State Cows - westcoast band

Videos from the release party

noreply@blogger.com (State Cows) — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 09:44:00 +0000

The release party for State Cows debut album was great!!! Thanks to everyone who showed up and for everybody else, here's a couple of videos from the show:

RELEASE PARTY · August 25 / 2010

noreply@blogger.com (State Cows) — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 06:51:00 +0000

Welcome the release party for our debut album! We'll be performing songs from the album with the following fantastic line-up:

Daniel Andersson: vocals, guitar
Stefan Olofsson: keyboards, vocals
Marcuz Granberg: guitar, vocals
Anders Lundkvist: bass
Ulf Sundquist: drums

Free admission

Time:
August 25 · 8:00pm - 11:00pm

Location:
Scharinska
Storgatan 65
Umeå, Sweden

New Web Store

noreply@blogger.com (State Cows) — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 10:13:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (State Cows) — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 18:49:00 +0000

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

artrock.se (Swedish)
melodic.net
Fury
Rock Meeting (French)
RockRebel Magazine (Italian)
RoxxZone (Italian)
Dan Backman (Swedish)
Allehanda (Swedish)
Cool Night (French)
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

noreply@blogger.com (State Cows) — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 07:16:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (State Cows) — Sun, 23 May 2010 12:56:00 +0000

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!

noreply@blogger.com (State Cows) — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 20:35:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (State Cows) — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 19:18:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (State Cows) — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 09:19:00 +0000

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!

The Soloists part #1

noreply@blogger.com (State Cows) — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 09:54:00 +0000

No westcoast album is complete without a set of extraordinary solos. We were lucky enough to be able to utilize some of the best talent (and best kept secrets) in this part of the world.

Petri Kivimäki: tenor sax
On the song "Looney Gunman" we had a very vague notion about including some sort of schizophrenic outburst somewhere in the song. Petri, being a professional saxophone player from Finland, made sense of our ramblings and delivered a totally deranged tenor sax solo which was perfect for the song!

Göran Turborn: guitar

Göran was instrumental (no pun intended) in shaping the sound of a song called "Lost in a Mindgame". This is probably the most Steely Dan-esque of all our songs having Göran fusing together styles of famous Steely Dan guitar soloists with his own unique jazzy tone into an absolutely brilliant solo!

One for the Rhodes

noreply@blogger.com (State Cows) — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 19:06:00 +0000

To get the authentic smooth westcoast electric piano sound, there was only one option: the Fender Rhodes. Fortunately, Stefan and brother Peter had bought an old Stage Piano back in the early 90's when these instruments were relatively cheap. Peter did the pickup and tine setup and Stefan stretch-tuned the piano.

We tried hooking the Rhodes to different amps but never got the sound we were looking for so we had to take a few steps back and do some research. Talking to Jay Graydon, Ian Eales and David Foster and reading an interview with Humberto Gatica in an 80's RE/P Magazine we pieced together how they achieved the classic sound.

The Rhodes used on most westcoast records in those days was a Suitcase Piano (active preamp) provided by "Leeds Rentals" called E-Rhodes by its label - "E". The signal was DI'd to the mixing console. We had to compensate for the passive preamp in our Stage model somehow. Finally, we tried a Bass Sansamp with surprisingly good results.

The second part of the story was splitting the Rhodes signal in two and running one through a Boss CE-1 Chorus pedal. The clean signal and the chorus signal was then panned to left and right. Voilá, the westcoast sound!

Taking the concept further we tried running the effect signal through an Ibanez Phasetone pedal. That sweeping stereo sound ended up on the song "Lost in a Mindgame".

Master Class

noreply@blogger.com (State Cows) — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 16:50:00 +0000

Jay Graydon is no doubt one of the most outstanding contemporary guitarists, producers and songwriters and a house-hold name for everyone the least familiar with westcoast and adult contemporary music. He has twelve Grammy award nominations, has won twice and has produced artists such as Al Jarreau, Manhattan Transfer, Kenny Rogers and Air Supply.

It's our great pleasure to announce that Jay will be playing one of his trademark solos on the upcoming album!

The Bull Horns

noreply@blogger.com (State Cows) — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 21:40:00 +0000

In order to be true to the classic Westcoast sound we wanted to find the best horn section around. And we did - "The Bull Horns". These guys did a marvelous job at nailing the often very tricky parts!

Pär Wretling: trumpet, flugelhorn and trombone
Pär is an avid adept in the school of players like Jerry Hey, Chuck Findley, Gary Grant and Bill Reichenbach. He handled trumpets, flugelhorns as well as trombones on many of the tracks - really impressive!

Markus "Macke" Asplund: trumpet and flugelhorn
Macke has absolutely amazing chops and took the lead on some really tricky songs. High five!

Olle Lindgren: alto and tenor saxophones
Olle provided all the section saxes for the album. He did a stellar job at capturing the smooth sound of classic Westcoast sax!

Horn arrangements were written by Stefan and Daniel and were recorded during January 2010.

Vocal Chords

noreply@blogger.com (State Cows) — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 20:56:00 +0000

Daniel's vocals were recorded at White Heart Cherry Studios during the summer of 2009. Stefan was producing the recordings, coaching the best performances from Dan. With the studio being located in "home fixers paradise", some very careful zick-zacking had to be made to avoid noise problems like circular saws, lawn movers, idling trucks and even a few pneumatic drills. All vocals were recorded through an American Sputnik microphone.

Low Frequency Information

noreply@blogger.com (State Cows) — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 21:15:00 +0000

Stefan "Kilju" Lindblom, a fantastic musician, played bass on the record. Daniel got in touch with him through mutual friends and told him about the project. Working in his home studio in Vaasa (Finland) Kilju laid down the bass tracks to the prerecorded drums, Fender Rhodes and scratch vocals.

Kilju's vintage Fender Jazz and Precision basses were DI'd through a Sadowsky preamp for the recording of this album.

Stefan Olofsson also played bass on a few of the tracks. Here he can be seen shredding on the very Fender P used on the songs.

Stay tuned.

Setting the Groove

noreply@blogger.com (State Cows) — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 19:59:00 +0000

Recording sessions for the STATE COWS project began in early 2009 at White Heart Cherry Studios. On all songs, we laid down the drum tracks first. We cut the tracks with two excellent drummers: Peter Fredlander and Peter "Peppe" Olofsson.

Wanting that vintage sound from the late seventies/early eighties we close-miked the drums with four microphones. These guys knew exactly what to do.

Peter Fredlander is a drum prodigy who has collaborated with Toontrack (EZ Drummer) on some of their products. He was also the drummer on Daniel Andersson's solo debut "Days in L.A.".

Peter "Peppe" Olofsson is Stefan's younger brother and is like a reincarnation of Jeff Porcaro. He can play those grooves in his sleep!

Stay tuned for more info.