Earlier this summer, while visiting Sly at his new house, he showed me his plans for the studio he expects to start building this fall, the successor to GreenGrove Studio. Still in the planning stages, he walked me through the layout, desk placement, acoustic treatments and workflow. It may eventually give us a second location, alongside SoundQuest, where we can record several musicians playing together.
Exciting stuff…
A Network of Rooms
Each SixFootStilts studio plays a different role. SoundQuest is our purpose-built recording facility. Lifeline is where Lote primarily develops ideas and records vocals, while Fox’s Den remains Sly’s long-established retreat and production studio in the Algonquin Highlands. His new studio will become the next link in that creative network.
In July, Sly and I spent three days at Fox’s Den with our partners, enjoying the sunshine, some boating, plenty of good food, drinks and laughter. Oh, and we worked on our music too! Eventually, music found its way onto the agenda: put up a song, pull it apart, try something unexpected and return to it later without watching the clock.
We also discussed upgrading the DAW software in our studios to Fender Studio Pro 8. A DAW, or Digital Audio Workstation, is a little like Word or Excel but for making music. While new tools are exciting, changing the software at the centre of our studios is also a little scary and definitely a pain in the ass.
Each system has its own plugins, interfaces, file structures and familiar workflows. Will older projects open properly? Will every plugin work? Will the routing survive? When everything is stable, you don’t want to touch it. But if you never touch it, you eventually get left behind, and it has been three years since our last update!
So, we’re looking forward to the possibilities while bracing ourselves for the installation and subsequent troubleshooting, which will undoubtedly involve some colourful language.
Old Business, New Legends
Meanwhile, WooWoo & VooDoo is waiting on me to finish writing/recording a few bass lines and complete several vocals with a friend of mine who is a singer. I’m the one holding things up, and I’m aiming to bring the album across the finish line September ‘ish…
At the same time, Lote and Sly have begun developing Urban Legends, the working title for our next themed project. Strange encounters, cautionary tales and stories passed from friend to friend feel like ideal SixFootStilts territory. I’ve started exploring possible visual identities for this album cover, and the uncertainty of where it may lead is exactly what makes a new project so energizing.
Separately from SixFootStilts I’ve spent part of the summer working alongside Sly and L’il K Nazzty (our former Beaver/RTZ bandmate) reimagining, revitalizing and remixing selected songs from their roughly 150 original recordings they made while living together in the early 1980s. This project, which we’re calling Sadlee Session Derivatives, will eventually span multiple albums. We’ve completed Volume 1 and are now working on Volume 2. While not publicly available or released yet here is a sneak peak if you are interested in hearing music from the intersection of human creativity and the latest AI based digital music tools…
There is a lot waiting to be built, finished and discovered. Somewhere inside all of it, there is new music waiting to be heard.
Looks like it’s going to be a busy fall…
JawnyB August 1, 2026
