From The Hip is available for purchase at MahoganyRush.com

From The Hip is the last album I recorded with Frank Marino. Sessions were held in Montreal at Frank's newly built studio, Star Base. Parts of the studio were still under construction at the time; I recall tracking drums in the partially finished main room, which added a great deal of character to the drum sound.

The majority of the session was just Frank and me, tracking drums and guitar, as well as overdubbing drums onto some previously recorded guide tracks. As always, he was open to my drumming ideas and encouraged me to play what I felt was right, steering me in the direction he wanted if he felt I was off the mark. It was a lot of work, but a lot of fun, too.

A few session notes you might find interesting:

On "Ride My Own Wave", the solo section at the end just wasn't coming together with only the two of us, so he called Peter Dowse (longtime FMMR bassist) to come in to track it with us. We punched in at the solo section and what you hear is basically the first take we played together. That trio ROCKED!

Four of the tunes on Hip were recorded earlier in my FMMR tenure."Rise Above" and "The Wall Came Down" were tracked during the Full Circle sessions. "Rise Above" was actually the first tune I tracked for for that record, shortly after I arrived from the airport. The 6/8 section is something we had played around with for some time. In fact, we played this at my audition in 1981! That section of the tune is a first take. "Babylon Revisited" and "How Long" were actually recorded during the Juggernaut sessions. An instrumental version of "Babylon" was released on the album Guitar Speak 2 in 1988. I had completely forgotten about "How Long" - to the point of actually asking Frank if I was drumming on it!