Don Caballero - American Don - Blue/Purple - VINYL LP

Original 2xLP recorded by Steve Albini at Electrical Audio in 2000 and remastered by Bob Weston in 2025Never-before-released live studio album, True Live Tapes, recorded by Greg Norman in 2000 and mastered by Bob Weston in 2025After finishing American Don with (Steve) Albini, we were nearing the peak of interpersonal tensions that would eventually wash us overboard. I (Eric) became convinced we lost the true essence of the songs in the recording process. It was not a unanimous decision to record with Steve. We wrote the album entirely on guitar loops and Team Storm & Stress wanted to go further in the studio with Pro Tools, which felt related to both what we were doing and where we were going. Steve had just finished building the magnificent A room at Electrical and Damon insisted we would record there for the drums. He never budged on it. As soon as we got there we realized all the songs, which were written in stacks of overdubs on our pedals, would only allow for mono guitar recordings. We worked around this by performing the songs to a single loop and overdubbing all the guitars later allowing for a full stereo field to match the glorious bombast of Steve's drum recordings. This approach dramatically changed how we played. While it allowed for magic moments of improv (Peter Criss intro), once the album was done, it sounded bloated and the performances sluggish. With increasing certainty I was sure the sound of the Akai Headrush, and the tempos it set forDamon was the heartbeat of these songs. Ian agreed.In an audacious last ditch hail mary, I had the idea to call Greg Norman (who worked for Steve!) and asked if we could secretly come to his studio in S. Chicago *road hot* after our next shows and re-record the album LIVE. It was an enormous gesture that could've never worked, but miraculously everyone agreed to do it and we gave it a try. Greg captured us at our mo