So as we are finishing up the EP, it is starting to become clearer and clearer just what Drive Faster sounds like. This might sound like a weird comment coming from someone who has been writing these songs, but what I mean is that we have started sitting back and really listening to the collection. The sound coming out at us now wasn’t so apparent when we were locked up in the rehearsal space getting it all together, and the collection has an undercurrent running through each one that is identifiably ours. This is definitely good news to us and I am very happy with the end result so far. The last 3 songs that were recorded might just be my favourites. That is probably a cliché or a predictable preference but I really do think the last ones to come out are the best and the most “Drive Fasterist”.

For all of you who came out to see us play the Velvet Underground (and thank you,) we played every song that we have recorded. Here is the set list from the show in order:

Before I Dry
Thinking of You
Ripping out the Pages (one of my newer faves)
My Old Self
Suitcase
Frame of Mind (one of my newer faves)
All in Good Time

The CD order hasn’t been decided yet since it will really depend on how each song has turned out in the mixing process and what songs flow sonically into the next. We have started the process of coming up with the title, but it is too early for me to list any ideas here. Like has been the process with our past records, (and even the process we went through when we changed the band name) the huge task of brainstorming has to take place. More often than not, this process results in mostly bad ideas, but out of those a few that will stick, and in the end perhaps the winner and best idea. Fingers crossed!

Looking forward to sharing it with you all soon, Heart.

;-) Angela and DF

A lot of time has passed since Drive Faster was born, approximately half a year ago we ventured out into the world of the unknown, with a landscape that we could only partially see in front of us, and we are just becoming to know how we are going to fit into that world. Armed with the songs we have written, and a new team member in tow, here is how our journey has begun…

Right after Jon came into the fold we filmed our “Master Tracks” episode for AUX TV. Producers Moe Berg and Laurence Currie were really great to work with. Moe came into the space after we sent him some demo songs and we worked on “Analog”, which is the song that we recorded at Metalworks Studio for the show. The filming was really fun, it was a really professional experience with a large crew and was catered which is always nice. We recorded in the same studio that Prince had recorded one of his last albums and also David Bowie. It was a great sounding room. It was a bit daunting at first with all of the cameras in our faces but we quickly got used to all of the attention! The producers liked our episode a lot and decided to hold it back from airing, until AUX TV airs as its own channel in the fall. After it airs “Analog” will be available as a free download on the AUX TV site.


After Drive Faster’s debut show at Canadian Music Week in Toronto, we were faced with the challenge of deciding exactly what our new “sound” was going to be. After much consideration and reflection, we decided to start songwriting from the ground up. No demos from the previous Supernal sessions were going to sprout up here, and we got to the task of creativity and enlightenment. After two months of writing and recording ideas, we had a group of 14 songs that we then reviewed and deliberated. (See video blog Episode 2). What we were seeking was not just songs to pick that we all “agreed on,” but songs that had a common thread, common vibe and we picked a selection that seems to reflect the new sound for the band that we all seem to envision.

With a list of 5 songs that were chosen to record, we then set to work on the logistics of the recording, from the right hardware to use, software to record on, and warmth and sound of the room where we were going to capture everything. From here on we have been busy getting intricate parts together, rehearsing and writing small changes where maybe we felt the song could be served better, and always listening back to make sure we love what we are doing. This is indeed a process and we knew it wouldn’t be easy or quick. We understand what we had undertaken, that we could not be out playing shows until this project was complete, but the end will justify the means. It is hard for anyone who loves playing live as much as we do to take time out to work on recording, but we are so very happy with the results so far. We are very excited to share it with you soon! We are getting all of the tracks done, and are really enjoying the process of producing it ourselves. As I write this I am sitting watching Jon playing bass for “Suitcase”, can’t wait until we get back out to play these songs and share them with the world.

Heart, Angela

“New Name? What the Eff is happening?”

So a lot has happened in the past year. 2008 saw the election of a president of a new era, and once again we were reminded that you can’t trust big corporations.…

In the past year, Supernal did a lot of growing too… we were busy working on a new record, we wrote a lot of songs, many which we think are good ;) and we have had potential success with some of them already (more on that later) as well as some radio play in select Canadian cities.
Supernal saw the return of Mike on drums (of How Do You Do fame, and the Rhymes with Eternal CD/DVD for those who have been with us since the Calgary days).

The band had great fun in Montreal, Ottawa and the “Golden Horseshoe” around Toronto during several trips east and west during the spring and summer. The band was featured in BOBBI Magazine and was nominated for a Toronto Independent Music Award for “Best Alternative Rock.”

With all the excitement of the past year, the band began to feel the need for a new name, a bit of a transformation to coincide with the inertia moving forward and a slight change in musical direction.

