This is Mike and I play in a band called Gladshot. We just finished a record that we recorded with producer John Agnello. When John went in the studio with us he had recently finished working on Sonic Youth’s album Rather Ripped and was gearing up to start production on The Hold Steady’s Stay Positive. Needless to say, we were pretty psyched that he wanted to work with a baby band like ours- with only handful if gigs in NYC under our belts and a few songs on television shows (mostly on cable… and for some weird reason, shown mostly during scenes where something sexually twisted is going on, but that’s another story.)

We recorded the CD at Headgear studios in Williamsburg, Brooklyn which is in a building with a big sign that says “Kickboxing School” on the outside. Headgear is a great place to record. They have a studio dog named Mazzy who is the mellowest dog in the word. Mazzy sleeps on the couch while everyone is blasting music really loud. The engineer Scott Norton who runs the studio (and owns Mazzy) says that sometimes if Mazzy gets up off the coach and walks out of the room during overdubs the musicians get all paranoid and think Mazzy doesn’t like it. (“Duuuude, you’re reading waaay too much into it!!)

Next door to Headgear is TV On The Radio’s studio and Dave Sitek was hanging around talking to John a lot. I was too shy to talk to him but he seemed like really nice dude. At one point John got sick and Dave lent him his, um, “steam machine” to inhale sinus medicine – it totally worked!! We were all using the machine by the end of the session. We also got to use one of TVOR’s effect boxes for our song “Nobody’s Looking” and the sound we got was really cool.

At one point when I was alone doing overdubs, I was a little nervous because Agnello was such a heavy cat and I was worried he would hate my playing. Then I looked up in the control window and there’s John with his massive beard and a big shit-eating grin on his face – he looked fucking crazy!! I totally cracked up and had a pretty easy time after that. It was an awesome experience with those guys and the record came out great! So, check it out – it’s called Burn Up And Shine.

Mike Blaxill
Gladshot
April 2009

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Photo by Kevin Mason