Damien Jurado - Motorcycle Madness: Studio Day 1, November 28th, 2022 (2026)

I placed an advertisement looking for musicians to play on a new album I was recording called Motorcycle Madness. Everyone involved was meeting each other for the first time.

My instructions were simple: play along and have fun. If questions came up about the songs, I asked them to consult each other instead of me. I tend to like everything, which isn’t always helpful.

We ran through each song a few times, took breaks, and moved on. What none of us knew was that the engineer downstairs was recording everything. I didn’t find out until later in the day, and I chose not to tell anyone.

We met again the following day and played through the songs once or twice more—still being recorded. That night, I took the recordings home and listened. It was immediately clear to me that this was the album. The rehearsals were the record.

On day three, I returned to the studio and told everyone we were finished.
“But we haven’t tracked anything,” someone said.

“We tracked two days of rehearsals,” I replied. “And it’s the greatest thing I’ve ever heard. Congratulations—we made an album.”

I assembled the final record from the best performances across those two days. That’s what became "Motorcycle Madness".