--Ada Wofford
----Released 17 December 2022
Philly power-pop four-piece, Tough Guy Soda have arrived with their multi-year project, I’ve Made a Lot of Promises and I’m Not Afraid. I use the term power-pop, but that doesn’t fully describe the band’s sound. There is no single term or genre to describe Tough Guy Soda. They don’t quite sound like anyone, but throughout the ten tracks, I heard traces of everything from Built to Spill, to Joyce Manor, to Arcade Fire, to Thin Lizzy (those harmonized leads!) but even in these moments, they only kind of sound like another band. Yet at the same time, the music feels familiar, like a place we’ve been before—only somehow, we’re made to hear it with new ears.
Having a good time celebrating the completion of the multi-year project.
The track “Bellringer” is a great example of Tough Guy Soda’s ability to weave together influences like some sort of patchwork dream—leaving you scratching your head asking, how did we get from there to here, while at the same time convinced there was no other direction possible. In “Bellringer,” the track moves from roots rock soloing; into a catchy, jingle bell laden verse; into a triumphant chorus; into a dreamy Beatles-esque instrumental section; all while making these musical gymnastics somehow sound easy. It’s dizzying and almost overwhelming, but in the best way possible.
Each and every track has this microscopic level of attention to arrangements and instrumentation. I reached out to the band to get a better idea of how they pulled off this amazing feat, and they had a lot to say. I’m going to include their whole statement because it’s a testament to what it takes to make a great album:
The demoing process for Promises began back in December of 2018. We took a trip up to the Poconos and left with rough versions of the ten songs on the record. For the record, we decided to track individual performances separately onto a Tascam DP32-SD recorder. Our decision to self-record everything granted us the ability to take our time and (almost) never feel like we were in a rush to complete the record. It also allowed us to fine tune compositional choices, experiment with different mic placements and gear combinations, etc.
Tascam setup with mic preamps and KRKs for monitoring. Picture probably taken towards the end of recording given the absence of drums in background.
Drum tracking began in March of 2019. We took full advantage of the 8 mic inputs on the recorder to capture every piece of the kit. Aside from a standard arsenal of dynamic mics, we used these cool AKG C1000S condensers overhead of the kit. They have a switch that focuses/expands the pickup field and we actually found ourselves changing that a few times throughout the process. I think some days, maybe just from the exhaustion of recording, our ears would trick us into hearing weird ghouls in the cymbals and toms. It was nice to feel like there was a switch we could flip and attribute to the sudden "correction" of those sounds.
Drum setup in our primary recording space in the suburbs of Philadelphia. Wolf pack blankets were essential for both motivation and sound dampening.
Drum tracking wrapped up around the end of Summer 2019. We then moved on to guitars which ran us from Summer 2019 - Fall 2020. We chose to experiment with splitting our signals through two amps for almost every performance. It was a choice driven by a desire to have a lot of tonal options in order to achieve the way we envisioned the songs coming together. There was definitely a bit of "having more is better than not enough" too. Usually, we'd set one amp cleaner and one more driven, or one drier and one with all the delay/mod effects. It wasn't always necessary but for the sake of consistency we carried out the process of dual-amp recording everything; rhythm and lead.
A fairly typical night for Dan while tracking guitars. In this picture, the Protone Telecaster through a drive into his VOX AC15 and Bassman clone. The Bassman featured two different sets of speakers (I think one is ceramic, the other not so sure) but we'd experiment a lot with different voicing combinations. Fun facts about the tele: It's of a special line of Squiers made during the 90's in Korea. It features an ash body and aftermarket wide-range humbucker made by the Creamery (UK).
We put two mics on each amp as well so every guitar performance was four tracks. We'd often double performances too. So, there were a lot of guitars to mix. Gear wise, John often used a Supro paired with a Mesa Boogie 4x10 and Dan used a VOX AC15 paired with a Bassman clone. Guitar wise, John used a Deluxe Thinline or Gibson Marauder and Dan used his trusty Blue Stratoaster and a Protone Squier Telecaster on most songs. Pedal wise, John's favorite overdrives are the Bookworm Effects (West Virginia) Billy Pilgrim Overdrive and Champion Leccy (South Philly) Fettle Boost. Dan loves his Gritty drive.
Dan's Gritty Drive. It's got the range to cover mild to menacing fuzzy tones.
Bass tracking was approached similarly to guitars. Not in the sense that we used two amps, but we did capture four tracks for each performance; relentless in our pursuit of ensuring we had enough tonal options. We had a DI dry, DI FX, and then two mics on an amplified signal (usually the Bassman clone). Jon used a Gibson G3 or Ripper on all songs but “Sco,” where a Mustang bass made an appearance. The secret weapon for a lot of bass tones was a Digitech Bad Monkey Overdrive; it was leaned on heavily and we were surprised by its versatility at first. Bass parts were expeditiously recorded over a couple sittings and finalized by Winter of 2019. Lead vocals were recorded during quarantine and a Warm Audio WA47JR was the main mic of choice; backup was one of those AKGs.
Close up on the mic preamps used throughout the process.
I think all four of us would agree that the most fun part of the process was recording back-up vocals. This came towards the end of our recording journey and after several months of isolating during the first wave of the pandemic. For a while, the recording of Promises became a project of one or two people working together at a time in an effort to keep things moving. By September of 2020, it finally felt okay (and very much needed) to be back in a room with one another. It was a lot of fun to stick each person in a different room of the apartment (their own vocal "isolation" booth), yell a bunch of lyrics into our microphones and then come back to reflect on takes, crack jokes and eat pizza (in between raising and lowering masks) in the living room. The culmination of all our individual and collective efforts on this project deserved to be one with all four of us together. So, when you factor in not seeing your bandmates and best friends for seven months—It was a really special moment and way to mark the end of the recording process.
The guitars used on the lead track for Tough Talk. The signal chain is a JHS compressor into AMT mini wah into the beloved Billy Pilgrim Overdrive from Bookworm. The signal is then split by a passive ABY box with one side going into Champion Leccy's Bloody Gett fuzz (s/o South Philly) and the other into Earthquaker Devices Tentacle octave pedal. This is an example of where we were trying to have two different amp signals and be able to blend that octave tone to taste.
We mixed the record on and off with Ted Richardson of TedAudio (Philly) and had a very lovely, hands-on time doing so. Mixing took us from Oct 2020 - Oct/Nov 2021. Ted also handled mastering. We snuck the record in just before the end of the year with a release date on Friday, December 17, 2021.
I’ve written about quite a few pandemic records at MLU, but this is the first one I’ve had that started so early before the pandemic and then transitioned into it. I find Tough Guy Soda’s tenacity and dedication very inspiring—and it’s something you can hear in the music. All of their guitar layering really pays off. The tracks have such a depth and variety to their sound. There are moments on “Overworn” and “Sco” where I swore I heard a horn section for a moment, only to realize they were somehow creating those melodies on guitar.
If you like power pop, if you like indie rock, if you like punk, if you like earworms, if you like musicianship, hell—If you like music, then check out I’ve Made a Lot of Promises and I’m Not Afraid. Support the band at BandCamp.