Realizing that Ryan and I have been flying under the radar as of late, we thought it was high time we let you know how our recording is going, what the songs are sounding like, and what we think of it. So without further ado:

– We began recording in late summer, and we worked on and off up through Christmas. We’re roughly 70% of the way finished. (Slow and steady wins the race, right Mr. Tortoise?)

– We have completed bass and drums and main guitars for 11 of the 12 songs we’re planning to include.

– We’ve sung what are called “scratch” vocals for all of them, in order to find out which harmonies work, where different melodies are needed, etc.

– We’re currently back home in Tucson rehearsing our acoustic butts off, making sure that we know exactly what we want to sing when we get back to LA to begin recording again.

– The songs to be included are as follows (though not in playing order):

o THE WORLD AWAITS YOU – an upbeat waltz, inspired musically by Coldplay and lyrically by the struggle to teach the ones you love, like kids or younger brothers and sisters, where to begin making sense of the world. A very difficult song to write.

“Some get a silver spoon/ some get a name/ some get hated-on/ thrown away”

o STOPLESS- what is, to us, a classic Ryanhood song. We’ve been performing it for the last two years, and it was first available on the recording, On The Radio. All I can say, is that Ryan and Ross (Hogarth, the producer) found the PERFECT way to take this song to the next level. It’s a long, steady build, with drums and bass exactly where you’d want them.

“How pointless is my point of view/ until I reach the point of you?”

o AROUND THE SUN- an up-tempo, minor-key plea for balance between a life-lived in the moment, content, and the longing to see and feel more. We co-wrote it with Boston-turned-Los Angeles singer/songwriter Owen Plant. You can see an acoustic, video version right on the front of our myspace page. Ryan has worked out some extra harmonies, and we’ve thickened up the choruses by having us both sing all the way through. Preeeettty niiiice.

“Don’t you want to stop/ taking personal offense/ and stop talk, talk, talking about love in the future tense?”

o NOTHING BUT THE REAL THING- a Mraz-ish rant about the myriad ways we fake each other out, in order to present a strong, capable, good-looking front. At heart, a sort of love song, about peeling back layers of yourself to another person. Full bass and drums and a bunch of hooks. First available on the live disc, Live At Fiestas ’06, though some lyrics have changed since then. But only for the better. Maestro plays all the guitar, so live, I’ll be dancing and prancing around with nothing but a T-shirt on… and a microphone.

“It’s hard to be/ everything you wanna be/ and to try to do it honestly/ but I know you/ and nothing but the real thing will do.”

o OKAY- Second in the, Who Am I? Series (kidding, no such series exists, except on this record, in our minds). Okay is as tight and tense and hard hitting as a pair of acoustic guitars can be, with the drums joining in for a Led Zeppelin chorus. After we’ve finished the singing, Maestro’s going to unleash a guitar frenzy on the bridge of this song, the likes of which have never before been seen.

“I’ve got Godiva/ Mercedes Benz/ I’ve got fame and Benjamins/ I’ve got the sex, I’ve got control/ and a hole the size of you inside my soul.”

o MATURE- Third in the imaginary Who Am I? Series, following Nothing But and Okay. The crowning achievement. Brooding and very acoustic, with hypnotic drums. Currently, Ryan and I are trading the singing on the verses, so we take turns telling a story about being a little bit lost on the road, and dealing with fears about forgetting who we are and where we’ve come from. A spooky and meaningful song with excellent, Ryan-penned lyrics.

“I don’t want to turn me into/ something that I’m not/ keep me close in mind and body/ you are all I’ve got.”

o ALRIGHT- “Me and Sergio can make a microphone out of anything.” A funky, uplifting party about small things like eating good food and driving around with friends in the 110-degree Tucson heat. I guess it’s the answer to Mature, a balance to the touring life. Maybe the anti-thesis of Okay. Musically inspired a bit by Jack Johnson, a bit by Dave Matthews, and reworked to great effect by producer Ross Hogarth.

“We will all run out of bread/ we will all run out of sugar/ we will all run out of wine/ that’s fine/ it’ll all come back in time.”

o HELPLESS HOPELESS- Ross maintains this is the best song on the record. It’s been my favorite of our songs for a long time, and I was a tiny bit disappointed with the way it came out on Forward. Don’t get me wrong, I love a lot about it, especially the mood, but I don’t feel like we made the definitive recording of it, like we did with, say, Army. I’m pleased that now it will get a second chance to live. The drums are more consistent, with a steady 2 and 4 feel (drummers, are you with me?), and we’ve rearranged some of the lyrics and choruses. You can be alarmed if you want to, but I really really really like it this way.

