Today Bang Tower guitarist Neil Citron tells us about "Hair of The Dog" from their brand new album "Casting Shadows". Here is the story:We were in the studio for the first time together at Entourage studios in North Hollywood. I asked Percy Jones if he had a revolving lick, because I had an idea for some chords to move over a bass lick. Percy started playing the beginning lick and I got Walter to jump in with his groove and I started playing these wah wah chords over it all.
After a few minutes of settling in, we stopped to figure out what would be next. Percy came up with this half step piece and so we played the two parts back to back. So far so good I thought. I came up with the next part and Walter began a samba drum beat, which sounded great and different from the other parts. We started recording the parts with the full intension of hoping for the best. We jammed the 3 parts we had and the rest just happened. So we're finally listening back to what felt great and Percy says " MY bass is distorted". I look at all the meters, and no RED! We decided to have Percy replay the bass in the control room. We got his sound up again and we started recording again and again we stopped only to hear Percy's bass sound distorting. We tried new batteries in his bass (active pick ups) with the same results. At a loss, I set up an appointment for Percy to go to the custom shop at Ibanez to get it looked at. Early the next morning, off went Walter and Percy to Ibanez to sort it all out, while I went into the studio to get some editing done.
What they found wrong with the bass was Dog Hair. Percy has a dog that sheds and some hair got under his bridge and was causing distortion. After we all laughed about it for some time, I said, we have to call the song Hair of the Dog! and there you go. In my humble opinion, it's one of the best songs on the CD. It has the most changes of mood within a song and has many interesting parts lying quietly in the mix. I hope listeners enjoy it as much as I do.
Now that you know the story behind the song learn more about the album - right here!
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