Now: Ready, Set, Go! DRIVE FASTER has a new and fresh focus, and a faster pace and vibe. As I remember saying to the guys “we’re in the big smoke baby, so let’s kick it up a few gears”, we are excited to work on new songs with a clarity of sound and vibe that we haven’t quite reached until now.

We have moved into a new rehearsal space (stay tuned for the next blog entry) and there are exciting things happening for the band, including a Canadian Music Week showcase and appearance on a TV show (more on that later)!

We are happy and excited to share our new music with you… we hope that you will come along for the ride ;-)

XO Angela

DRIVE FASTER

www.drivefastermusic.com

Drive Faster on Facebook

So as many people have now noticed, there is a new face filling the Supernal drummer’s seat…. who is it you may ask? Well it seemed like a good idea to post this interview…written by Samantha Wright, so you can all get to know Mike. Bienvenue Mike!

What is the first thing that attracts you to a song, and what is the first ingredient in a good song?
I like a song if it makes me want to move. There isn’t one specific instrument but what the band sounds like when the instruments all come in together.

What are your favourite 3 songs?
(He pauses for a long time). I couldn’t possibly answer that question.

What is the saddest song you have ever heard?
Plush by the Stone Temple Pilots.

Who is your favourite drummer?
Matt Cameron. (He was the drummer in Soundgarden and Pearl Jam). Mike is quick to add “Slash Dave Grohl. I am totally into him right now.”

What is your favourite Supernal song?
Right now it is LA DI DA. (Editor’s note: unless you were at the past two Supernal shows, you don’t know this song…. yet)

What is your favourite colour?
Black (that’s not a colour Mike. But good Roxstar answer.)

What would be your dream car?
’87 Chevy Caprice Classic Wagon with a Hydrogen engine, A/C and really fucking loud sound system… that would be my dream car, definitely.

Describe yourself in ten words or less….
Passionate. Bored. Hyper. Amused. Extremely laid back. Confused. I’m good.

I thought I would write a note about what Supernal has been up to lately.

The recording process so far has been really fun. The studio has a great feel about it. There are drapes, curtains and mood lighting, and it usually smells like incense. In fact it doesn’t seem like most studios at all, which I think is awesome. We have spent a fair share of time in about 7 studios to date, and this is the first one that is truly comfortable. There is no glass. Usually studios have a glass that separates the band, or musicians from the control board and engineer. It’s sometimes a completely different room. You usually have to talk through a sort of intercom with “Talk” and “Playback” buttons. Here, there is no disconnected feeling between where the “magic” is happening and where the “magic” is being recorded. I really like that. We started our sessions with some pre-production where we figured out some song arrangements with the band and our producer. We were able to all talk to each other comfortably and quickly since we were literally standing in the same big room.

Here is a brief synopsis of how songs get recorded:

After the songs have been figured out and everyone knows who is playing what and how, we record a “take”. The band plays together and records separate “scratch” tracks of what every member is playing, which can be referenced back to as the recording process continues. The first stage of the real recording starts with drums. The drummer plays along with the “scratch” tracks (not including the drum tracks) and with a metronome to keep time, although sometimes a “click” is not used. There are often up to 20 tracks for a drum take, as every drum has a separate microphone, and microphones are also often set up around the room to catch the sound of the room as the drummer is playing.

The bass is recorded next, in which the bass player plays along with the new drum tracks. Often the vocal “scratch” take is also played, as a reference to where we are in the song. Guitars are recorded next, and the tracks build up from there, since often you will record a few different tracks of guitar, with different “clean” and “distorted” sounds, different parts, and inserting guitar solos as necessary. Keeping these tracks separate helps in the mixing process, and makes recording faster as you often will have different amps and guitars being used for different parts and songs.

Once all the different instruments are recorded, vocals are usually last. The lead vocals and sometimes backing vocals are often recorded in a smaller booth or room, but it is fun to play around with different sounds and natural reverb that occurs depending on where you set up the microphone. Different microphones and “pre-amps” also suit different voices (as is the same with amps and guitars) so you definitely want to test things out before you hit “record”. Once all of the performances are recorded, the mixing stage is next, done by the engineer and/or producer. Here all of the levels and equalization of all of the tracks are set until it sounds like a good song! Lastly you often choose to get the songs “Mastered”, which will unify the sounds of the different songs and make the music sound better for broadcast and duplication. This is the stage I know least about but I know it has to do with equalizing the “high and low frequencies” of the sound, and also sequencing every second on a record. That’s the works!

So that is basically what we have been up to lately. We are having fun and creating stuff that I hope you will hear in the near future!

So I have been told that it has been quite a while since my last blog entry…. And what can I say so much has happened to me that I don’t know where to start. 

