It was an idea Craig had whilst getting a coffee at Renaud’s.
The idea was to put a new version of NTLA ComboNation together. This part of the story was a success as he asked Pete Lester to play bass, Dan Boer to play keyboards and Bill McLain to play guitar. They all agreed to join the project. Craig would play guitar and I would sing. It was a major challenge, however, as it was still the beginning of the Covid 19 pandemic. How were we going to play and rehearse together? Also, we were all so far apart; with Pete in Santa Cruz, Dan in Los Angeles and Bill up the mountain from downtown Santa Barbara where we lived. But somehow it worked even though we didn’t have a drummer yet. Eventually, by sheer circumstance and luck, we found a drummer… Chaska Slawson. He agreed to join in the project also. We were all so relieved to have him join in the fun!
We rehearsed online. We rehearsed at Bill’s. We rehearsed at the park.
Back to the question asked above, how were we going to play together with all of us so far away? We heard of JamKazam and decided to give it a shot. At first, we rehearsed to backing drum tracks that Craig organized. It was so frustrating. There was terrible latency. But after some tech issues were sorted out, the latency was better although it never quite resolved completely. After months of struggling to play online together, we decided to take a leap and rehearse at Bill’s house up on the mountain. Pete drove down from Santa Cruz, Dan drove up from L. A., Chaska drove up from Carpinteria, and Craig and I drove up from downtown Santa Barbara. It was such a great experience to play in real life! We laughed, we cried, we kissed our gas money goodbye.
One day, Craig had a cool idea to practice in the park… Alice Keck Park Memorial Gardens, to be exact. Pete and Dan couldn’t make that one, but Bill, Chaska, Craig and I had a great time under the blooming trees.
Having to move sucks. But even so, we recorded some tunes – 3 originals and 1 cover of Gangsters by The Specials.
Just when things were starting to gel, Craig and I got a notice that our landlord wanted to “remodel” and we had to move. Right. Okay. We searched and searched, jumped through hoops and everything, but we couldn’t find a place before our lease was up. We eventually found a place in Ojai and moved. It was so far away that it was just too much of a trek to drive to Bill’s to rehearse. Craig suggested meeting up in Ventura, but that went over like a lead zeppelin.
Slowly, we turned a bedroom into a small recording studio and invited the gang to come and put down some tracks. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out with Pete and he left the group. Shortly after that, Dan decided he didn’t want to play either. So, we gathered up Thom Richards for bass and Craig played keyboards on the recordings. It was fun recording these tracks but it was very difficult! We had rehearsed for so long, but it was almost always with latency being online and we had only gotten together physically as a band a few times. We had never played with Thom before, but he learned quickly, showed up and put down the tracks even though he barely knew the lines.
The project had a mind of its own.
After some time living in the Ojai apartment, Craig set his mind to mixing the tunes. It was arduous, but he was determined. I helped as needed. When we played the songs for Paul du Gré, he decided to step in to help with mastering. When we had the finished recordings, we shared the tunes with the gang. But we weren’t sure if we wanted to release them. Shortly after that, we were given the news that Dan Boer, the beloved keyboard player to many projects, had passed away. It was really shocking and we were so heartbroken that we really didn’t feel like going on with the project. It just seemed to naturally fly apart. Following all this work, we decided to release Gangsters.
You can purchase it directly from us here…
NTO ComboNation – Gangsters
This is NTO ComboNation with a cover of Gangsters originally recorded by The Specials who were influenced by Prince Buster.
You can also listen and buy it through our Bandcamp.
You can also find the original recordings of the 1980s NTLA CaobmoNation on our Bandcamp as well!
If you would like to connect with the band, please send us a message on our Contact page: https://www.ladyaudio.co/contact/
