(October 2017 "FROM THE ARCHIVE") - "The Clincher" BBM Demo

In the summer of 2006 I borrowed a mini-van from my then girlfriend’s mom (future wife and mother-in-law!) and drove up to Jersey City, NJ with my brother Dan and our friend and drummer Kyle to record demos at Big Blue Meenie Studios for what would become The Tea Club’s first album General Winter’s Secret Museum.

I was 22 and, far from being a man of the world, promptly got us lost. Remember, these were the days before smartphones (we didn’t have a gps either) so we were relying on printed out directions from Yahoo Maps to get us there. One might say Yahoo Maps was to blame but a fair amount of responsibility could also be ascribed to “User Error”.

Needless to say, we ended up in New York City (my first time there), got lost going back into Jersey, almost ended up in the city again, and were forced to call the studio to tell them we were gonna be late.

After several calls back and forth we finally found it (with much help from the studio manager Neen), a solid 3 hours behind schedule.

Upon walking in we were notified by the producer Tim Gilles that we were already legendary as the band that almost didn’t make it. Big Blue Meenie Studios had clients all over the world. We lived in New Jersey and the studio was in New Jersey but WE were the band that almost didn’t make it. We were reminded of this fact many times throughout the proceedings.

The plan for demos was to set up our gear in the live room, record the basic instrumental tracks live (“off the floor”,  as they put it), and go back later to record vocals. We did this for nearly all 22 demos with one exception: “The Clincher”.

“The Clincher”, at that time, was one of the newest songs in the band’s repertoire. We had recently become a trio (me on bass and vocals, Dan on guitar and vocals, and Kyle on drums)  and the material we were writing at that point had a distinctly “garage band” feel to it. No song expressed this more than “The Clincher”. We needed to do everything live for this one, man.

We were able to set up a vocal mic in the live room and proceeded to play a single version. It was the last song we recorded that night and immediately had a specialness to it. Up until that point the engineers and producers were playing it pretty cool and not letting us know exactly what they were thinking about this weird band of sheltered losers who couldn’t even find the studio. But I remember looking through the glass at one point and seeing everyone in the control room rocking out. It was a good moment and couldn’t have come at a better time.

This recording of “The Clincher” is one of my favorite snap shots of the early days of the band. We were all very young and very excited and had no idea what we were doing. But when the three of us got together in a room and picked up some instruments, magic could happen. I think we captured one of those moments with this recording.  

Enjoy! -Pat

This recording of “The Clincher” was performed by:

Patrick McGowan - Lead Vocals, Guitar, Bass

Dan McGowan - Guitar, Vocal Harmonies

Kyle Minnick - Drums

Recorded at Big Blue Meenie Studios, July 22nd, 2006