Ranch On Mars

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Galactic Cowboys are THE best band you’ve never heard of. They flew pretty far under most peoples’ radar, which is really a shame. The Cowboys combined the melodic and harmonic sweetness of the Beatles with more progressive metal music elements. While they never had massive commercial success, they developed a rabid and fanatically loyal fan base, of which I am a part.

Monty Colvin has a huge bass sound, the product of a bi-amped setup in which he runs the lower frequencies through a traditional bass amp and the highs through a Marshall guitar stack.

One of many interesting things about this song is that there isn’t a single lead vocal, the entire lead consists of a stacked choir vocal the whole way through. The effect it gives is quite distinctive and really adds to the overall ambience of the song.

Capturing both of these elements was vital in attempting to pay homage to the Cowboys’ sound. Without either of them, you just don’t have Ranch on Mars.

Sonically speaking, this track is a beast. When I got to mixing and mastering stages, I very quickly realized that I had a huge challenge ahead. The recording itself is very thick… there are a lot of layers of guitars, vocals, bass, etc. When you start to combine these elements, you begin to realize just how much of your aural bandwidth is being spent in thickness rather than in overall output. In the end, I finally started to realize that in order to get the song to an appropriate ‘volume level’ (average RMS… probably the easiest way to explain it without getting into engineering-speak) I needed to start dialing things back. As I brought levels down, the overall headroom I had for improving the signal level increased. Ironically, this also cleared up a lot of muddiness and made each individual element sound clearer and more defined – especially the tracks I’d lowered in the mix.

Eventually it came to the point where I couldn’t finish mastering it without losing my mind, and my good friend Wes was more than willing to step in and finesse the last little bit of tastiness out of the project.

Very special thanks to Pudge for the harp solos, and Wesley Perdue and Lance Scott for their mix/master expertise. This recording could not have been brought to completion without you.

Monty Colvin continues to record a quasi-regular podcast called “Monty’s Rockcast” and has a band called Crunchy.

To the Cowboys: Monty, Ben, Alan, Dane, Wally… Thank you. I patiently look forward to the reunion album and tour someday.

“We are brothers in our hearts”

Dedicated to the crew of the 25th Space Shuttle mission and their families.

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