The Arlington Sessions

I am not really sure where to begin describing this past weekend. As devoted readers know, Shane came into town for a pre-tour rehearsal weekend. What started as a lark, with Shane blurting out "We should go on an open mic night tour!" after the Players Pub incident last December, is becoming-- dare I say it?-- a reality. We spent the weekend working on songs and playing guitar (and banjo!) as we planned (and eating hamburgers, and doing photo shoots, and making videos-- mainly of drunken dancing at Saturday night's BBQ, mind you-- and most of the other things that were on our to do list). But the whole thing got turned up to eleven when we went into the Lab of Luxury studios here in Arlington yesterday to record some of the songs we've been working on. After making sure we had our instruments, tuner, picks, lyrics, the teach-yourself-how-to-play-banjo book, and plenty of nervous energy, we went over hoping to record scratch tracks with which we could practice a little bit over the next month, perhaps in an attempt to not suck when we went on tour. Our able producers (Jeff Streicher and Jesse Meik of Jude the Innocent fame-- album from them, coming soon!), however, somehow transformed our simple little ditties into ACTUAL SONGS!!! I don't know how they did it (neither does Shane, he thinks they used magic) but somehow or another, we now have three seed songs for an EP. Currently labeled "The Arlington Sessions", this recording session exceeded our wildest hopes and dreams. It was so fun, I have to recommend that everyone who might read this go out, pick up an instrument, write a song, and record it. It is the most fun thing you could possibly do. Even my schaack-optimism was dwarfed by the final product, an example of which you can hear below. Of course, when we are on tour, Jeff and Jesse won't be there laying awesome drum tracks and intoxicating bass lines, so it will sound a little bit more like good ol' me and Shane, but it was so fun to watch the song grow and develop as we layered the music and at least some new elements can be re-created on stage with castanets and some fearless harmonizing. Like I said, go do this if you can. You will wonder why you do anything else. More DWO tour details soon!

To hear Double-Wide Optimism's official worldwide debut
of their self-titled single,
"Double-Wide Optimism"
click below!
(that's a lot of optimism in one sentence, brace yourself!)
Written by
Shane Lewinski
Performed by
Shane Lewinski, Jeff Streicher, Jesse Meik, and Sarah Schaack
Produced by Jude the Innocent and recorded at The Lab of Luxury,
Arlington, TX 2009