Here it is, folks… the world premiere of “No Sax In Country Music” performed by The Tizzies.

One of the practical tasks that we were assigned here at the Recording Workshop was to record a song as a group. It could be a cover song, or we could write our own, or whatever. Our group consists of 4 very diverse members. We have a singer / songwriter, a rapper, a saxophone player, and me (I’m not always 100% sure what I am).

We got together to jam and try to figure out what kind of song we could record and who could play what instruments. Out of that jam session came the idea for a country song featuring a saxophone. I went back to the house and immediately jotted down the words for a country song featuring a saxophone called, “No Sax In Country Music”. Oh, the irony!

We had a lot of fun recording this song. We started out using a metronome, but we just couldn’t stick to it (the drummer on the song had never even played drums before -but he did a great job). The whole song probably jumps at least 20 BPM from start to finish, but hey, who’s counting?!

Our group has been further split into sub-groups for mixing. My subgroup was assigned to the analog console room to mix yesterday and we decided to try to mix this song on the analog console. We did not use a single ProTools Plug-In (we did do a couple of volume automations in ProTools, but nothing major). We wanted to stick to a completely analog experience. It was actually a lot harder than we thought and it took us the whole session to get it done. Now listening back through the mix, I hear a few things that I wish could be changed, but they cannot be changed because after our session we had to zero out the board and none of our settings were saved or documented. Of course, we knew that was the deal going into it, but we wanted the experience anyway.

So this morning I mastered the song and turned it into an mp3 for you to enjoy. So enjoy.

Studio Credits:

• Clif Cooper -saxophone
• Jeff Polen -vocals, acoustic guitar, electric guitars
• Robi Rütenberg -backing vocals, keyboards, tamborine
• Bill Sanchez -bass guitar
• Akeem “Skye” Towns -rap, drums

Mixed By: Jeff Polen & Robi Rütenberg

Mastered By: Jeff Polen