How are you doing today

Tom Ray: wait.

Jason Erb: Oh my god! I’m sideways!

Tom Ray: I love that you were yelling the second that it turned on, though. We’re here today to talk to you, Jason, of, Velcro Mary, about the remix that you did for our Lorenzo’s Remixes, Volume 2 album. So, first of all, how are you?

Jason Erb: I’m great. How are you?

Tom Ray: I’m all right. I’m doing okay. It’s nice day out, sunny. So too hot. Come on. You’re one of those. I hate winter. Actually, where are you located again, I can’t remember what.

Jason Erb: I’m in North Carolina, in the Charlotte area.

Tom Ray: Okay. I guess it gets kind of hot there.

Jason Erb: Oh, yeaheah. Hot and humid. It’s pretty rough. I try to stay inside most of the day.

Tom Ray: T even go out. That has nothing to do with the weather. You’re just a recuse. And you don’t like to be out. Wear a hu over yourself.

Jason Erb: Yeah, I mean, also that.

Tom Ray: So.

You did a remix of our song Friction Called Quest

All right, so I want to talk to you. You did a remix of our song Friction Called Quest. Now, I want to talk about the process of this. I actually. I mean, I want to learn from what you did on it. And also to compliment you on a great remix that you did. So one of the first questions I have is the beat that you did.

Tom Ray: So program bat. But, what did you build that in? Did you program it by hand? Did you, have an electronic drum kit? Like, how are you making the drumeats?

Jason Erb: First of all.

Tom Ray: Yeah.

Jason Erb: Could you please share with me the reactions within the Lorenzo’s music camp to, What was the reaction amongst the group when you guys heard my remix? Because I honestly was like, they’re probably gonna hate this.

Tom Ray: Really? You thought that?

Jason Erb: Yeah.

Tom Ray: No, not at all.

Jason Erb: Well, I mean, I. I just,

Jason Erb: What’s the word I’m looking for? I wasn’t, I mean, I just, like, tore that song apart and it’s.

Tom Ray: I know.

Jason Erb: Yeah. I mean, but that’s a good thing. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The symmetry of it didn’t work for me.

Tom Ray: Okay. Oh, wait, wait. I see. You’re criticizing my songwriting and saying you could do it better. That’s what you’re telling me?

Jason Erb: Yes, kind of. But no, I mean,

Tom Ray: I see where this is going.

Jason Erb: Okay, so. Well, I mean, you’re practically the only thing left of the original song. And even then, I chopped up your lyrics, retuned your melodies.

Tom Ray: Yes.

Jason Erb: Changed the song structure a little bit.

Tom Ray: So.

Jason Erb: I mean, I took so many liberties. I mean, the bass Drums are gone. There’s like teeny tiny amounts of the original guitar and hornange.

Tom Ray: Yep. No, no, that’s a remix. I mean the classic, example of. Remember when remixes became a big thing in the 90s, there would be the end of the album, had a remix of one of the songs on it and they would have a guest remixer at the end of the album. Big thing in the 90s, one of the pioneers of that was a Butch Vig. remix was always like a huge deal and his process was basically you get rid of everything except the vocals and start from scratch. That’s the way that he defines remixing. That’s basically what you did.

Jason Erb: Yeah, then that’s Butch Vig mix.

Tom Ray: That’s what I’ve been saying, man.

Jason Erb: That is literally the process. So I mean I’m sure it works differently when Nine Inch Nails goes out and secures people to remix. There’s financial stake involved.

Tom Ray: Well, that’s a tough one too because there is a classic Head like AOL remix album that has 29 versions of the song Head like a Hole. And to tell you the truth, some of them are really just instead of this drum sound, I used this drum sound like one will be a slate mix and one will be stone mix. And really he’s just going by different sounds. I think it’s just he kept every iteration of his pass at the song and then released it as a remix album because the whole thing is still the same across the board.

Your song has a swing to it that’s not normally capable in a drum machine

ok, so first initial reaction what you were saying mine was and when I listened back to it, it was wrong. But I’ll explain why it was wrong. But when I first heard it and this is what I liked, the beat that you made, while it’s a program beat and this is why I asked if it was programmed or played is because it has a swing to it. There’s a swing to it that’s not normally capable in a drum machine. And my first reaction was and maybe you’ll know this reference, it reminded me of the song Lucas with the Lid Off. Are you familiar with that song? It was his name’lucas it was a one hit wonder. It was during the time of like unbelievable by emf. You know, like all those bands had the casingles out and they were.