Well… let’s start from about the time when I went to Australia. That was basically for the month of March and since then time has been in fast forward for Supernal. To speak of my trip to Australia; well it was an awesome trip and I saw and did so much that I feel that my “memory card” was full from day 9. My first journey was alone and was a 30 hour flight (including stop-overs) to Australia. I was a bit anxious about the flight, the length of it and the fact that I was flying alone, that I let my doctor talk me into taking a drug much like Valium; a relaxing anti-anxiety drug that had the potential for addictive dependency. I was actually looking forward to the relaxed, mellow high that was promised, since I am no friend of turbulence and flying over large bodies of water. Instead, I ended up feeling woozy and I actually threw up in Honolulu, which was a disappointment and only the beginning to my world of vomiting! I met my family in Sydney and flew to Cairns, which is a far-north, resort-type of region. That basically means that meals are about $30 on average but it also means that you are here in the middle of nowhere for a reason. I spent my first full day on a Sky Rail that went 6.5 km into a tropical rain forest, and then the next day I spent at the Great Barrier Reef. One of my best experiences “Down Under” was here, when I had the opportunity to snorkel in the Reef. I was so seasick from the ride 65 km offshore, that by the time we started seeing the coral and the tropical fish, I was so seasick that I ended up “Feeding the Fish”, or in other words, vomiting into the Pacific Ocean! It was actually so cool, a whole bunch of fish started swarming around me once I started throwing up, and apparently I was more than happy to feed the frenzy of tropical sea life that was there to greet us. Awesome experience, although I basically passed out in the sun after that and got a very painful sunburn.

To summarize my Australia trip I had an amazing time and got to explore Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney. I visited Steve Irwin’s “Australia Zoo” and got to witness a real crocodile feeding! I also got to hand-feed Kangaroos several times (they are actually very friendly and charming… well, atleast when in captivity) and I also got to pet and hold a Koala. I swear I have the pictures the prove it. The Koalas were my favorite and I was surprised at how cute and cuddly they actually were. An interesting fact about Koalas is that they sleep about 20 hours a day; not because of the heat but because the Eucalyptus leaves they eat are not very nutritious (and are actually toxic to all other animals) and they don’t have a lot of energy to spare during the day. I was very disappointed to see so many Koalas sleeping at all times but it makes sense why they seem so damn lazy! I saw a lot of the Australian landscape, including mountain ranges and many ocean views. My favourite ocean spot was Surfer’s Paradise, which is surprisingly a whole city that includes a vast region of high and dangerous ocean waves. Overall the best city to visit is Sydney, which has so much culture, history and an amazing skyline! Australia in general is very much like Canada; the culture, diversity and geography is very similar….minus the obsession with Cricket, the driving on the left hand side of the road (THAT was fun) and activities such as “Tea Time” and eating Vegemite! All the same, I felt like I didn’t miss much when I came back to the Northern Hemisphere. 

Right when I returned the band was very busy with the video shoot for “Light it Up”. It was a flurry of activity for 2 full days, and we had a blast. We basically had as much fun as you could have considering we had a 7AM call time, and were performing and shooting all day to the same damn song over and over! I can’t really divulge the details of the shoot until the actual video is released, but let’s say it was full of stunts, music, and bits of violence thrown in! Currently the music video is being edited, and I patiently await the edit that you will all get to see. What fun. 

The rest of the last month I am technically forbidden from talking about; let’s just say that I spent a week at the posh Fairmont Royal York on Front Street in downtown Toronto. I slept a total of 10 hours over three and a half days, and had the most stress and chaotic fun ever as I vocally trained with some of the most talented singers you can find across Canada. No, it was not for Canada’s number one-rated show of all time. And no, I wasn’t on camera at least 20 different times… 

As if all of this were not enough excitement for one to handle, we will be in the midst of moving the rehearsal space June 1st when Brent moves into a new house. This one is lacking a roof suitable for throwing trees off of it, and there will no longer be a basketball court for a driveway. It also is not across the street from a McDonalds, nor attached to a religious temple, so we will have to adjust. Conveniently it is located much closer to me, almost a drunken-stumbling distance away if you will, so I am looking forward to it. 

Supernal has been busy writing some new songs with our new drummer Jonny Swank. Jon Jon is nice. He smiles a lot and smells good but can beat the crap out of any drum you put in front of him. For this reason he makes me a little scared. But he also makes me dance and jump up and down…. I guess you just have to meet him to get it. He has a lot of flying experience that impresses me, and we are so happy to have found him; so the future is looking bright and sunny, just to match the weather out here in Toronto.

It has been a great few months since I last updated the blog which may just lead people to believe that Supernal has either a) moved onto warmer climates and took off to Mexico ;) or b) frozen altogether, just like our friends in British Columbia, who until recently never really understood why you would ever want to buy a big SHOVEL… (you mean, it’s not for potting really, really big plants?) The answer is neither, and in fact is just the result of laziness, or as I would like to claim, a really busy season…

Really, who wasn’t busy last month treading through the crowded smelly malls looking for that special something for those people who were written down on that lined sheet of paper that you make every year but then lost two or three times (maybe that is just me.) But anyways, yes, Supernal has been busy switching into warmer clothes, and enjoying the city life that Toronto has to offer… not to mention that it finally snowed for real only yesterday for the first time! Yesssssssssss.

