Update on the Wolves & Sheep hip hop and rock concept album “Grey Expectations”

by Tyler Durdin | Aug 20, 2020 | Behind The Music, Music

Update on the Wolves & Sheep hip hop and rock concept album “Grey Expectations”

I know it’s been a minute. To those of you who have been waiting patiently for the arrival of the Wolves & Sheep concept album “Grey Expectations” … we are sorry for the delay. The road has been a bit bumpy lately for many of us in the band, and I’m sure it’s been rough for many of you as well. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel. Hopefully there’s not a freight train attached to it.

You’ll notice that we have a new album cover, designed by Liv Caspersson who is the daughter of my mentor, colleague, and good friend Ian Caspersson from IC9Design. Ian has done a good portion of the Wolves & Sheep artwork including the logo and wolf and sheep images. More on the album cover in a later post.

So where to begin. Well we ran into some snags during mixing. I’m sure DJ Silent Beard would love to tell you all about it, but unfortunately, he’s sticking to his code of silence. Maybe one day we’ll get him on the AMP’D UP podcast and he can tell everyone why it’s taken us 8 months to ‘almost’ be close to mixing. Could it have something to do with covid? Perhaps it’s the 17 songs containing what he would probably say are “too many vocal tracks?” Maybe his computer crashed? I’m not saying it was aliens… but it was definitely aliens.

The good news is that after they showed us all the meaning of life, they added more tambourine and digitally enhanced every one of Robin’s high hats. So what does that mean exactly? It means that Tyler has to drive 16 hours to Maryland… avoiding hotels because those places were germ farms before the coronavirus… and spend a week with Kit Whitacre and Ryan Billings (aka the beard that is silent) wearing masks and making donuts.

I wanted this album mixed by the end of March. While we’re being honest, I don’t really want to make this trip. This whole virus thing is annoying. I’m gonna miss my family. Hopefully I’m making the right decision by driving down there. I want this concept album to sound amazing and Ryan and Kit have done a great job up to this point. “Grey Expectations” needs a little TLC.

I’ve been absent from social media. I miss all the friends… and fans. All of us in Wolves & Sheep miss you. We’ve been in our caves. Well maybe I’m the only one who retreated to his cave. Kai has been in need of a great deal of attention. I couldn’t find time to work on mixes and marketing and all the other stuff while still being attentive to her and Alex. But I did manage to find time to put together a free 5-song EP that I’m going to release soon as a thank you to all the fans for supporting us on this adventure… that still isn’t done yet.

But I promise that it will be done soon. We hope that you all haven’t checked out on us. We’ll be back on all our social media platforms soon and can’t wait to see what you all have been up to.

“Grey Expectations”… coming sometime before the velociraptor hummingbirds and the covid-19 vaccine. Stay tuned for continuous updates including behind the scenes stories from the making of the album.

Tyler Durdin from Wolves & Sheep

The Grey Expectations Crew – Cash The PRO

by Tyler Durdin | Apr 25, 2020 | Behind The Music

The Grey Expectations Crew – Cash The PRO

Cashmere The PROfessional

ALBUM ROLES: Emcee, Writer, PROfessional
Cash The Pro Facebook
Cash The Pro Twitter
Cash The Pro Instagram

“This most PROfessional of all mammals uses his extensive vocabulary, carefully crafted lyrics, and razor sharp delivery to sneak up on unsuspecting prey. Although he can be found lurking near office conference rooms, he is most comfortable in his native environments… the studio and the stage.”

– David Attenborough #BBC

Hello everyone, meet Cash The PRO aka #Cashmere The PROfessional. He’s the #grown man in the middle. He is one of the wolves in this band (Wolves & Sheep), and he’s not only one of the dopest rappers and writers on the planet, he’s my best friend. I met Cash online and we became really close when I moved to #Atlanta in 2000. We started making music together and have been best buds ever since.

Cash stopped making music a while ago, but he’s too damn talented to not have a dope project of this calibre on his resume, so I harassed him until he agreed to be on this album.

I can honestly say that this album would not be anywhere near as good without him on it. He’s taught me damn near everything I know about being a solid emcee. He used to murder me on every track, now I can hold my own with him… sometimes.

Cash and I also recorded our first video podcast last week and we’ll be editing it and releasing soon… and we plan on doing it regularly. Our first topic of discussion was the dumpster fire known as #TheRiseOfSkywalker.

Say hello to one of Kai’s favorite uncles…. Uncle Cash!