“Today is a day/ for letting go/ of promises I’ve broken/ and words that I have spoken/ when really, I don’t know.”

o BACK INTO BLUE- A beautiful, Ryan-sung song about leaving home to go on tour a month after getting married. There’s a lot of imagery sung over a nice, slow-bounce. But it’s the melody that wins all the Grammys here. No drums on this one, but probably an upright bass and we’ve been plotting to have some cello. I’ve been singing the bridge, which is funny because Ryan wrote it for HIS girl, but I just go to my own place when I sing it, and we both think it sounds good.

“I’ll have you with me/ and there won’t be anywhere we have to be/ you are the ocean and I am the moon/ wading out in your waters/ I’m fading back into blue.”

o DIVIDES- The mother load. An intense, rocking, lyrically to-the-point song that we wrote with Carlos Arzate, singer of American Android. Rhapsodizing on Mahatma Gandhi’s exhortation to “Be the change you wish to see in the world,” we sang, “Be what you want to see.” A moving rocker, Divides features U2/Larry Mullen Jr. style drumming and some of the highest notes, sung for the longest periods of time that Maestro and I have ever done. This song just about defeated us in the studio. Not that it’s particularly hard to play, but I found myself struggling greatly to record my guitar parts in time with the drums. After great duress, Ryan, Ross, and I pushed through it, though, and I’m intensely proud of the results.

“This world divides us all between/ who we are and who we can be.”

o BORN TO RUN TO YOU – the ballad that will probably close the record. First available on On The Radio, it’s a sweet song, told in reverse, about a girl who made up her mind to believe in the love that she hoped for, even though she couldn’t see it yet. No drums here. A couple of acoustics, maybe some mandolin and maybe some violin, to complement Ryan’s beautiful guitar solo. It’s the only song that has a completed vocal, since we opted to have yours truly sing it and play it at the same time. Seems like you’d expect, huh? But recording is strange sometimes. I dug so deep trying to sing with the right emotion that I almost threw up. Mmmm…romantic.

“It took a lot to get there/ she measured distance in days/ while she wondered from miles away/ ‘Is there such a thing/ as a love meant to be/ and if so is one meant for me?'”

The goal for this record has been to make it sound like Ryanhood, as in, Ryan and Hood, with both personalities shining through. I think we’re really making that happen. What we didn’t want was to make a super-produced record with me singing and Ryan getting lost somewhere in a big, soulless backing band. I think that Ross has very successfully steered us clear of that, and in fact, steered us into a really interesting, very personal, very strong musical place. If we keep on putting the work in until it’s finished, though it may take a while yet, this will definitely be our finest record to date. Thanks for being patient with us.

…having to seal my finger-tips up with super-glue, that is! My normal, guitar-player calluses (which come and go) have definitely gone on my left hand, as the result of performing Stopless for 5 hours in the studio yesterday.

The ..B.. and ..G.. strings were digging a hole in my left middle finger, so I pulled out the old super-glue, and gave myself a protective plastic coating. It makes me feel very tough, and industrial, and ingenious.

Uggggggggggggggg….

Apparently Ryan and I suck at the guitar pretty bad. I didn’t used to think that was the case, but apparently it is. We’re taking a million years to make this record. And let me tell you something: we’re not getting any younger. Soon, it’ll be curtains for us, I say, curtains.

The studio is a hard situation. Not only is it like a microscope or a super high-resolution lens, but it’s also like trying to draw a picture of a cougar, with a girl you like looking over your shoulder. How are you supposed to just draw naturally and let your artistic whims go wherever they will? “She thinks I suck at drawing cougars! She thinks I shouldn’t have drawn his beard like that!” These sorts of worries plague your mind. And even though the studio is a time for playing what you’ve already written and arranged, as opposed to “just feelin’ it,” it’s still hard to just sit down and PLAY the guitar naturally. I get all worked up. I lose all semblance of any mojo I might once have had.

I like when blogs are funny. That is, I like reading blogs that people write FOR their audience. I aim to make mine more that way. I fear I fall too far into the, “Let’s talk about my favorite subject and yours: ME!” camp. I like serious blogs too. But not necessarily hyper-emotional, hyper personal-blogs (you say, “Sure Cameron, have you even READ your own blog on your personal myspace? Beyaaaaaa!!”) So anyway, I’ll try to keep things light and froofy and funny.

