In the midst of the 2020-2021 covid-19 situation, mike watt asked vince giobbe if he’d like to be a guest on “the watt from pedro show” via the internet, to maybe talk about new music and such. in an exchange of emails, vince explains to watt that he hasn’t written any new music since the pandemic started, so watt asks vince to write some songs and get a project going together with watt. you know, to get vince busy writing new music again. watt tells vince “if it rains fuckin’ lemons, then make fuckin’ lemonade! that’s what we’ll call the project. lemonademakers!” 

vince writes the music for six songs, then watt shows vince how to file share via the internet so watt can compose and add bass tracks to the six songs. watt sends back the songs with inspiring bass tracks attached. love and respect to mike watt for all of this! after some discussion, watt tells vince that he doesn’t want to sing on the songs, just play bass, which kind of puts vince in a bind, because vince can’t sing a lick. vince floats the idea of bringing sean cole onboard to write the words and do the singing, which watt thinks is a great idea!

vince talks to sean on the phone and explains the project, then asks sean if he’s interested in doing the words and the singing? and to please bring his guitar onboard also. sean agrees! now vince didn’t know much about file sharing, and sean knew even less, so for a while it was watt teaching vince, then vince teaching sean how all this file sharing stuff worked! after a while sean sent back files with words, singing, and additional guitar parts. and that’s how we got these songs written during a pandemic.

earlier on, watt asked jerry trebotic if he would come onboard for drums, and if pete mazich could do the recording sessions at his casa hanzo studio in san pedro when the time was right? both said yes! so it was finally time to move this project out of the file sharing world and into the actual recording studio.

first jerry came into casa hanzo and laid down the drums by listening to watt’s bass tracks along with vince playing live guitar into his headphones. jer really hammered ’em out! once the drums were finished, vince came back into casa hanzo and laid down all the rhythm guitar tracks, as to give sean a complete rhythm section to sing and play guitar to when it was his turn to record. sean then came into casa hanzo and did all his guitar parts and vocals. he really knocked us out with his performances. much respect to sean cole! next it was time for vince to come back into casa hanzo, and record his guitar solos, random riffs, and piano parts.

watt then asked vince what he though about bringing in san pedro’s surf guitar aficionado pete botica onboard to play some guitar on a song. vince loved the proposition! the only problem was that sean and vince had already recorded all the guitar parts. so vince came up with the idea of adding a coda at the end of a tune on ukulele, then having botica come in and play surf guitar over the top of it. vince came back into casa hanzo first, to lay down the uke, then botica came in and laid down the most beautiful surf guitar coda anyone could ask for. In one take no less! much respect to pete botica!

now during this whole thing, pete mazich is doing all the recording, listening, and knob turning, and it dawns on watt and vince that he should be doing some of the playing as well. so we ask peetzo if he could lay his hammond organ down on the tracks also. peetzo agrees, and the fifth member of the lemonademakers is officially onboard!

then came mixing, mixing, and more mixing, until we finally got her done. peetzo really did the greatest job bringing these songs to life. we love and respect his production and mixing skills so much. sean and vince learned a lot from peetzo during this project!

sometime during all this, vince asked watt what he thought about having scott aicher come onboard to do the artwork? watt said yes immediately, so vince contacted scott and asked him if he could kindly do the cover art? the only concepts mentioned to him was that watt wanted a lemon storm incorporated somehow, and everyone in the band lived and worked in san pedro. scott then painted us a righteous record cover! we were truly blown away. much respect to scott!

last but not least, we sent the final mixes up to john golden in ventura, ca. to master the songs. that man has great ears! a big thank you to john and his family.

well, that’s our story. hope you enjoy the songs. these are the facts, as best we remember them. -lemonademakers.