– Tyler Durdin and Wolves & Sheep

The Grey Expectations Crew – Robin Eckman

by Tyler Durdin | Apr 21, 2020 | Behind The Music

The Grey Expectations Crew – Robin Eckman

Robin Eckman

ALBUM ROLES: Drums, Honey Drums, Percussion, Great Hair

Social Media Links
3rd Grade Friends Facebook
3rd Grade Friends Instagram
3rd Grade Friends Twitter

Hello everyone. Meet Robin Eckman. Robin no longer has a social media platform, so he gets to see nothing I write about him. 😁 He’s the guy in this photo with the great hair. Oh wait, he’s the only guy in this photo with hair. I met Robin through Joe Martin and their band 3rd Grade Friends. The first time I saw him play, I was blown away. Not long after that, we linked up to track drums for our song “Ration Day.” It was the first time I’d ever worked with him and he showed up prepared and absolutely crushed it!!!

Robin had never played drums on hip hop tracks prior to joining Wolves & Sheep, which shocked me because he was perfect for it. To put it bluntly, he’s TIGHT! He’s always in the pocket, his levels are always right where they need to be, and he has the innate ability to modify his tone so his drums become more than a backing track… cutting through the mix to become instruments of their own.

Robin will tell you otherwise (he’s extremely humble, almost to a fault), but he can do things on drums I’ve never seen or heard. If you ask almost anyone in the DMV area, they will tell you that Robin Eckman is the best drummer they’ve ever seen.

He almost wasn’t able to finish the album up with us due to tendonitis in his elbow, but I’ll save that story for a later date. Luckily he pushed through the pain and we’re all grateful he did because this album WOULD NOT be the same without his special sauce.

So say hi to Robin and thank him for sacrificing his body to finish this album with us!

– Tyler Durdin and Wolves & Sheep

The Grey Expectations Crew – Erin “Atlas” Thompson

by Tyler Durdin | Feb 3, 2020 | Behind The Music

The Grey Expectations Crew – Erin “Atlas” Thompson

Erin “ATLAS” Thompson

ALBUM ROLES: Emcee, Writer, Piano, Keys
Guerrilla Music
Instagram
Facebook
Twitter

Hello everyone. Meet Atlas. He’s one of the wolves in our band and he’s on the far left in the photo above. Erin is an extremely talented keyboard player, producer, writer, and emcee… and he’s a great friend of Tyler’s.

I’ve known Erin for over 20 years now. I believe we first met at WRUR during the Bruce Banner show. It’s possible that’s incorrect, so he’ll have to correct me. We clicked immediately and started working on some music together. We lost most of it, or never released it, or half-ass released it. We became good friends and stayed in touch even as I bounced to Atlanta and then to Annapolis.

Both of us eventually stopped making music at certain points in our life, but we still managed to inspire each other creatively during these sabbaticals.

Fast forward to the recording of the “More Than Blue” album in 2015. I reached out to Erin to see if he wanted to write a verse for this song called “Star.” He killed it as always, BUT as fate would have it, the song was never completed and the album was released sans that song.

When I was working on “Take It Back”, I reached out to him again and he joined myself and four other emcees Mr. SOS, Ardamus, Zero Basement (William George), and Cash The Pro (RG Cashmere Johnson) on yet again, another track that ended up almost not getting released until I decided to just take care of it on my own nearly a year after it was recorded.

Have you noticed a trend here? Without throwing anyone under the bus, let’s just say that a lot of these issues helped steer me to the place I’m at today… and where we are as a band. When I was younger, I wasn’t focused. As I got older, I was focused, but leaning too heavily on other people who didn’t have the same passion and drive. But when you’re not in control of every aspect of something, you eventually find yourself in a place where your hands are completely tied and you can’t do a damn thing about it. I was tired of it and decided I wanted to at least write and produce one album where I was making all the executive decisions.

Fast forward again to the spring of 2019. We had already begun working on “Grey Expectations” and I was in the process of writing. I started thinking of folks who I felt were capable of writing verses that had to adhere to specific topics. I know plenty of rappers, many of them are much better than I am from a technical standpoint, but there are very few who are consistently capable of writing content-specific bars without a significant amount of micromanagement.

Atlas was a no-brainer. He also had a number of skills a lot of other folks I knew did not have… he was a producer, engineer, and an insanely good keyboard player. At that point, I had laid down all the piano, keys, and synth on the album, and although I can somewhat get by, I’m not even close to a capable keyboard player and rely heavily on midi, which gives me the freedom to make a lot of mistakes.

Erin is on the complete opposite side of the spectrum. He’s a dedicated piano player and an outstanding “feel” player. One thing I made a conscious effort to not do on this album is stifle anyone’s creativity. This album is littered with raw emotion and spontaneous grooves and melodies. I prefer to act as a guide when I’m producing. If I hear something I like, I’ll hone in on it and ensure we fine-tune it, but I prefer to embrace each artist’s creative spirit until it’s necessary for me to offer specific input.

