Gift Horse Enters The Studio

That's right, Gift Horse has gone into the studio to make our debut full-length album with Hank Sullivant (Kuroma) and Nate Nelson (Nate Nelson & Cortright) on production duties. We're making the record at Nate's space on the fifth floor of the Michael Brothers building in downtown Athens (it's the one with Doc Chey's and The Mellow Mushroom on the first floor). So far we've got most of the drums tracked and reworked a few songs, and everything sounds very, very promising up to this point. In fact, the drums sound outstanding.

We've only been working for three sessions now, but we have been keeping some pretty harsh hours due to the fact that we are not the building's sole occupants. A typical night starts at 7 p.m. and ends in the wee hours when we turn to absolute mush.

One non-musical highlight that I feel like I must

mention occurred on night two, when the fire alarm mysteriously went off on the empty fourth floor below us. Luckily there was no fire, but the alarm made the building's elevator do some weird stuff. Just before the elevator froze some of the guys "mistakenly" rode it down to the 1st floor. When the door opened they found themselves in the changing room of Toppers, the local gentlemen's club. A stripper and a bouncer ever-so-politely directed them to "get the hell out of here" and they shuffled back onto the Wonka-vator which took them back to the lobby. There it froze with the door open and made a mysterious buzzing sound for hours. Luckily the late-night crew at the Mushroom let us sneak down the fire escape. Thanks fellas.

Of course we will keep you posted with all things Gift Horse, but I just want to say thank you very, very much to the following people: Hank, Nate, J.J. Bower, Matt DeCamp, Jason Scarboro and Patrick Ferguson. From what we have heard so far and based upon the way we all feel we believe that we are not creating just yet another typical album, but something very special indeed. We recognize that we would not be on our way to completion without the help of these people. Stay tuned, we'll have more pics and info on a title and release date later.

So, if you're out at 2 a.m. in downtown Athens and you hear some mysterious sounds coming from the corner of Jackson and Clayton, chances are it's a girl drunkenly smashing a beer mug into another girl's face at Flanagan's. But it may be us across the street.

Be sure to check out all of Matt's photos.