Jason Erb: That was the name of the song is Lucas with the Letter.

Tom Ray: The name of the song was called Lucas with the Lid off. And it’s’s a song that’s a dance song, but it’s drats A hip hop drumeat done over an old 1920s, like Chattanooga song. listen, so it had that swing to it. But the thing is, the drumeat was straightforward. It was the Chattanoo Chattanooga, no, Charleston. That’s what I’m trying to say. Charleston beat, that your song has. Yours has like a 1920s, 1930s swing to it and I really liked that. How did you create that beat? That’s what I wanted to know.

Jason Erb: Okay. So I started with the vocals like you said. I listened to the stems multiple times. And based on what I could do with the stems as they were, that kind of limited me, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Could be a great thing. I like working with limitations. But, yeah, like, for example, like the guitar track is a stereo track with multiple guitars sometimes playing at the same time. So if I just won one of those guitars, I just couldn’t do it. so going through that, I was like. And having just the world of possibilities. I could do anything I wanted. One of my original ideas was I was just going to, play it on top of Stairway to Heaven. So that. Yeah, just to make it unreleieable and to be a dick.

Tom Ray: We still would have done it. I would have released it. That would have been great. To get sued by them.

Jason Erb: Yeah, yeah, that probably would have been great publicity.

Tom Ray: Exactly.

Jason Erb: But, so I was like, all right, I’m not going to use the drums, I’m not going to use the bass, I’m not going to use the keyboard. All right, I got to start somewhere because I kept trying stuff and oh, this is neat. Oh, I could do this, I could do that. I could do anything I want. There’like there wasnn be like a 30 minute version of this song at one point.

Tom Ray: Good.

Jason Erb: I was gonna sing on it. At one point I was going toa play guitar. Most of all those ideas got scrapped. But so I started with the vocal. I ran it through the vocoder effect that like made it even more mangled.

Speaker C: I back for the. I came up all too fast of the vocals.

Jason Erb: Would have loved a clean, dry vocal if you could do that next year.

Tom Ray: Okay.

Jason Erb: So that we can create a different.

Tom Ray: Track for the vocals is what you’re saying. All right.

Jason Erb: Wishist for future remixers. And I’m sure, again, other people on board with me would be, just give me one clean, dry vocal, separate that synced up with everything. Clean guitar tracks would be good. Just separated tracks that we could.

Tom Ray: I’m trying to remember if I Did have affected vocals on it.

Speaker C: I went back just the same, but feel it get further away if I just.

Jason Erb: I also say through a s harmonic delay, I actually.

Tom Ray: O, you’re right, that song does have delay.

Jason Erb: Yeah. I tried to de veb it as much as I could with plugins, so I, like, tried to take stuff off and then fed it back into a vocodder. And you should’just me, man.

Tom Ray: I could have given you a track like that.

Jason Erb: I was going, ok.

Tom Ray: I get what you’re saying, though.

Jason Erb: These are the limitations. This is what I’m going to work with.

Jeff: I used Apple Logic to create the beat for your song

So to get to your beat.

Tom Ray: O. All right.

Jason Erb: the beat. I work in, Logic. Apple Logic. So I used last, time we had a podcast together, I was telling you a little bit about this, but they’ve got drummer tracks. They’ve got different tracks. You can do it. In fact, I did it with. I used all of them, actually. I used drum, bass and keyboard for that. And basically.

Tom Ray: Okay. The bass sound was from that too. Okay. Yeah, yeah. So.

Jason Erb: And Apple’s got. They kind of have like these parameters where you’re like, oh, I want it to be like a hard rock drummer, for example. So it gives you, like a default kit and some default beats and you can play with it all. And so I think I started with one thing I do a lot. I do this in my own music as well, is I will, get a beat from one of those drummer tracks and then take it to somewhere totally different, like, genre wise. As far as the kit goes. Like, I might start with like a rock kit and then take that. Bounce it down to midi and then take that MIDI track to another track and then figure out all the drums differently. And that’s what I did with your song. So I came up with a beat by tweaking the Apple drummer over and over again until I kind of got what I wanted. got something that I thought fit the song well. actually kind of. Kind of hit like a Will Smith song for a little.

