson - Story of a Woman
DP - Strange Ways

There are only a few copies left of each so they are selling on a first-come, first-served basis.

http://statecows.bigcartel.com

Welcome!

Reviews

English language except where noted. This list will be extended as more reviews show up:

artrock.se (Swedish)
melodic.net
Fury
RockRebel Magazine (Italian)
RoxxZone (Italian)
Dan Backman (Swedish)
GloryDazeMusic.com
Westcoast/AOR Music
Extended Mix (Swedish)
PlanetAOR
Métal Intégral (French)
svd.se (Swedish)
Myglobalmind
DangerDog.com
Infinite Abyss (German)
hooked-on-music.de (German)
Metal Glory (German)
RockReport
Den melodiösa bloggen (Swedish)
Rock Times (German)
RockWay (Greek)

For translation we recommend Google Translate

Some Stores

Here is a small selection of stores that will carry the State Cows album. Some of them have pre-ordering possibilities.

Scandinavia:
Megastore
Ginza
Zink Music
CDON

USA:
NEHRecords

Japan:
Amazon.jp

Germany:
Amazon.de

Italy:
Markuee

UK:
Amazon.uk

The Soloists part #2

Continuing on our previous post, here are more great soloists!

Peter Holmqvist: guitar
On "Come to the point" we were looking for a jazzy solo to give the song a special edge. We've known Peter for years, he played guitar on Daniel's album "Days In L.A.", but it was a long time since we played together. Daniel called him up, Peter listened to the song, came over to the studio with his old Les Paul plugged in and played a wonderful jazzy solo all in one take!

Mikael Sandström: guitar
Guitarist and founding member of Dynamo Bliss. An extreme musical talent from Hössjö just outside of Umeå. Mikael played the blazing solo on "Stella by the Barlight". Besides being a great musician, Mikael is handy with electronics and engineering, building amps, mixing consoles, compressors etc. A studio lifesaver!

Preliminary album release date: 18th of June!

The preliminary release date for State Cows new album has been set to 18th of June!


The album will contain 11 songs and the running time will be 51:14.


More info to come!

Backup Plan

How many westcoast records can you name that don't contain blazing harmony parts?


Daniel and Stefan recorded scratch vocal arrangements early on in the process to make sure there was enough room when the time came to put the real vocals on. Soundscapes tend to clutter up fast when adding instrumental overdubs. The arrangements turned out quite intricate with lots of tight notes and tricky jumps as well as some castrate like tenor parts.

In order to get good performances and a nice mixture of voices, some really versatile vocalists were badly needed. We found them in Christian Thomsen (above) and Marcuz Granberg (below), two extremely talented singers! They totally delivered and did all their parts in less than a day. Kudos to you, guys!

Vintage Vibe

Daniel recorded the rhythm guitar using one of two tube amps - a Fender Pro Jr and a Vox AC30. The Pro Jr is a small amp without any bells and whistles, only volume and tone knobs and a great sound!

Pedalwise, a Tube Screamer and a Hot Cake Fuzz were frequently used throughout the recordings.

Daniel's main axe is a Gibson ES 335. It's been around for quite some time and delivers a great vintage smooth hollow body tone, perfect for westcoast music.

Les Pauls, Teles and Strats were also used a lot, all in the best interest of the song. What wasn't used was amp software plugins. While they do get closer and closer to the tone of real amps, the feeling of moving air is just not there - at least not yet!