What was really cool and unique to Toronto was that I somehow won a draw to skate at the Air Canada Centre and meet Wendel Clarke. You may be asking “who the hell is Wendel Clarke?” and I will be honest, I said the same thing when I won, but I will assure you that he is indeed a true national celebrity… especially if you followed hockey in the 1990s and are a Maple Leafs fan. Since I don’t love hockey and frankly would never bet on the Leafs to win a Horseshoe Toss (Flames all the way baby!) I was more excited about the skate on real NHL ice at the Arena. It was the smoothest ice I had even skated on, and they even had to stop the skating every hour so they could “ZAMBONI” the ice and maintain the ice quality… I got to hang out and step on the FACE OFF circle as well as the goal areas… my conclusion is that it really would be hard to play in the NHL… I had a hard time going around the rink without falling; imagine having to race to a puck, start and stop AND have to get punched out and shoved in the process of trying to score! Anyways, I sound pretty lame going on about hockey so I will say that Wendel Clarke (the former Leaf’s captain) was very nice and I am going to stick to music!!!!

Another major event this winter so far was Supernal’s TREE TOSS 2007. We had purchased a REAL Christmas tree this year and had to get rid of it after, so what better way to do that than to try to blow it up? Or, at the very least, set it on fire in some way… First, I will tell you what was supposed to happen, and then… well, what ACTUALLY happened. The idea was that we were going to throw the tree off of Brent’s roof onto the driveway below ( over the live electrical wires going to the house and the neighbours’) and have three firecrackers go off as the tree flew through the air onto the concrete below. The first flaw in this plan is obvious…okay there are actually a few flaws, but what turned out to be the most dangerous was the fact that there were THREE firecrackers and you could only light ONE at a time. Tony and Brent were both in charge of the lighting… but as Tony lit one, Brent couldn’t’ light the other one before- and you guessed it- the first one went off…. Into Brent’s hands!!! As you will see in the video (and YES, there is conveniently a video of the whole thing) the firecracker exploded into Brent’s hand as he literally caught a fireball and Brent and Tony remember only that there was an explosion and they were sent sprawling backwards on the roof. The not-so-funny part was that Brent had second-degree burns on both of his hands and had to be rushed to the emergency room. I guess when they say “DO NOT ATTEMPT THIS AT HOME” they really do have a reason for saying that… so take this as a lesson kids! I am happy to say that although Brent went through a lot and has serious burns on his hands right now, he is going to heal perfectly without scars and be able to kick rock ass once again. Way to take one for the team!

On the musical front, we have been busy writing, and more importantly, recording songs that will be released online until we have enough to formally release them on CD. We have been busy playing shows in Toronto too, and look forward to the days when we will be able to load up the tour van in T-shirts once again…. Until then, enjoy the new songs (“Glass” and Light it Up” are the first to be unleashed) and I hope to write of new exciting tales for 2007!


;) Angela


PS

The moral for this story: do not attempt to light firecrackers unless you know how long they burn until they GO OFF…. And…… the Leafs suck. Ha ha ;)

Can so many eyes not really see
what's right in front of her, him, you and me
Wanting some flames, it's always the same
no pain no gain, so use artillery

4-3-2-1

Light it up and let it die
Let the heroes close their eyes
When it's time to say goodbye
Light it up and let it die

Who would ever fuel this fire
when there really is no real desire
The radio is up in smoke
so tell me who you think is the real liar

4-3-2-1

Light it up and let it die
Let those heroes close their eyes
When it's time to say goodbye
Light it up and let it die 

The end doesn't have a start 
How can a fire burn without a spark, with a mark
Who will ever end this game
When the pieces play with only blame, now take aim

Now take aim

THE ONE

You were the One fighting in my corner
You made me feel like I was the One
What did you expect me to do when my time set with the sun

Let me fall, it's out of your hands now
I had it all but lost somewhere somehow
Fast or slow, the landing will be the same
So let me go, now I'm the One with the pain.... the One

Feels like I've been falling forever
But somehow I was only two feet up
Now I feel two feet tall
Now that the One has finally had enough

It's out of your hands now
I had it all but lost somewhere somehow
Fast or slow, the landing will be the same
So let me go, now I'm the One with the pain

THE ONE
THE ONE

It's out of your hands now
I had it all but lost somewhere somehow
Fast or slow, the landing will be the same
So let me go, now I'm the One with the pain

THE ONE
THE ONE
THE ONE
THE ONE....... you must have been THE ONE