I got Alex started playing in a band when he just turned twelve years old. We were asked to play at a party so we found another guitarist and a drummer and within one month played our first gig. At the time I was doing all the vocals with the exception of an AC/DC and a Ramones song that Alex sang. As we played more gigs over the next year, Alex continued to take on more of the lead vocal responsibility in addition to his duties on guitar.

Although Alex was listening to the likes of AC/DC, Rush and Led Zeppelin to name a few, he was developing a strong desire to play the blues and leaned toward the styles of Stevie Ray Vaughan, Eric Clapton, and Jimi Hendrix. I think the local blues-jams really influenced Alex's new found love for the blues too. Alex started writing his first songs during the summer of 2005 after attending a "Rock The Park" outdoor concert in London, Ontario. There he realized that he needed to write his own music and front his own band if he was ever going to have any shot at pursuing a future in music. Immediately after returning home from London, he wrote his first two songs.

At only 13 years old it was difficult for Alex to write blues lyrics which usually depict hard times and life struggles, so instead Alex decided to write fictional stories about the lives of others. Being a highly visual learner, Alex continually studied the music videos of Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jimi Hendrix to steal any licks he could as well as mimic some of the stage antics of Hendrix. From this, Alex was able to incorporate several of his idols' licks and stage antics into his shows which gained him much applause from his audiences.

In October 2005, 13 year old Alex was ready and eager to front his own band so I willingly passed the front-man responsibilities on to him to form the trio of The Alex Tintinalli Band. With Alex on lead vocals and guitar, Mike Boltz on drums and me on bass we managed to form a cohesive unit that would play some 30 shows of varying sizes by the end of 2006.

Our most memorable show was when we opened for The Yardbirds when they came to Waterloo. Its not that we remember much about our own show but we were so pumped about opening for the legendary Yardbirds that it felt like we were in a dream that night. It was a real buzz! In fact, Alex was so enamoured with lead guitarist Ben King that he sat on stage right in front of him for their whole show in awe of the entire experience.
By summer of 2006, Alex had written enough songs for an album. Each time we played Alex's songs, we received overwhelming reactions from audiences. We knew it was time to go into to the studio. Before heading into the studio, we spent numerous hours dedicated to rehearsing including on the hottest day of the summer. We were up in Mike's attic around 7:00pm and the temperature was over 50 degrees Celsius! Needless to say even with three fans blowing, we did not rehearse for very long that night.

After searching out various studios in the area we found a local studio where Alex felt comfortable and un-intimidated. James "Jamie" Schneider at Edison Recordings had the right combination of record engineering experience, great analog and digital equipment, a quality studio with a relaxing environment, and a mild nature about him, that we decided to move ahead and record with him. This made the next six months an enjoyable experience for Alex, Mike and I in the studio.

Thanks Jamie! We feel we made an excellent decision. We hope you too will feel the same after listening to the album.
The first step in recording the album was to capture the drum tracks (a.k.a. bed tracks) with everyone playing along to them. Once we were happy with the drum tracks we went back to the bass, rhythm guitar and vocal tracks and re-recorded them all over again one instrument at a time. A click track (a.k.a. metronome) was used on all songs to maintain meter and tempo.

Mike did a great job of keeping a good feel throughout the drum tracks and was done in a relatively short amount of time. Leo then re-recorded all of the bass parts to maintain a tight rhythm section. The boy wonder Alex, was next. All the rhythm guitar was re-done in the same manner. This gave Alex a chance to fine-tune all of his guitar parts. He did an amazing job at capturing the nice feel and warm tone you hear.

The next step was the lead guitar tracks. We used a vintage Fender Twin Reverb amp that gave us the warm but intense sounding leads. Alex spent many hours fine-tuning the lead tracks to come up with the blazing, high-energy, ear-pleasing sound and feel that you hear on the album. Although Alex had not been in a recording studio before, he was a quick study on the various recording techniques that we used.

Once we were happy with the instrumentation, the next step was vocals. All the vocal tracks were done with the CAD M9 tube microphone. Notice the nice warm sound on Alex's voice. This was the hardest step for Alex in the recording process. You see, Alex's voice was starting to change its pitch which meant that there were many takes on some songs in order to achieve the right pitch. He also spent a lot of time trying to capture the right sound and feel on the vocal tracks. To help with this, before coming to the studio for the vocal sessions, Alex would warm up by singing along with his favourite John Mayer videos to adopt the right frame of mind and mood. The result is the passionate, soulful vocals Alex delivers on the album.

The 9th track, Idle Time, was recorded right after we finished recording Life By The Drop. Alex was really letting loose on the acoustic, so Leo and I decided to record it and see what we got. We were so pleased with the recording that we decided it would serve as a perfect track to put just before Life By The Drop. Overall the whole process of recording the band was very enjoyable. It went very smooth and everyone involved gave 100% of their time and effort. Thanks, guys.