I knew Erin was one of the missing links, but he was in #Rochester… I was now in #Madison … and we were finishing the album in #Annapolis. Even when he told me how excited and honored he was that I’d asked him to be part of the band, I tried not to get my hopes up. I knew he had a lot going on and it might be extremely difficult for him to make the trip to Annapolis within such a tight time frame, especially when Kit and I were trying to schedule studio sessions around Kit’s work schedule and times when the other band members could record.

Well folks, he made it and it was every bit as awesome as I expected. He’d never met Cash and Kit Whitacre before, but they all gel’d instantly. That entire weekend was a non-stop adrenaline rush. The vibe in the #MustardMansion was intoxicating and we rode that wave all weekend long.

If you’ve made it this far, please welcome Erin and make sure you follow him at Guerrilla Music LLC and check out some of his music at www.guerrillamusic.net

– Tyler Durdin and Wolves & Sheep

The Grey Expectations Crew – Kit Whitacre

by Tyler Durdin | Jan 7, 2020 | Behind The Music

The Grey Expectations Crew – Kit Whitacre

KIT WHITACRE

Co-producer, Engineer, Mixing, Vocals, Electric Guitar, Saxophone, Organs, Synth, Harmonica, Percussion (More Tambo!)

Well, it’s time to get the blog rolling. Not like anyone will read this… or care… but it took me a couple weeks to clean up this website.

Now that I’ve got that out of the way, let’s get things started by introducing my man Kit Whitacre, whom I’m extremely grateful to have co-producing this album with me. “Grey Expectations” is soooooo much better because of all the work he’s put into it.

NOTE: I have no concept of dates or times anymore, so let’s just assume that all dates are within like 10 years going forward.

How We Met
I met Kit at a poker game at a mutual friend’s house sometime around 2015. S/O to Dave Bowen and Rick Morrison. We started talking about music. He told me he was in a couple bands. I probably told him I wrote greeting cards for Hallmark or some shit.

He was pretty young at the time, maybe 23 or 24, but he acted much older. Had a good head on his shoulders… humble… great listener… and unlike most of the other Annapolitans his age, I didn’t feel inclined to slide tackle him into a vat of Old Bay.

I ended up running into him a lot after that, but even the first time I met him I knew there was something about him that made him special.

You’re going to hear me say this a lot about the artists on this album, but I distinctly remember telling him that one day we were gonna make some dope music. We eventually linked up to lay down down some vocals for a couple songs that I produced for RG Cashmere Johnson, then I moved to VA and Kai was born… and I probably disappeared for a couple years.

Uniting for “Grey Expectations”
When I found out that Alex and I were moving to #Wisconsin, I knew I needed to get some drums tracked with Robin Eckman before I left. I reached out to the engineer I’d been using previously, but he was booked. In hindsight, it was a blessing in disguise. It had been a year or two since I’d seen Kit, but I hit him up and asked if he was available to record some stuff in his basement studio #MustardMansion.

Initially, we just needed a place to record drums, but as the album started developing, Kit’s role expanded dramatically. It had been a couple years since I’d seen him perform, and I was blown away by how much he had advanced as an engineer, producer, singer, and musician. Even at that time I didn’t realize just how damn talented he was, but he got to see more and more of it each session.

We had a few sessions with Robin… recorded some drums… and then I headed to #Madison where I began writing and sequencing.

By September, 2019 I was pretty close to done with all the writing and was able to piece together some solid demos using Robin’s drums and Tony Quintero’s guitars, bass, and congas. BUT… I still had a lot to do. Not only did we have to add musical and vocal layers to these “demo” tracks, but in developing the story for “Grey Expectations” I felt it was necessary to add… oh about 7 new tracks. Initially we planned on 10 songs. The album is now at 17. 🙂

I had always planned to return to Annapolis to record vocals and instrumentation, but after adding new songs, I knew I’d have to be gone at least a month. I was there for two.

From Wisconsin to Annapolis
I’m still not exactly sure how this worked out so well, but Kit just happened to be visiting his dad like 3 hours north of Madison. We worked it out perfectly so that I would drive an hour and a half north and his dad would drive an hour and a half south and there… at a Denny’s… we would begin our adventure to complete our “adventure” album.

Kit’s “Grey Expectations” notebook.

The 16-hour drive worked out great. We listened to the demos and discussed ideas, and the whole time Kit was sitting there with his notebook jotting everything down. I don’t recall what we ate, which states we drove through, or where we slept, but I remember all the important stuff. I also got to know Kit a lot better. Spend 16 hours in a car with someone, and you’ll bond real quick… or want to kill each other. Both of us are still alive.

Making the Album
We made it to Annapolis on a Thursday, about 2 hours before Kit had to go to work. The next day we started bright and early at like 11:30 🙂 and began getting all the sessions prepped for Robin, who was coming in on Saturday to track drums. This is probably a good place to end for now, but I’ll continue the story in future posts.

To be continued…

– Tyler Durdin and Wolves & Sheep

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