Tom Ray: Yeah, a little bit. I get that.

Jason Erb: Yeah.

Tom Ray: Like dj. Ah, I can’t say. Also djj Z. Jeff. Well, that is hard to say. Jesus. Yeah, I could see that. That could be that swing that I’m talking about too, because he did have kind of a swing in most of the beats that he used.

Jason Erb: There’s a little bit of a. You can adjust the swing like any drum machine. M. So I think I had some on that. But it was once I had the beat and put that on midi and there are so many different percussive elements in that. And I then went. I started with. I built that kit like, totally custom from mostly. It’s mostly drumnth. I think there’s a couple samples in there, but it’s mostly, like a drum synthesizer. And so I would go in and like, all right, let’s get the bass and the snare. Right, get those. And then I would just like each sound. Like, maybe it’s the closed hi hat. I like alrigh. Let’s tweak that. And so I kind of just messed around until I got something that sounded good and interesting to me. And I hope somebody else would like it.

Tom Ray: Yeah, no. And so the bass sound or, first of all, the keyboard sound. Do you remember at least what setting you had for the keyboard sound? I really like that tone and I’d kind of like to recreate it.

Jason Erb: so there’s a couple. Are you talking about like, the sound that comes in in the intro, like the electric piano?

Tom Ray: Yeah, yeah, the electric piano. What one? Because’always I’ve been trying to find a good electric piano sound that. Let’s see.

Jason Erb: Here’s my session. So according to this, it’s a 70s funk clavh. So it is a clav.

Tom Ray: Okay, Yeah, I have a cleab. But, the 70s funk part is really standing out in yours. And I did dig that.

You basically rewrote my lyrics on this song

Now, while you have that open, let me ask you another one. This is actually going to be my next question. The middle section, where there’s kind of a breakdown, the bass kind of turns into a buzz base. What did you do there? Because I really like that part.

Jason Erb: That’s fucking awesome, isn’t it? I love that part. It’s a bit pressure.

Tom Ray: It a.

Jason Erb: It is.

Tom Ray: Okay.

Jason Erb: Yeah. All right. that part. That part was tricky. I kept playing with that. I think I sent you a snippet of that at one point.

Tom Ray: Yeah, you sent me me that over Instagram.

Jason Erb: Yeah, yeah. My manic messaging. I’m sorry.

Tom Ray: No, no, no, no. Actually, you’d be surprised from the things that I do and the people that. That I, work with. Manic messaging is not a different thing for me. I’ll get people who will message me at one in the morning. I’m like, yeah, I’m. No, I get all kinds of different types of messaging. I’m very used to it now. Another thing too, is, you mentioned you ran the, vocals through a vocoder. Now, I want to point out the fact that not only did you mainly just use the Vocals. But you also basically rewrote my lyrics.

Speaker C: I went back just the same but feel it get further away I went back for the best. I came up, too fast.

Tom Ray: I did, and I dug that. That actually had to have taken more time than just what you did. So you, you wr, switched up different lines. You’re kidding.

The entire album is built off of one song, actually one chord progression

Okay, so tell me, what was the thought process behind doing that?

Jason Erb: You tell me first, what is this song about? Tom Ray?

Tom Ray: the song is actually this particular one. It’s hard to say because it’s a themed album. The entire album is built off of one song, actually one chord progression. The entire album is in a chord progression in a. That goes down. And we decided the concept would be, what if we rewrote this song 15 times in different moods as if it was a soundtrack to a, movie. So each song kind of progressively goes through that. And Friction Called Quest itself is one called Friction Called Quest. Because when we first jammed on it, the beat that we started out with and what I was doing on the piano kind of reminded me of, lyrics to go by tribe, called Quest. So I just called it Friction Called Quest because all were coden named Friction something. It went on from there and became a heavier song. But, as far as that song, trying to. I’m hoping that me describing working up to this song, I will try and remember what the lyrics mean. So I went back, just saying all write songs too.

Jason Erb: Tom. I get it.