A question: How does one keep it froofy? Is it akin to keepin’ things jiggy? Can you get jiggy for Christmas? Perhaps froofy is like a petticoat. Perhaps it’s like dryer-sheets. Or like static-cling. Perhaps like a sock stuck on the inside of your pant leg making you feel extra comfortable. Could it be that froofy is like a mixed-drink involving fruit flavors that kids would like, but hard alcohol that would make them stagger through a McDonald’s Playland shouting, “What it IS Ronald? You never come ’round no more!”? Perhaps it’s like Imogen Heap. Or is that “Froufy?”

A bad idea is mistaking super-glue for contact-lens solution.

The Greene Room Recording Studio, 11:30 PM. Ryan’s playing the chords for ‘Back Into Blue’ in the main studio, while I sit in the control room next to Ross, typing.

A friend just asked me yesterday, ‘You’re here. Can you believe it?!’

At times I pinch myself (mentally, of course. Why would I really pinch myself? Have you ever pinched yourself? . . . and not like a love-pinch, but like a real ‘wake-me-up-when-the-biscuits-are-done’ pinch? Hurts.) Anyway, at times I pinch myself and think about how were living out what we dreamed of in high school . . . how we’re professionally recording songs we wrote at the edge of our beds and on our friends’ couches . . . how even though we’ve made records before, we’ve never done ANYTHING like this.

But as a balance to that, I also think that this is just the next logical step. I know all the things that came before this . . . all the work and preparation and long drives, the hundreds of times we’ve played these songs live or in rehearsal, the battles over song-structure and lyrical-choice, the sheer number of phone calls involved in setting this up, the horrific loss of blood, the nightmares, the humanity, oh the humanity (emmm?) . . . and so anyway, it is right and appropriate for us to be here.

‘Shayzzuss . . . you’re clacking away like a monster,’ Ross says to Ryan. ‘Give me one more take.’

And Ryan understands that Ross means he’s playing too percussively and that he should minimize the amount of string-sound, and maximize the amount of chord-sound that’s coming from his guitar. Ryan and I have started calling this the NPS ratio, or the Note Per Strum ratio. I have a high NPS ratio, while my volume doesn’t vary much, which can be boring-sounding. Ryan has a lower NPS ratio, though he’s a much more dynamic player.

And Ryan also knows that even though Ross says, ‘Give me one more take,’ he may actually be performing that part of the song twenty-six more times before it’s right.

Performing a song like ‘Back Into Blue,’ or ‘Born to Run to You,’ (which I attempted unsuccessfully earlier) can be a humbling experience. These studios have excellent microphones. And that’s like saying, ‘These photographers have extremely high-resolution cameras.’

It’s like being naked with the lights on, and then a photographer comes in and sets up and tells you to be perfectly at ease. And that’s difficult because you know that when you look at the photo proofs you’ll be able to see all your imperfections and extra pounds all zoomed-in-on and up-close. You can imagine that’s great for the old confidence.

Songs like ‘Alright’ are easier because there’s a drummer and a bassist to hide behind. There’s the extra challenge of playing perfectly in time with what they’ve already played. But little freckled notes and slightly sagging tunings have the luxury of being concealed among those backing tracks.

So click click goes the musical camera of our life. (heh heh. Who’s writing these puns? They’re fired!) And we want to make our mamas and papas and Ginas proud, so we’re gonna be naked and uncomfortable for quite awhile. But it’ll be good in the end.

‘I was waiting for you to look at me and tell me it wasn’t good,’ Ryan says, still working on Back Into Blue, an hour later. ‘Well it wasn’t,’ Ross says, ‘It was all, ‘Blaaannnggg!’ Give me one more.’

It’s been stormy and rainy and windy and lightningish outside for the past three Tucson days. So beautiful.

It’s three AM, we’ve just pulled into the Pasadena Royale Best Western, right outside of Los Angeles. We played a 30-minute opening spot for Steel Train at an all-ages club called Modified in Phoenix, AZ, and after we finished, hung out, and loaded up the car, we set out on I-10 West for Los Angeles.

I’m pretty sleepy.

But I was thinking of something. Surprise surprise. I was thinking maybe I have a split personality … not quite like Two-Face, from the Batman comics, where half of his face has been corroded by acid, and is therefore evil, and the other half is a reputable lawyer … not quite like that. Actually it’s not a split personality at all, I was just looking for inventive ways to talk about Batman and his varied foes.

