Bring a group of rock ‘n’ rollers together for a weekend of music-making, have them hang out in a basement (with beer and pizza of course), and good things are bound to happen.

A few weeks ago, Sharlene Birdsong (of Thee Tsunamis, WhiteMoms) invited some like-minded musicians to write an EP’s worth of songs with her. She summoned Nick Smith (The Constants, The Ramettes) to play guitar, Mark Cutsinger (Zero Boys) to play drums, and Cameron Holloway (The Icks) to play keys, as well as David “Moose” Adamson (DMA, Jookabox) to be the project’s producer. Having been a longtime fan of Adamson’s catalog, as we talk over the phone on an October evening, she admits that she was especially excited to get an opportunity to work with him, saying, “I just picked Moose because he does everything right.”

The group (who would eventually decide upon the band name Cut the Dog Shit) took very little time to gel, recording four songs their first night together. Birdsong recalls, “It happened really fast. I had some songs that I was just kind of saving up for this that I wanted to try out. I just started showing them my songs, and it was good right off the bat.” From Smith’s ripping riffs to Cutsinger’s drumming “genius” to Holloway’s “badass” command on keys, things were all clicking, Birdsong remembers (check out a short playlist of examples of these musicians other work below).
 

“They’re all up for anything, which made it easy,” she says. “We didn’t really have to pry anybody out of their shell. It was kind of just like a hangout.”

Some issues did come up in the recording process, however. Adamson (who took part in a previous EP in a Weekend) recollects, “We recorded on a Tascam 388. It's an older machine and it was cranky. Some of the tracks didn't work, etc. So there was a bit of a learning curve with that, figuring out what we were going to be able to do.” Despite the hitches, Adamson still gained from working with this unfamiliar equipment.

“[The Tascam 388] was a lot of fun to use and that made me want to find one for my jam zone at home,” he says. “I got some hands on experience cleaning tape heads, which I am definitely going to use on the couple of reel-to-reels I have sitting around at home. And I was able to put EQing concepts to practical use to try to allow every element of the mix to have its own place.”

After recording songs the first two days, Sunday was devoted to polishing the recordings, which ended up sounding great in Adamson’s opinion. “I think the songs are really raw and heavy,” he says. “I love the sound of analog tape and I think it was especially appropriate for this group of artists.”

Looking back, Birdsong really enjoyed working with this new team of musicians, especially considering the laid back approach they had throughout the project’s short timespan. She reflects, “It all came together really naturally. It felt like we were all just hanging out for three days and at the end we had some songs.” So in her eyes, the Cut the Dog Shit EP was a tremendous success.

“If I had a band, I would want it to sound like that,” she says. “I like everything about it. I wish that we could play more.”

Shout out to Smallbox for helping out by sponsoring this series. Be sure to chek out our past EP in a weekend projects right here.