I started with the familiar. Or the one I felt most ownership of: the song I sang lead on.

A cover of Liz Phair's "Divorce Song" began the journey a few months back. A semi-staple of our live shows (if just because I don't sing lead on anything else), this lamentation on the breakup of a relationship was my entry into mixing and producing a new set of recordings by my band.

Eventually I started calling the "album" Hassles, and designed a cover for it. And it's not done yet. But I'm pretty close.

I've said this "pretty close" thing for the last month or more. Every time I take another pass at the songs, I figure out something new. A better way of fixing problems, mixing sound together, making the end result closer to something professional.

But I'm not a professional. This is my first try (our last set of recordings, Summer of Ten, was done by committee...and I'll end up remixing it sometime in the summer of eleven) at sound mixing. In a way, I'm the low cost alternative. But also, it's my band. And I bought a new computer with the knowledge that I would do this.

Back in 1993, I was underemployed and not looking for a traditional career. I wanted to write. I'd done layout in college. And a little graphic design with a strange college comic strip called Sticky World. But no one wanted me to write for them (I wasn't trained as a journalist, and didn't really want to be one). So I created and started my own magazine.

I'd read lots of magazines. And I did a little research (mostly reading small press magazines) before deciding to do this project. Lies Magazine lasted about four years before we had to call it.

This band has been together for over three years. My last one lasted over four. And, since the early 80s, I've been listening to various genres of pop music.

That's my experience.

And I'm not bad at using computers. I'm using the most accessible, if possibly worst feature wise, computer program for this: Garageband.

But I'm not a professional. We're not charging anyone to listen to our music. Our next two shows are free. So, in a way, it makes sense.

I spent over five hours yesterday in what I thought would be the final pass. After finishing, I burned a CD, ate the second half of my egg foo yung and ambled over to my brother's to watch his little girl for a few hours (a little break for the parents). When I got home, I put the CD on. And was instantly dismayed.

The sound volume was still low. The bass was way too loud, as were the cymbals. I poured more rose and wrote down notes. Should I even burn the band CDs of this mix?

And then I realized the swamp cooler was making it hard to hear the stereo. And I had the bass and treble on my receiver (there's a somewhat rudimentary equalizer on that puppy) turned way up, which was obliterating the mid-levels. I reset it, put on the new Paul Simon, and tried to let it go for the night.

But what else was I gonna do? It was about midnight, so I turned off the swamp cooler and put my band back on (one of those songs, "Lullabye", just came on my iTunes as I'm writing).

It was pretty good. I could hear the changes and experiments that worked. And it could use another run through. But I'm close. Pretty close.

And, just like my magazine was never mainstream quality, while it might never be of professional slick, Hassles by Full Speed Veronica is gonna be good enough.

Hopefully I'll finish it pretty soon.

Matt Worley couldn't get a job emptying trash cans at a recording studio.