Tom Ray: O. It’s about going somewhere. It’s about going somewhere and, basically going to meet someone and finding out that it’s over and then the long drive home. That’s basically all about what the lyrics are.

Jason Erb: I don’t remember if that’s what I thought it was about, but that sounds pretty close because I do remember. You know, I went through the list of songs until I got to one that I was like, I can do something with this. I feel pretty confident. And that was. That was probably the second or third song in your list. But I didn’t have to go very far for inspirationeah. so I listened to it multiple times, and to try to get it. And I did kind of one time, you know, kind of form, like a visual, you know, image of the story going on. all right. But when I wrote out the lyrics, they didn’t connect to me personally because I they.

Tom Ray: And I was just disappointing you across the board. No, I mean, disappointment.

Jason Erb: Tom, you wrote. How is the song you wrotenn affect me in the exact perfect way? It’s not going to. It’s okay, right?

Tom Ray: Yeah.

Jason Erb: But, so the way you sing it, though, is great because you break every line up into two parts. So I just wrote it into two columns and played mix and match it. Like, I think these words go better together than these ones. And so.

Tom Ray: No, I like that. That was really cool put.

Jason Erb: I connected those in ways that made more sense to me, seeing how I was just butchering your song and taking all meaning from what is there.

I really liked the chopping up of the lyrics on this song

There’s like, a’s. There’s some, like, famous philosophical question, about the boat. It. It’s something. You’ve probably heard this in some form or another, but it’s like, famous ship that gets replaced piece by piece. And at the end, like, there’s no original pieces of the original vessel. Is it still the same boat?

Tom Ray: Huh? I have not heard that.

Jason Erb: I KE think what you saying in the song. And I never took the philosophy class, so I don’t know if there’s an answer to that. R. And I’m too lazy to Google it, but that’s what I thought about a lot. Ye.

Tom Ray: You will use it in conversation.

Jason Erb: Yeah. I’ll talk about anything to. I don’t need to know anything about.

Tom Ray: That’s right. I’m the same way. I’ll use words that I’m not sure if I’m pronouncing correctly or if I’m using them in a correct manner. So I do that all the time. No, but I really did like the chopping up the lyrics. And also, it’s very much like our. That’s what our writing style is. A lot of it will record some stuff.

Jason Erb: Did you catch it right away that I had changed the lyrics or. Yes, I did.

Tom Ray: Just because I’m the person singing them. So, in my head, you know, you’re miming it along in your head. And then I’m like, wait, that’s not the next line. Then I’m like, oh, he’s continuing to do this. I’m like, that’s really cool. I dug that. I dug that a lot. And it gave it a whole different mood. I really like that. Also, I’m not precious with my stuff that I make at all. To tell you the truth. Probably a quarter of the songs that we do, we change. Absolutely do a complete 180 on them. Maybe a week or so before we release them. That’s literally sometimes be like, you know what? That’s not right. Let’s do it this way. And then we’ll release it. Because if we don’t release it. we’re going to keep messing with it. So. Yeah, no, I love when people do extreme things with it. There’s another person I’m going to be talking to pretty soon who not, only did he just use my lyrics, but the backing tracks that he used are. The instruments that he used for it were from a different song entirely. So that one’s going to be interesting too. But yeah, no, I liked absolutely what you did with it. From the swing drums, the bass sound was phenomenal. The keys were really cool. The bass was a really great sound. It’s got a good slide in there and everything. And I’m assuming that also has to do with what you were doing in the setup, on Logic.

Jason Erb: Yeah, yeah. Again, that’s an Apple based drummer. Then I. I tweaked the midi. I did a lot of manual tweaks to that MIDI to get it to do what I wanted and then did all sorts of stuff to the bass sound. And I think every tracks run through like a, tape saturation plug in that I got and was like, hey, I’m gonna put this on everything.

Tom Ray: Yeah.

Jason Erb: And you plugins well.

Tom Ray: And you also have. And I wa.

There is a reverse reverb effect on the vocals in the second verse

Wantna ask you one more thing before we go. there are occasional like, swooshes and swell noises. And did you put those in as you were going along? Or afterwards did you kind of go. This part here needs some. But they’ll just kind of come in lightly in different spots on the song. Like, what was your process for adding those extra noises? Are you,

Jason Erb: So are you talking about like the reverse reverb effect on the vocals in the second verse or something?

