Session Information
Since the first incarnation located in his parent’s basement, Barrett Jones’ Laundry Room Studio had relocated three times, each being more accommodating for recording than the last. Moving from house to house, each had one thing in common – like the original, all were still located in Arlington, Virginia. In the summer of 1991 Jones decided to up sticks for the fourth time, but this time he was heading further afield, across the country to Seattle, Washington. With Dave Grohl now located on the West coast with Nirvana, and with the grunge movement starting to take off, Barrett decided it was also time to make the move. With no Laundry Room Studio for the time being, Grohl had to find somewhere else to record during his downtime from Nirvana.
Despite there being no shortage of recording locations on the west coast, and off the back of completing recording for the Nirvana album ‘Nevermind’ at the famous Sound City Studios, Grohl still chose to fly back home to Arlington and booked into another studio in the City.
That local studio was WGNS, although like Jones’ Laundry Room it was far from being a bespoke recording studio. WGNS was initially created by owner Geoff Turner due to a lack of underground radio stations in the DC area, the acronym standing for ‘We Gots No Station’. As time went on the operation evolved beyond broadcasting and allowed local musicians to record their music.
The studio was set up in a house rented by Turner with most of the equipment located in the basement. Recording took place using a Tascam 58 8-track reel-to-reel tape recorder which used ½ inch magnetic tape.
Dave Grohl arrived at the studio on July 27th, 1991 and with the help of Turner recorded four newly written songs - ‘Hell’s Garden’, ‘Winnebago’, ‘Bruce’ and ‘Milk’. Grohl once again recorded all the drums, guitar and bass tracks himself, also tracking vocals for all but ‘Bruce’. The lyrics for all three songs were written swiftly by Grohl whilst he was at the studio, with Turner being credited for the words to ‘Winnebago’. Grohl even saw fit to show his appreciation during the song itself, quickly singing ‘Thanks for the lyrics, Geoff!’ before the final lengthy instrumental section that closed the track out.
The four songs, along with six others earlier recorded at Laundry Room Studio, were given to Jenny Toomey of Simple Machines and released on the 'Pocketwatch' cassette, under the pseudonym 'Late!', in the summer of 1992.
