I got Alex started playing in a band when he just turned twelve years old. We were asked to play at a party so we found another guitarist and a drummer and within one month played our first gig. At the time I was doing all the vocals with the exception of an AC/DC and a Ramones song that Alex sang. As we played more gigs over the next year, Alex continued to take on more of the lead vocal responsibility in addition to his duties on guitar.

Although Alex was listening to the likes of AC/DC, Rush and Led Zeppelin to name a few, he was developing a strong desire to play the blues and leaned toward the styles of Stevie Ray Vaughan, Eric Clapton, and Jimi Hendrix. I think the local blues-jams really influenced Alex’s new found love for the blues too.

Alex started writing his first songs during the summer of 2005 after attending a “Rock The Park” outdoor concert in London, Ontario. There he realized that he needed to write his own music and front his own band if he was ever going to have any shot at pursuing a future in music. Immediately after returning home from London, he wrote his first two songs. At only 13 years old it was difficult for Alex to write blues lyrics which usually depict hard times and life struggles, so instead Alex decided to write fictional stories about the lives of others.

Being a highly visual learner, Alex continually studied the music videos of Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jimi Hendrix to steal any licks he could as well as mimic some of the stage antics of Hendrix. From this, Alex was able to incorporate several of his idols’ licks and stage antics into his shows which gained him much applause from his audiences.

In October 2005, 13 year old Alex was ready and eager to front his own band so I willingly passed the front-man responsibilities on to him to form the trio of The Alex Tintinalli Band. With Alex on lead vocals and guitar, Mike Boltz on drums and me on bass we managed to form a cohesive unit that would play some 30 shows of varying sizes by the end of 2006.

Our most memorable show was when we opened for The Yardbirds when they came to Waterloo. Its not that we remember much about our own show but we were so pumped about opening for the legendary Yardbirds that it felt like we were in a dream that night. It was a real buzz! In fact, Alex was so enamoured with lead guitarist Ben King that he sat on stage right in front of him for their whole show in awe of the entire experience.



By summer of 2006, Alex had written enough songs for an album. Each time we played Alex’s songs, we received overwhelming reactions from audiences. We knew it was time to go into to the studio. Before heading into the studio, we spent numerous hours dedicated to rehearsing including on the hottest day of the summer. We were up in Mike’s attic around 7:00pm and the temperature was over 50 degrees Celsius! Needless to say even with three fans blowing, we did not rehearse for very long that night.

After searching out various studios in the area we found a local studio where Alex felt comfortable and un-intimidated. James “Jamie” Schneider at Edison Recordings had the right combination of record engineering experience, great analog and digital equipment, a quality studio with a relaxing environment, and a mild nature about him, that we decided to move ahead and record with him. This made the next six months an enjoyable experience for Alex, Mike and I in the studio. Thanks Jamie!

We feel we made an excellent decision. We hope you too will feel the same after listening to the album.



The first step in recording the album was to capture the drum tracks (a.k.a. bed tracks) with everyone playing along to them. Once we were happy with the drum tracks we went back to the bass, rhythm guitar and vocal tracks and re-recorded them all over again one instrument at a time. A click track (a.k.a. metronome) was used on all songs to maintain meter and tempo.

Mike did a great job of keeping a good feel throughout the drum tracks and was done in a relatively short amount of time. Leo then re-recorded all of the bass parts to maintain a tight rhythm section.

The boy wonder Alex, was next. All the rhythm guitar was re-done in the same manner. This gave Alex a chance to fine-tune all of his guitar parts. He did an amazing job at capturing the nice feel and warm tone you hear.

The next step was the lead guitar tracks. We used a vintage Fender Twin Reverb amp that gave us the warm but intense sounding leads. Alex spent many hours fine-tuning the lead tracks to come up with the blazing, high-energy, ear-pleasing sound and feel that you hear on the album. Although Alex had not been in a recording studio before, he was a quick study on the various recording techniques that we used.

Once we were happy with the instrumentation, the next step was vocals. All the vocal tracks were done with the CAD M9 tube microphone. Notice the nice warm sound on Alex’s voice. This was the hardest step for Alex in the recording process. You see, Alex’s voice was starting to change its pitch which meant that there were many takes on some songs in order to achieve the right pitch. He also spent a lot of time trying to capture the right sound and feel on the vocal tracks. To help with this, before coming to the studio for the vocal sessions, Alex would warm up by singing along with his favourite John Mayer videos to adopt the right frame of mind and mood. The result is the passionate, soulful vocals Alex delivers on the album.

The 9th track, Idle Time, was recorded right after we finished recording Life By The Drop. Alex was really letting loose on the acoustic, so Leo and I decided to record it and see what we got. We were so pleased with the recording that we decided it would serve as a perfect track to put just before Life By The Drop.

