Steel Drum Buffet

Steel Drum Buffet was conceived during the summer of the year 2000. The Toucans' backline version 2.0 had been playing for three seasons, and we had lots of great new unrecorded songs. So we booked some time at our buddy Pat Grey's studio (Private Radio, www.prirad.com) in quirky Fremont.

The set-up was in a large wooden room. We all played live, facing each other, surrounded by baffles and a forest of expensive microphones. (Microphone Geeks can see exactly which mics we used.)

Set-up and sound check was done in the evening, and the entire album (18 tracks!) was recorded in one 9-hour session the following day. The recording session's progress was described by Stephen Coy, assisting Pat Gray in the booth, as "frighteningly smooth". That's what you get after 75 gigs in a row...

The entire live mix was recorded onto the Toucans' trusty Tascam DA-38 (8 track digitial hi-8 tape deck) and dumped onto Toucan Dave's computer for further work in ProTools.