Anyway, here’s what I mean. I loved being at home these past couple of weeks. After two years in Boston, and a ton of travel and a ton of hotel rooms and airports it was just nice and regular to be in Tucson again. I just got moved into a new place, with a new roommate, who is a good friend, and also our guitar tech, and also destined to be, if you ask me, a punk rock legend. Hes called 5ft2. It’s a good move to name your band after how tall you are.

Anyway, I was saying. We’ve been having a great time hanging out, watching movies, chit-chatting and the like, he’s turning me on to Malcolm X, and I’m getting him into Martin Luther King, Jr. Its a pretty sweet trade. Not that either of us are big academic authorities on either of these men … just fans.

So we’ve been hanging out, and it’s been good. And I know it’s been good for Ryan to be home too. So I was dragging my feet a bit on the packing and preparation for this little mini-tour. I don’t know, sometimes leaving home for long periods of time — that is, touring — isn’t as illustrious as maybe Jackson Browne or The Eagles or Willie Nelson have made it sound.

But once we loaded the guitars and T-shirt bag and Cds into the car, we said our goodbyes, and got an hour down the road, I found that it wasn’t at all hard for me to slip into a different frame of mind … the frame of mind that doesn’t get upset about spending hours in airports or spending numberless nights in nameless hotels. And that’s nice.

So in the words of Steel Train — who for the record, if you don’t know, and haven’t heard, can be imagined as being like the very best sweet and rootsy moments of the Grateful Dead mixed with the energy of the pop/punk generation — we did two shows with them — anyway, in the words of Steel Train:

Send your dad a note
you made it kid
you’re on the road!

It’s a good reminder, because when I think about little tiny things, which I do, like I said, a lot, I forget bigger pictures. I forget that I’ve dreamed of all this for a long long time. Thanks dad, and mom, for telling me it probably wasn’t going to be a good idea, but that you’d stand behind me anyway.

Ah, I get so dramatic. I love it. It’s a pretty good move to be dramatic when you’re a singer.

Give yourself an early Christmas present and pick up a copy of Steel Train’s Twilight Tales From the Prairie of the Sun, or even just download the sweet, sweet tune Better Love. I bet you’ll be humming it tomorrow.

Speaking of which … how will I ever get to tomorrow if I never go to bed tonight? Good night moon.

Sometime ago, one of our fans in Tucson mailed a CD to their friend in Bothel, WA. This friend, a local Bothel guitar teacher, liked what he heard. He drinks coffee at a place called the Lyons Den. Last week, while getting coffee at that establishment, he noticed a flyer that said Ryanhood was coming. Tonight came, and he was there, with his son, and he even made a request for Separate. And this is awesome. So Good job! to our Tucson friend for passing along our CD, and Good job! to Cascadia College for making flyers, and Good job! Lyons Den for putting them up! Its amazing when this whole machine actually works. Please feel free to try this at home!

Speaking of home, we’ve been gone for a little while. 11 days to be exact. (Somehow I didn’t get the memo and I packed only 3 days worth of clothes, which has been ridiculously annoying; Cameron, if you are reading this, you may not want to sit next to me on the plane home tomorrow). In the middle of our time away, we spent two more long days in LA to work some more on the record (friends in LA, please don’t be upset we didn’t visit this time through, we are on-call 24/7 on these trips and haven’t had time to leisure about yet). We holed-up in a Hollywood rehearsal space, and ended up rehearsing right next door to Sum-41. I felt like I was inside of an episode of some E! Celebrity Sightings show. So far, we’ve worked up arrangements on about 9 songs for the record. There’s going to some beautiful hand-drumming on this record, and the use of full drum set is sparser and wiser. Stopless is sounding friggin awesome. I’m hoping its the lead-off track.

So in addition to our San Diego debut next month, we now have a show at the esteemed Hotel Café in Los Angeles the very next day. This is an amazing opportunity to launch things in Cali, and we really hope that people will rally together and start something big there! Spread the word! Were coming!

So one of my favorite candies in college used to be Starburst Fruit Twists (Licorice). And then they became Starburst Red Twists (Licorice) and they were still my favorite. And then they discontinued them. So I wrote an email to Starburst, dreaming that they would send me all the leftovers. But they just wrote back saying that they were ‘re-evaluating’ or something. More than a year later I found a three small packs in a store in Chicago. Which was sort of gross, because it meant that they had been on the shelf for a very long time. But I still bought all three packs. I ate them very slowly. Earlier this week while shopping in the produce section of a grocery store in Spokane, I spotted something called ‘Kenny’s Juicy Twists’. I am eating them now. And really liking them. It takes me right back to college. And the dentist.

