While we're working on releasing our upcoming album, we'll share some stories behind our old songs. "Set on Fire" from "Varona" (2007). http://music.varonaband.com/track/set-on-fire Sometimes when writing, composing, arranging or recording a song there are these extra special euphoric episodes. When you hear something fall into place, something so perfect, it makes you smile. Set on Fire is one of the earlier songs. It was just the first year of making music in the band. One of these euphoric moments for me was when Amit came up with his guitar parts as we were playing the repeating chords. I started smiling and had a hard time coming in with the vocal. We were practicing in Timur’s living room. Another special moment was when Andy looped his bass and started playing trombone. When we were rehearsing and later playing this live Timur played Cabasa. This was one of the two tracks that Amit played on the acoustic guitar (the other, Pereplela, he actually played on nylon string guitar). In the beginning of our time together for some reason I had a bias against the electric guitar and was arguing with Amit which one he should play. Eventually he convinced me with his electric guitar playing. So all in all, with looped bass, trombone, acoustic guitar, cabasa and the thunder tube for the intro, this was a very exciting new sound for us. Then Amit left to Israel and we never got to reworking this song and never played it live again. I couldn’t play his guitar parts myself and it was hard to substitute them with another instrument. When we were recording the first album we were doing it in many stages, overdubbing many instruments… adding more and more… In January 2007 Vladimir Zimakov (who lived in LA at the time) introduced Timur and I to his friend Mike Kolovsky (who was visiting LA). Mike plays tuba in Auktyon, one of my most favorite bands from Russia and one I was influenced by a lot. So before meeting Mike, I thought, wouldn’t it be cool to record with him? The idea at the time seemed unreal. Nevertheless, after Vlad introduced me to Mike over the phone, Timur and I drove to LA with a laptop, a mic, and a Presonus Firebox. And with the tuba. Mike tuba was left behind in St. Petersburg, so we had to rent one. We didn’t have that much choice as there were not many tuba rental places in Bay Area, so we rented one with the wrong kind of valves (piston instead of rotary). But Mike managed. The whole thing was surreal. Here is Mike Kolovsky whom I heard on Auktyon records and have seen in concerts, here he’s playing along to our songs in a living room in LA. We ended up recording total of five songs with Mike for the album and two or three were recorded that evening. Set on Fire was either one of them or might have been recorded later in San Francisco. You can hear him scream into the tuba at 1:18. All this was kind of last minute or for some other reason, I didn’t take Monday off work, so after recording and hanging out we drove back to San Francisco at night. I slept at Timur’s place for a couple of hours and elated went to work.
