Robby's Lobby #169

BlogJuly, 2021INROCK Magazine

Hey Hey In Rockers and Welcome to the Lobby for this month’s update from my little corner of the world! I’m out of the woods for the first time in a few months! Let me explain…. For the past 6 weeks Goo Goo Dolls have been in Hurley, NY at Dreamland Studios, right outside of the legendary Woodstock, NY. The studio was built in the early 70s in a little hilltop church that was erected in 1900 for the laborers that were digging a water reservoir in the Catskill Mountains to supply drinking water for NYC. The church had been abandoned after the after reservoir project was completed in the 1930s and the church sat abandoned for decades. But after the legendary Woodstock art and music festival in 1969 many musicians and artists stayed in the area and recording studios began to pop up all over the quiet little mountaintop community. At the time people like Bob Dylan, The Band, Levon Helm and Todd Rundgren all began living and recording in the area. The church was then repurposed as a recording studio and it’s seen a host of legendary artists inside it’s walls such as The B52s, The National, Hall and Oates, 10,000 Maniacs, Fleet Foxes, Feist, Joe Jackson and so many others. I haven’t spent all that much time out in in the forest, and I must say I’ve never felt more like a city kid that after spending 2.5 months living in the woods! We got lots of bug bites, saw wild turkeys, avoided packs of deer, walked along abandoned railroad tracks and recorded a whole bunch of songs that we’ll continue working on for a release later this year or early next! We stayed in a little building down the hill from the studio that they believe was a temporary church built on the property before they completed the larger church on top of the hill. It was a little creepy sleeping in century old church in the middle of the woods, a good scenario for a really terrifying horror movie! But all was well and aside from the normal experiences of insect and field mice control that most people experience deep in the woods we made it through the adventure mostly unscarred, with some great new music and we made some new friends in Hurley NY. The manager of Dreamland studios is Jerry Morrata, he was the drummer for Peter Gabriel, Hall and Oates, Indigo Girls and so many others, we got to spend some time talking with Jerry about those legendary Peter Gabriel records and so much more, most importantly they were there to make sure we were able to capture what we were creating. Jerry also introduced us to and another Woodstock fixture, bassist Tony Levin, who plays with progressive rock band King Crimson, Peter Gabriel and a host of other legendary artists. It was funny sitting in that little diner in the middle of the woods with some of the most recorded musician in history, but that’s how the magic works in the middle of an enchanted forest near Woodstock, NY. I’m back home now in Buffalo getting my life together a bit here as my daughter finishes up the 3rd grade. I’ll get to spend another fun summer with her because of a relatively quiet schedule as the Goo Goo Dolls Summer 2021 tour has been postponed until Summer 2022. We’ll have some scattered shows as things begin to open up around the US and hopefully the Covid numbers will remain at a manageable level here. With the Olympics coming to Japan it will be a huge test for all of you as well, and I hope things go well for the Athletes and their supporters. OK, that’s it for this issue, I’m going to go inside and help my kid with a book report on a new thriller called “Cats at the Campground” (pretty rock and roll, huh?) and as always, I look forward to talking with you all next month here in the pages of the mighty In Rock ! Peace Robby

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