Overall the whole process of recording the band was very enjoyable. It went very smooth and everyone involved gave 100% of their time and effort. Thanks, guys.




I bought this guitar originally because it was easier to play than other Strats, and I liked its sound, However I found that whenever I used the whammy bar, it would go badly out of tune. So I decided to customize it with Schaller Locking Machine Heads and enhanced the whammy bar spring system and bridge so that whenever I used the whammy bar my strings would stay in tune. I also had the plastic nut replaced with a graphite nut which altogether keep my guitar in tune regardless of how hard I play.

For Love Is Gone, I re-recorded it after upgrading the pickups to Fender Texas Specials. You can hear the difference in tone and intensity of the leads on this song.

I used this solid-top for Idle Time and Life By The Drop. Originally I recorded with a 12-string but found that the 6-string was easier to play and had a much nicer tone so I re-recorded the songs with it. This was a sweet guitar. Thanks David for letting me use it!


This pedal has some nice drive and tone. I used it on all songs except Love Is Gone. It has a nice range of drive, tone and volume.

I got this pedal toward the end of the making of the album and felt it gave me the sound I wanted for Love Is Gone, so I took it to the studio and did the lead guitar all over again. It’s overdrive is more subtle and warmer than the BOSS, however I like switching between the two depending on the song I’m playing.

I only used this pedal on one song, Breakdown. I first played it normal, and then played over top with the pedal upside down (or reversed). When we played the two tracks together we were able to achieve the special rhythm sounds you hear on the song.


I used these amps in unison for all of the rhythm tracks. We put a microphone on each amp and in separate rooms. From that we were able to pull the different tones from each and blend them together where needed.

This is my baby. I love this amp. I used this for all of my leads on the album. Just “crank ‘er up and play like crazy” !



I used most of the studio kit. It was a vintage 1964 Ludwig standard 5-piece set with clear Remo drum heads. I did however use some of my own gear; a 5.5” by 14” Ludwig ensemble snare, DW 5000 single chain bass drum pedal, Sabian 13” AA hi-hats , Sabian 15” AA crash, Sabian 21” AA dry ride, and an older Zildjan 18” that I converted into a 'sizzle' crash/ride by drilling holes and inserting rivets.

It was a great kit to play on and really delivered the big, driving sound that we wanted to achieve on the album.



In the studio I used a Godin Freeway 4, since my Fender Precision Special was in for major repair at the time. I plugged directly into the console for recording. Then we ran the bass tracks through a Mindprint DTC microphone pre-amp mixed with a line feed into a Bogen J330 Tube Mixer. The mix was then fed through a 12” Eminence driver and recorded with a Peavey 520 Microphone.

From this we were able to get the right tones to compliment the bass drum and together provide the fat bottom end that you hear consistently throughout the album.



For recording the keyboard tracks for the album I used my Roland VK-7 keyboard through a Leslie 147R via a Leslie Combo Preamp and into Native Instruments’ B4-2 Hammond organ plug-in. This combination enabled me to emulate the rich Hammond B3 sound.



Edison recordings uses the Sonar 6 platform with the Delta 1010 interfaces. The majority of the outboard gear is good old-fashioned tube types ranging from new to the late 1940's. The microphone locker is packed with ribbon, tube, dynamic and condenser microphones to fit any need that we had. The monitoring system is the Tannoy System 8” active with a Tannoy PS-110B subwoofer. The live room is a large space filled with a vintage 1964 Ludwig drum kit, Hammond M3 organ, Yamaha U1 acoustic piano, various digital keyboards as well as some vintage tube amps.



For Breakdown we used two tracks of guitar feedback which were created by locking Alex into a small sound booth while holding his Strat close to the amp which was cranked to 11. Once we got the feedback the way we wanted it, we then played the two feedback tracks in reverse and used panning to give a big guitar sound. Lots of reverb and delay were applied as well.

On Voodoo Thing we were playing with some ways to add some uniqueness to the song so we decided to “voodoo” Alex’s vocals. We sent the stereo instrument tracks to reel to reel tape. Then we slowed down the tape slightly, and while Alex sang to the track we recorded his vocal track on the analog tape machine as well. When the vocals were complete, we played back the tape machine at normal speed and sent it to the computer. To our surprise we were pleased with the voodoo effect you hear on Alex’s voice on this song.

We were in the studio mixing the song when we had an “Aha” moment. No Way Out is a song that we can all relate to. Sometimes we have these thoughts in our head and we just can’t get rid of them. So to try and keep with that, we played around with the song’s chorus line “No Way Out” by arranging the reverb presence (foreground and background) of each phase and alternated the effect on the harmonies.

For both of these acoustic tracks we used a CAD M9 and a MXL 603 microphone running into the Mindprint DTC microphone pre-amp. We blended together what we captured from the mics and added a lot of compression to provide the big rich sound you hear on these songs.