Nine Bands Share Their First Recording

Page 9 of 9

For musicians of all ages, one of the most exciting things in the world can be digging your teeth into a brand-new project. With fresh faces and skill sets, the experience can make music feel brand new again for many. So we appreciate it when bands are willing to step back and share earlier works that haven’t seen the light of day.

We asked eight acts, including Rubblebucket, FAWN and ARMS, to share their first recordings as a band and talk about this process, and they were generous enough to revisit their beginnings. Feel free to share your own first recordings in the comment section below.

9. Hello Echo – “All the Time”
“‘All the Time’ is the first song Hello Echo wrote as a band. It’s so simple: four very basic chords, a laid back groove and some feeling. This demo has the true feeling of the song to it—very real and not overly produced—three guys playing in a room. This was our go-to song for the first year or two, the song that people would always respond to. It got lost in the mix as we continued writing new songs, but we remembered that it was special, and every time we’ve gone into the studio to make an LP or started figuring out what songs to feature on a tour we try to revive it, but it never works. It’s so simple musically, but the vibe of it is delicate for some mystical reason—maybe we wore it out, I dont know. So until further notice, this demo is the definitive version. That’s sometimes the bitch about a good demo, the mojo or feeling of a song can get used up on it, or the unique or lower-fi sounds you got from using whatever guitar or recorder you found at the moment can make more sense for the song, and it doesn’t work when you go to make the produced ‘real’ version.”