Starting the second new track of the week, Mike Shinoda jumped in head first into a very different kind of track. This new song, titled “Space Boots and Jet Fuel” by artist Dusty The Stampede, has a unique taste as it’s based on the melding of very different genres of music, namely country and sci-fi/electronic.
Shinoda starts the production stream off as usual, by listening to the original submission. In this case, Dusty submitted drum and acoustic guitar tracks, along with multiple vocal tracks and a few other sounds. Despite the familiar instruments, it became very apparent very quickly that this song was unlike anything Shinoda had produced on his Twitch channel before.
“I love this [Dusty’s] aesthetic man, this whole vibe, this homemade spaceman … I haven’t done a track like this on the channel … I went through and put a note for each of the structure points [in the song] and I was a little confused about what to call certain parts … while it’s fun to have an unconventional structure, I also think like you don’t just do that for no reason … so we might chop it a little bit, and just try and make more sense out of the parts. But I think the first thing to do is to make some cool parts and if they hold your attention the whole time then great, and if they don’t then we start removing.”
Starting to work on the track, Shinoda first temporarily removed the acoustic guitar, stating that he either needs to mix it more or only bring it into the song at a later point. He also muted the drums before deciding to add tambourine and rerecord the drums. He asked viewers if they thought live drum loops or vintage 606 drum sounds would be better, playing a little of the vintage samples to help viewers choose. Seeing an overwhelming amount of people in the chat choose live drums, he then went into his live room to record them. After a little more fine tuning for the new additions, Shinoda then began to tweak the structure of the song, deciding to change it to go straight into the first verse after the song’s intro and a chorus section. Sticking with Dusty’s unique sound, Shinoda also decided to add a few sci-fi/space tones and effects. Realizing this was a two day job after working on it for over two hours, Shinoda took a break from the track and came back to it the next day on Thursday, February 12 to finish it.
Dusty the Stampede seems to be relatively new on the music scene, but regardless has already carved out a unique sound niche as he experiments with blending country music with different genres. In his own words, Dusty describes himself as, “An astronaut from the year 4,321, writing and performing Sci-Fi country music across the galaxies”. He has released one EP, titled The Astronaut, Vol. 1, which was released in 2020 and currently available on various platforms including Spotify and Apple Music. The original version of “Space Boots and Jet Fuel” can be found on Soundcloud.
If you weren’t able to see Dusty The Stampede’s “Space Boots and Jet Fuel” produced live by Mike Shinoda, you can still watch the Twitch replay below! Make sure to check out Dusty’s music, as well as Shinoda’s previous production sessions. And stay tuned to Shinoda’s Twitch channel weekdays around 10 a.m. PT, as he will be starting on a new song called “Crazy”, written by Sam Champagne and performed by Amber Lee, on Friday, February 12!
