Dave got in and started tracking at noon. Somebody was blocking my car in my driveway and I couldn’t get out til 2pm. Dave had gotten the choruses triple tracked, messed around with a little slide guitar, and was about to get to work on the solo. He spent some time working on getting the right tone for it: His PRS going into his Marshall for the main sound, and the repeats from the delay pedal running out to the Bogner for full effect. He decided to double track the solo playing the SG and using his Crybaby wah, and running through a Roger Mayer fuzz/ocataver pedal. When you hear the record, you will just hear a heroic solo, but it really takes hours of tone searching and trying different amps and recording approaches to find the one you fall in love with. When the tone is just right, it gets newly inspiring, and new parts and discoveries can appear in the moment and really change the recording. Right now the solo is sounding absolutely amazing. Dave is having a great time with all this sonic experimentation. The lights are low, and the vibe is great.

All day, parked in the lot was a gigantic blue “Oprah’s Best Wishes” Bus. All over the studio, extra people and a camera crew were buzzing around. Apparently, she hooks people up with “Make-A-Wish Foundation” type experiences, and a winner was in one of the rooms tracking a song with Mariah Carey. Randy Jackson was somehow involved, and during our daily Dinner/Metallica Movie break, he stopped by and talked to us. He was way cool, nice guy. The best thing about the Oprah crew was they sure knew how to roll: in one of the rooms, they had catering from Roscoe’s Chicken & Waffles.

Watched the Grammys last night. Normally, I don’t even bother, no one I ever really like ever gets nominated, and the show is usually such a bore. I TiVo’ed it just in case, so I could zip through and check out the highlights. Riss and I were kind of blown away by how good it was. Short on ten minute long montages, and tedious speeches, and long on performances. I have to say I was fully blown away by Alicia Keys and Jamie Foxx. That shit was sick. Very entertaining show. Also, Usher killed it. His music isn't really my cup, but he is really such an amazing performer. The opening with Gwen (She Who Can Do No Wrong), Maroon5, Los Lonely Boys (Um, who they hell are they?), and Black Eyed Peas all doing the live mash-up, was pretty impressive. Led Zeppelin finally got a lifetime achievement award, nice. The Jennifer Lopez/Marc Anthony duet - pure comedy gold! At the end of the show, John Shanks won Producer of the Year. John has a studio down the hall, and I have been seeing him everyday, he has been letting us use an effect or a guitar here and there. Well done, man!

Meanwhile, today in the studio: By 6pm Dave was pretty burnt from playing different parts of the same song. Chris and Stephen broke early to go have some Valentine’s time with their ladies. I got to work on the choruses of “She Won’t Last”. It took a while to get the right sound, I need to fit into a track that already has three tracks of Dave rhythm already. We eventually ended up using Marc’s Les Paul through his Marshall. Someday I think I’ll need to pick me up one of those babies. We broke a little early to have just a little extra Valentine’s time at home…