(antiMusic) Welcome to Singled Out! where we ask artists to tell us the inside story of their latest single. Have you heard about Kidneys? It's a group fronted by Bad Religion's Brooks Wackerman. Today Brooks tells us about "Christian Cheerleading" from their self titled debut, which was released digitally via Porterhouse Records this week. Brooks played all the instruments on the album and produced the effort. To fill out the ranks for live shows Brooks recruited John Spiker (Filter, Tenacious D) and Todd Hennig (Death By Stereo). Now that you know the background on the band, we turn it over to Brooks to tell us about the background of the song:"Christian Cheerleading" is a song about general relationship tensions in which one party is a bit more insane than the other. It relates to a feeling that I think every individual has experienced at one time or another, in the past or maybe in the future.
Due to the subject matter I wanted the beat and rhythm to be driving, so I choose a loopy ska rhythm against punk sounding guitars. I felt this combination worked in making the groove magnify exactly what the music and lyrics were trying to say.
Since I was a one man band in the studio, I approached the tracking by laying down guitars first as a reference point followed by the trap set and so on. One focus and challenge that I was up against was that I didn't want the music sounding like a drummer playing everything, so the feel was paramount. I had to wear a lot of hats in making this album, but I quickly learned that by listening back I became aware of when to shift more into band mode. Sonically, I wanted the song to sound tight-since it's spunky so the engineer made sure we had fancy compression to suck the world in.
Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen for yourself and learn more about the album - right here!