PUBLISHED ON APRIL 20, 2006:
TUCSON WEEKLY

By STEPHEN SEIGEL

Nine Questions with Cameron Hood and Ryan Green.

Tucson natives Cameron Hood and Ryan Green constitute Ryanhood, a duo that has garnered a faithful following across the country largely via college and university gigs. On Friday, April 21, Ryanhood, along with The Year of Acceleration, inaugurate Hotel Congress’ Outdoor Concert Series at an all-ages show starting at 6 p.m.
What was the first concert you ever saw?

Hood: Green Day, Mesa Amphitheatre. Someone threw a boot at Mike Dirnt. It hit. It hurt. They were done.

What CDs are in your changer right now?

Hood: Switchfoot, Nothing Is Sound; Derek Webb, Mockingbird; The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers audio CD; demo mixes from the new Ryanhood CD. Green: D’Gary, Mbo Loza (Madagascan guitar genius I just found out about); 92.9 The Mountain Live in Studio C; 5ft2, Live at KXCI; Bruce Hornsby, Hot House.

How many total albums do you own (CDs, vinyl, cassettes, 8-tracks)?

Green: 300-plus CDs.

Do you download music, and if so, legally or illegally?

Hood: I buy from iTunes. Though sometimes Ryan’s got a CD, and I borrow it …

What was the first album you owned?

Hood: Boyz II Men, Cooleyhighharmony. It’s so hard to say goodbye to Boyz II Men. No wait, it was an old Star Wars episode on a 45. … Am I that old? Green: On cassette, I think it was Boston (self-titled). However, my first CD was MC Hammer, Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em.

What song would you like to have played at your funeral?

Hood: How about U2, “Where the Streets Have No Name,” then Tom Petty’s “Wildflowers,” then singing and salsa dancing and a guacamole-eating contest. Green: “Flying” by The Beatles.

Musically speaking, what do you love that your friends don’t know about? What’s your favorite guilty pleasure?

Green: In high school, I used to listen to almost exclusively progressive rock. I still listen to my old Dream Theater albums on long flights–it gives my brain a better workout than a crossword puzzle.

What band or artist changed your life, and how?

Hood: U2 were honest, emotional, epic and overblown. Preachy, perhaps. I know Bono’s got a big mouth, but he walks the walk.

Figurative gun to your head, what is your favorite album of all time?

Hood: Midnight Oil, Earth and Sun and Moon. Green: Naturally, Too High to Die by Meat Puppets.

Having started things off right on Interstate 90 out of Boston, with U2’s “Beautiful Day,” and having listened to “The Fellowship of the Ring”, as read by Rob Ingles over 16 Cds (yes, I only made it through the first book…what?!…a guy’s gotta have some time for silence and some time for listening to great songs from yesteryear), and having paid $32.15 in highway tolls (particularly in New York and Indiana…[you states are pretty tricky, huh?…whatamigonnado?…drive around New York state?…]) and having logged over 3,150 miles (including a jaunt from Chicago to Bloomington to pick up my little brother and watch him kick booty in Scholastic Bowl [which is like Team Jeopardy, but for smart people] and then a drive back to Chicago for fun and a visit to a visiting friend, then back to Bloomington then on to St. Louis), having visited my dad and family in Kansas City, having spent only $17.23 on Red Bull and coffee, having promised with my debit card to pay $318.24 to various gas stations across the country, having negotiated snow in Indiana, rain and sleet in Illinois and Missouri, flatlands and boredom in Kansas and Oklahoma (sorry, Kansans and Oklahomanomians), powerful winds in New Mexico (I somehow avoided being spellbound in the so-called “Land of Enchantment,” though it was more beautiful than I remember it) and having somehow avoided any car crashes or mishaps while irresponsibly taking pictures of every state’s Welcome-To sign (this is not a good idea, for it involves caring more about road signs than about the semi-trucks that approach quickly in your rear-view mirror), while stopping often to pee and to buy toffee peanuts, I sailed into Tucson, Arizona at 2:00pm on the 6th day, in time for soundcheck and a spot at City Limits opening for Ringside (with Balthazar Getty from TV’S “Alias,” and Weezer’s Brian Bell), before eating a caeser salad and some strawberry waffle, drinking some water, talking with some friends, and going home to my older brother’s house for sleepytime.

“Sonador, When you ran the earth shook and the sky opened and mere motrals parted…”

– Dreamer