Background and Recording
Against Me! announced plans to record the album in July 2003, stating that they would work with producer Rob McGregor, who had recorded their first album and two previous EPs, and that the album would be released November 4. The band planned to record at Ardent Studios in Memphis, Tennessee, where they could make an all-analog recording with very few overdubs. In order to ensure that McGregor would be familiar with the new songs by the time they went to Memphis, the band recorded demos for the entire album at his Goldentone Studios in their hometown of Gainesville, Florida on July 15 in the span of a few hours. The rest of the album was recorded that August at Ardent. The version of "Cavalier Eternal" from the July 15 Goldentone session was used on the album, as Fat Wreck Chords head Fat Mike preferred it to the version recorded at Ardent. The entire Goldentone demo session was released in 2009 by Fat Wreck Chords as The Original Cowboy.
Against Me! as the Eternal Cowboy was mixed and engineered by Pete Matthews and assistant engineer Adam Hill, and was mastered by Brad Blackwood at Euphonic Masters. Singer/guitarist Tom Gabel designed the album's artwork and layout, using photographs taken by Brian K. Wynacht.
The album's title and track listing were announced in September 2003, followed by news that the band's previous label No Idea Records would release the singles for "Cavalier Eternal" and "Sink, Florida, Sink", using alternate versions of the songs from the recording sessions, including the version of "Cavalier Eternal" recorded at Ardent.
Gabel described the record in 2003 as a concept album "that explores love and war", explaining an ambiguity with regards to the album's title's reference to its songs: an Eternal Cowboy can be "symbolic of the power structure" or of "someone forever wandering, lost and alone".
Read more about this topic: Against Me! As The Eternal Cowboy
Famous quotes containing the words background and, background and/or recording:
“I had many problems in my conduct of the office being contrasted with President Kennedy’s conduct in the office, with my manner of dealing with things and his manner, with my accent and his accent, with my background and his background. He was a great public hero, and anything I did that someone didn’t approve of, they would always feel that President Kennedy wouldn’t have done that.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“They were more than hostile. In the first place, I was a south Georgian and I was looked upon as a fiscal conservative, and the Atlanta newspapers quite erroneously, because they didn’t know anything about me or my background here in Plains, decided that I was also a racial conservative.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“He shall not die, by G—, cried my uncle Toby.
MThe ACCUSING SPIRIT which flew up to heaven’s chancery with the oath, blush’d as he gave it in;—and the RECORDING ANGEL as he wrote it down, dropp’d a tear upon the word, and blotted it out for ever.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)