Time On Their Side

Their first gig, back 35 years ago, was opening for Black Flag at a school graduation party, and for 20 years Redd Kross, based around brothers singer and guitarist Jeff and bass player Steve McDonald, made the kind of pop punk that would inspire everyone from the Seattle grunge kids to New York art rockers Sonic Youth. A much-needed hiatus after the release and touring of their last album, Show World, looked like it might become something more permanent with the untimely passing, in 1999, of guitarist Eddie Kurdziel from an overdose. Reconvening in 2006 with Robert Hecker from It's OK on guitar and The Muffs' drummer Roy McDonald, Redd Kross started recording a new album in September the following year, but it's only now that the Researching The Blues album, recorded at American Recorders in LA with ex-Ramones drummer Tommy Erdelyi producing, has finally been released.

“In our hiatus time,” Steve McDonald explains, “both of us have gotten interested in learning recording and both have spent a lot of time making our own recordings and recording other people – Jeff's produced other bands, I've produced other bands and artists.”

“But with this record, it's very strange,” Jeff chips in, “because we started recording it on half-inch eight-track, and then it kind of mutated into going in the studio with the Neve board, then going into our own basements with our Pro Tools – we just did every imaginable technique.”

“Yeah, we just worked with what we had,” Steve continues. “We went into a proper studio and did, like, basic tracks for a while, but then the thing that I think was the biggest game-changer for us was that we'd had these tracks for quite a while now and they'd been in various stages of being finished but I felt so strongly about making sure that the record lived up to the songs, 'cause my brother had written this incredible collection of songs, and we had them around in various forms of rough mixes and they were cool and they were exciting but I was still, like, this is such a beautiful picture, let's not put a shitty frame around it.

“And so I feel like in some ways I had to learn how to mix well enough to get to the stage where I thought that the sound and the presentation lived up to the content.”

That, along with the fact that the brothers found themselves busy with other projects, explains the length of time it took to get the new album together. That and, as Jeff admits, “it is bad for someone like me, I know, the lack of deadlines. You'll sing a backing vocal and, like, four weeks later go back and do something else.”

“It's hard to stay focused and be disciplined,” Steve adds. “I mean, basically, it's funny how this record got finished. Like I said, it started a while ago and then we've had other things, but I came to Australia four months ago with a hardcore band I also play in called OFF!, with Keith Morris, the original singer of Black Flag, and Jeff actually took me and Keith to the airport, and Jeff had been working on the record a little bit prior to that and he just gave me a disc and he said, 'Look, this is where I think the record is right now. I think it's really close,' and I had two things on my iPod, a biography on tape about Albert Einstein, like, twenty hours of Einstein's life, and what was to become the new Redd Kross record, Researching The Blues.

“So I spent all my listening on that tour learning about Albert Einstein,” he chuckles, “his theories…” “Applying them to our record,” Jeff interjects. “Kind of,” Steve continues, “and getting super inspired. So in a weird sort of way, the finishing of that record started in this country. When I got home in December, I got really disciplined and said, 'I'm not doing anything else – I'm not going out at night, I'm not hanging out with my friends – I'm going to stay in the basement, I'm going to finish this record. I was going to do all those backing vocal parts I hadn't done yet and I was going to mix this record. And that's what I did.”

For all the changes in the way they approached the recording of Researching The Blues, which of course is decidedly not a blues record, it still sounds like four guys all in the same room enjoying making a racket. “Essentially we were,” Jeff confirms. “The only time we weren't was, like, if there was a song to be sung, I had the luxury of just sitting by myself and recording a vocal – and a few guitar solos – but for the most part we had a really solid basic track as a band.” “We did, like, sixty per cent of the record in one week,” Steve adds. “It wasn't that different from our other records,” Jeff continues, “in that sense, where we were all together as a band…” “But then it was just sort of the overdubbing portion,” Steve cuts in, “which is – the record is very light on overdubs – but just that portion of it, normally a band goes into a studio, then to a cheaper studio for an extra week and you nail down your overdubs and some of the mixes and you're done. That was all left up to us, and it's hard when you're by yourself. I really give up respect to the artists that do the entire thing themselves because it's hard to not have a cheerleader in the room going, 'Wow, that was an awesome take!' Or whatever it is that helps to motivate people.”

“And another thing about the new technology,” Jeff adds, “being able to record at home. It's not about cutting and pasting and doing all this trickery, 'cause for me I approach it just the same way as normal studios, just that it's in a box. The biggest, I think, struggle is just making decisions, you know, especially when you're working by yourself – 'Is this good? I dunno' and you go off in this direction for a day, then, 'No that's not good' – that's a nightmare. Having too many choices.”