With great joy and some sense of relief the Gin Palace Jesters have returned to the studio to wrap up our debut CD recordings. After spending the better part of the spring and summer paying bills, undergoing tumultuous lineup changes and getting everyone up to speed with new musical arrangements while continuing to play gigs, we finally got caught up enough to learn a few new tunes and get back into the studio. We decided there were plenty of qualified individuals right here in our own happening city of Chicago that we could get a quality recording done by day and sleep in our very own beds by night. This was also a desirable goal for our pocketbooks and is in fact what happened. As it turned out we recorded right up the road west of here on Huron Street which is why we added this cool postcard.

Prior to going to record in Nashville back in April, we had been approached by this feller right here, Mr. Mike Sharp who verbally abused and chastised us for driving all the way to Nashville to record. Mike works as a soundman at Fitzgerald's nightclub and on a daily basis is running sound for some of the best acts in Country, Western, Honkytonk, Bluegrass, Blues, Rockabilly, Jazz, Cajun and Zydeco music. Mike told us he had his own studio and we should come by and lay some tracks down. We figured hearing acts like that night after night he'd probably be sympathetic to what we were trying to do but we had already booked our Nashville trip so ended up recording in Nashville. When we decided we needed to record again we sheepishly asked him if he was still interested. He said he was and boy are we grateful!

Here we can see Mike at the helm while Casey looks on. Mike said his place, "wasn't anything fancy, just a basement." Well, he's right, it wasn't fancy other than the fact that he had some very serious and professional equipment and gear lying around and somehow managed to capture some great clean vintage hillbilly sounds on his "stuff".

Here we can see Mike Medina, Mike Sharp and Casey Stockdon discussing the finer points of how to mic an acoustic bass while September's calander centerfold (Elvis) looks on. Homer and Jethro are featured for October which we thought was very good "karma".

The picture speaks for itself

Casey Stockdon is one helluva bass player equally adept and comfortable with Bluegrass, Rockabilly, Western Swing, Hillbilly, Honkytonk or Jazz. He also proved he knows a thing or three about recording and we are damn lucky to have him in the Gin Palace Jesters.

Mike looking sad is asking "Why have you placed me in isolation?" Mike "the mechanic" Medina is still working crazy hours and worked his normal shift of 2pm-12:30am and then pulled an extra 7 hours of overtime and came directly from work to be at the studio at 10:00am. How is that for keeping yourself busy? He didn't go home until 5:30pm so that must have been about a 30 plus hour day for him.

Dave sings the soon to be hit "Nashville Penny" Real MP3

"Mister Photogenic" imitates a Beaver.

Here Mike's day beginning to show between takes while the boys do their best impression of three fouths of the Old Hickory Quartet while Johnny, Joey, Marky and Dee Dee Ramone look on from the right..

Bud shows Mike what he can do on his Sho-Bud.

Another view of the man in his element wondering which button the cat pressed on his voyage across the board to the litter box.

Here Jake (the cat) tries to make Mike forgive his trespasses

Meanwhile Buddy has a volume pedal crisis as a crucial part goes missing!!! Uh oh...Where did it go???

And WHO do you think FOUND the missing part??? That's right...JAKE SAVES THE DAY!!! Thanks Jake, all is forgiven.

Now it's time for Rick Veras to scratch some fiddle on top Real MP3

A little research has shown the earliest known on stage sighting of Rick can be traced to Freeport, Illinois WFRL Barndance back in 1978!!! Rick is a multi-instrumentalist playing fiddle, mandolin and a mighty fine guitar. That is all WE know about anyway.

He explained he was regarded as a quality guitarist until that crazy movie Urban Cowboy came out in 1980 and he had to start bringing the fiddle to all his gigs too. Pretty soon that was it for the guitar gigs. If you come across Rick in a club ask him about doctors shoving NEEDLES in his eyes! NO JOKING!!! Yuck!

Mike does not believe they shoved needles in his eyes. You can see by Rick's face he is not kidding.