Tom Ray: No, it’s something else. There’s literally. Sometimes it’ll just be, you know, or something like that, just like transitioning from one part to the next. Or maybe I’m just hearing something. I don’t know. Do you see any, It sounds like maybe I am mishearing something that you had used.

Jason Erb: The one thing that it may be is in the second verse, there is a reverse reverb.

Speaker C: Always try nothing more away.

Jason Erb: Put on like. Okay, the first line of two or three lines. I, forget exactly out the but.

Tom Ray: So it is more of a residual effect rather than an instrument that you were adding in or.

Jason Erb: Well, that was so. No, that. I mean, I did it manual. I’m sure there’s probably ways you can do this easy. But I would reverse your vocal. Put a big reverb on it with a long tail. Bounce that down just the Reverb, tail, Flip that around, chop, and move it to the front. So, so, so you get, you get the. The reverb is, is backwards. So you get like the very first consonant sound. M kind of like zooms in. I’m hoping, describing, it. Well, for the two watchers, which I think are us.

Tom Ray: Well, we get replay views. It will ll be all right. But no. okay, so that’s probably what I was thinking of. I mean, I’ll have to go back and I’ll message you if I think of like. No, I was talking about. Because off top of my head right now, without listening to it, I can’t point out what part I’m thinking of. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is, is that you did this. And I want to thank you for doing it. It was actually really cool. I liked it a lot. And also, do you have anything you want to mention before we head out today? anything you have coming up, any projects you’re working on or stuff like that you’d like to talk about?

Jason Erb: Go listen to Velcroy. They’re great, I hear.

Do Lorenzo’s music have anything to do with Back to the Future

I did have a question from you, Tom. One. One last question.

Tom Ray: Yeah.

Jason Erb: And I hate asking people about their band names.

Tom Ray: Okay.

Jason Erb: But does Lorenzo’s music have anything to do with Back to the Future?

Tom Ray: Back to the Future? No. Ok, how would it be in Back to the Future? I’ve always. So it is Garfield, the voice of Garfield. Carlton the doorman. Yes. it is not the movie Lorenzo’s Oil. but how is it Back to the Future? I know Back to the Future.

Jason Erb: I’m sorry, what did you say it was?

Tom Ray: It’s the voice of Garfield, Peter, Bnkman, Carlton the doorman, Garfield the cat. It’s the guy that does voicema his names. He’s also the creator of the Bob Newhart show. his name was Lorenzo Music, and we put the apostrophy because, his lawyer heard about our band name when we were originally called Lorenzo Music, and they sent us a nice little letter going, hey, we heard you’re using his name. And we went, no, we’re not. And we put an apostrophe s on it. So.

Tom Pew: I’ve got an alternate story that you could use if

Jason Erb: All right, well, I’ve got an alternate story that you could use if.

Tom Ray: Yeah, Fact, the future one intrigues me. What is it?

Jason Erb: I was just rewatching Back to the Future for, I guess, probably the, 800th time the other week. And, there’s scene, the scene where, Marty, like, it’s at the dance and the band is smoking in the car, and Marty gets locked in the trunk. one of the band members is named Lorenzo, and they keep talking about Lorenzo, and Lorenzo’s locked the keys in the trunk. And I was like, oh, maybe it’s some cool. Like, if Marty hadn’t gone back in time and invented Chuck Berry’s rock and roll, what musical, world would we live in? Some alternate history thing where Lorenzo’s music took over instead of Marty McFly.

Tom Ray: You m put way more thought into that than I did. I basically came home lot, and on, Nick at Night, Bob Newhart show was playing, the credits were rolling, and it said Lorenza Music. And I said, that would be a cool band name. That’s really how it came about. But yours is nice and elaborate. I like that one. I wish I would have thought of that.

Jason Erb: You can tweak it as much as you’d like.

Tom Ray: All right, I’m going to add that to my history. When people ask me the etymology of the song. See, there I go. I use the word etymology_m sounds good. So thank you for talking with me today. That was, I mean, it was so cool of you to do that remix.

Jason Erb: Great talking to you.

Tom Ray: Tom Pew.