What better way to celebrate the release of your band's new album than by taking the stage at Iota? How about sharing that celebration with two other local bands who are doing the very same thing. Tonight, Arlington's great little venue is hosting the CD release parties for three very talented local bands — The City Veins, Julie Ocean and Yell County. We asked each of the bands a few questions about their albums. See what they had to say and get an idea of what you can expect tonight.

The City Veins, Cracks in the Floor

Where did you record the album? And with whom?
Spencer Vliet (drums): We recorded the guitars, vocals, keys, handclaps, and various percussion in Charles' bedroom and apartment hallway, in D.C. His neighbors must have loved hearing him mess up the same guitar solo repeatedly for 45 minutes. Fortunately, they were nice enough to not call the police. For the drums, we found this guy Mike Eudy online who just opened a great new home studio in his condo in Rockville. It's got these high, angled ceilings that created a nice open sound. Mike mixed it too, and we had it mastered at Silver Sonya in Arlington.

Photo by Darren Higgins

What were the high and low points of that process?

Charles Gray (guitar/DCist Nats columnist): High points - One high point was hearing Spencer's drum beat on "In The Sky." He has this crazy beat in 9/8 that is just awesome. In fact, it was so good that it became difficult to add anything to that song. Every extra instrument just made the drums harder to hear. Overall, getting done with recording and mixing, and hearing the whole thing back was great. The best part is when you can listen back to it and be happy with what you've done. It takes a while to get there, but when you do it makes the whole effort worthwhile.

Low points - Getting our CDs back from duplication was a chore. In fact, after we sent away our master to be reproduced, we learned that the company we were using had copied our last CD with a different band's music on it. When we finally got the CDs, which took a lot longer than expected, the first question was "Is it us?" In fact, sometimes we think that we should play each of the 1,000 CDs that we printed just to be sure that we are on all of them. Also, staying up until all hours of the night recording for several weeks starts to take its toll, particularly when you have to spend that much time with Aaron Tarr. Finally, mixing a CD will drive anyone completely insane, and we're barely sane to begin with.

Did you have a vision for the album before recording? Does the end product match up with that?

Spencer: We didn't really have a grand "vision". We had recently gone through a lineup change, and our goal was to have a CD that sounded like us, to capture our stage energy. But basically, we had a bunch of songs that we really liked and we wanted to make them sound great on CD. I think we've done that.

Were there any unexpected challenges in making this record?

Charles: There are always unexpected challenges. The biggest was probably getting used to how long the process takes. Our initial idea was to record a nice little EP, and get it out by mid-March. Mid-March quickly turned into April, and so on until it is June. Basically, things go wrong constantly when you're in a band.

Did you learn anything for future recording endeavors from this process?

Charles: We learned that you can hold a microphone in place with a plastic coke bottle cap. This is useful when your singer forgets to bring the right mic clip. Mostly, though, we were a little more adventurous with this CD, and the results were pretty good. I think that'll give us confidence in the future to try even more new things, like different sounds or time signatures. This was the first time we wrote and recorded as a whole band and we learned a lot about what works for us.

What should people expect from your show this Friday?

Spencer: We're going all out for this show. We're bringing some special guests up to play with us, like Tom Hnatow from These United States and a horn section on some songs, and we're really excited to be debuting new stuff. It's going to be a great time.

Julie Ocean, Long Gone and Nearly There

Where did you record the album? And with whom?

The album was recorded at Dragonfly Studios in Haymarket, Va., and Stratosphere Sound in NYC. It was produced by Geoff Sanoff, who's produced people like Luna and Fountains of Wayne, among others. It was put out by Philadelphia-based Transit of Venus Records: www.transitofvenusmusic.com -- it's also available via iTunes, eMusic and Amazon.

Did you have a vision for the album before recording? Does the end product match up with that?

We just wanted to make a fairly short, fairly concise record full of short, concise, poppy songs. We like the way it turned out.

What should people expect from your show this Friday?

A lot of explosions, some smoke, some glitter, many exhortations to "put your hands together." It's going to have a sort of mid-period Kiss feel.

Yell County, a real fine hole

Where did you record the album?

Actiondale Studios

And with whom?

Mike Harvey

What were the high and low points of that process?

High: Making the music come to life.
Low: Everything but making the music come to life. In other words, when recording music and mixing it, it's fantabulous, but scheduling, finding money, waiting for the next session/phase/whatever would make a preacher cuss.

Did you have a vision for the album before recording?

I envisioned it as a collection of singles, rather than an album as a whole, in a way.

Does the end product match up with that?

Yes. Every song on it is good, I swear to Og.

Were there any unexpected challenges in making this record?

Only in that what you have in your head is often different from what it ends up sounding like, if you'll pardon my dangling preposition. But that is also often a good thing. The sound thing, not the dangling thing.

Did you learn anything for future recording endeavors from this process?

Yeah, but it mostly involves self-flagellation, so I'll spare you the details.

What should people expect from your show this Friday?

Everything you love about rock 'n' roll served up like a pheasant under glass. Kind of like the early Kinks and Who if they formed a supergroup with the Clash and MC5. It's like the Fantastic Four of Rock, except there's three of us.