Eventually All At Once

Eventually, All at Once was in part a spontaneous creation, even though the genesis for the songs began months earlier. A good analogy would be childbirth: a nine month gestation period followed by a few hours of labor, or in this case five days of recording in February 2006 by the collective known as Joan of Arc. The labor was documented by a portable 8-track tape machine at Donna Kinsellla's home in Buffalo Grove, IL, the childhood residence to both Tim and Mike Kinsella. In fact, Mike's former bedroom served as the live room of the "recording studio," while Tim's former bedroom was the control room. The one constant on this recording was Tim, which makes sense given that he wrote all of the songs (save for the cover of Robert Wyatt's "Free Will and Testament" that closes the record). Tim's guitar and vocal tracks were recorded first and then Mike, Bobby Burg, Nate Kinsella, Todd Mattei, Cale Parks, Ben Vida and Sam Zurick all came to the house and recorded their parts. Really, though, Tim was the only one who stayed for the entire five days while each day a different member of the group would stop by, lay down their tracks and eat; really most of the time they were eating. The end result of Eventually, All at Once is a casual-folk-drone album. It feels off the cuff, simple and subdued; yet it resonates with all of the intimacy of a new life entering the world.