Friday, Aug 5: Paul Broussard's Living Room -- Four of the five members of (the) Frames of Reference are evenly spaced between the open kitchen and entry hallway. They stand almost at attention -- save for Patrick "Squash" Gibbens, who is sprawled on the floor -- waiting for their cue. Against their producer's advising, guitarist Dallas Griffith urges Cord Bueker to secretly depress the nearby piano's pedal. Across the street, visible through the large double window with the shades drawn open, a woman and her kids are picking up yard waste, unaware of their activity.

From down the hall a voice gives the word, and they count it off: One-two-three --go, before erupting in a simultaneous, "Hey!" As the pedal vibrates with the sound of their voices, the shouts travel down the black microphones' cords, snaking their way through the house. "Hey" makes it down the hall and rounds a right curve before crossing to the left into the control room, speeding its way into the waiting grasp of Broussard's computer.

"Got it," Broussard's voice shouts back at them. The band slumps and Gibbens stands, heading back to hear the track as Broussard prepares to add it into "Hey Cows, Asst Cheese," a song on their new album. In truth, Broussard's house is almost more recording studio than home. Broussard bought it more than a year ago and enlisted his father's help turning it into Leap's facility. It started as a three-bedroom home with a living room spilling into his kitchen. Now, one bedroom has become the control room and another the studio. The living room sees lobby and waiting activity, serving as a place for musicians to loaf about between takes. One bedroom was spared the studio treatment but does contains a bookshelf where all the CDs Broussard has worked on rest. To those who go there, Broussard's home is known as Leap Studios.

Now is a period where accessible recording technology has liberated musicians from the shackles of studios. Locally, bands have cut albums in the strangest of places: Richard Revue at a fishing camp, Marty Christian in an attic on the Fourth of July and theTransmission in a transmission shop. Previously, recordings were capable of going outdoors, but advances -- programs like Pro Tools -- give artists unprecedented abilities to merge convenience and quality.

Still, among the local rock scene and rappers from here and nearby areas, Broussard has made his house a destination on the road to stardom. This is his full-time job, welcoming a few clients a week into his house. He finds them through referrals, at shows and by networking as the drummer for Bimora, a band pretty much defunct save for a release show for their first CD -- one recorded at Leap.

"Once they try me out they never stop coming," boasts Broussard, one of the most animated men you'll ever meet. In defense of his bravado, he's right. Rappers send their homies, rockers tell their practice shed mates and bands like the Frames know only Leap as a studio, recording all four of their albums with Broussard. He's laid tracks for MattRock & The PowerBoxx, Down in The Park, Lay to Waste, Brosius, Paradox, 3for5 and others.

"They all seem like they are not scared to go do their own thing," he says of local rock. "When I see a band, I want to see a band that shakes me up a little bit, that has a little something different to them."

In the control room, Broussard's instruments are the knobs, buttons and sliding controls at his fingertips. He plays the board like Ray Charles worked the ivories, squeezing out the best sound possible. No matter the material -- grindcore, alt. pop, rap -- the outcome is always the same: clean recordings where each instrument shines.

Broussard works and lives alone at Leap, except for his beloved cat Spook, who shows off for bands by climbing the walls. The only time Broussard's eyes get as big as when he talks about music is when Spook clamps her teeth or claws into his hands, often resulting in a yelp rivaling anything recorded in the studio.

Though an ear can't tell, Broussard -- a former student at the University of Louisiana -- has no real training in studio engineering. Despite their programs in the field, he didn't set foot in classes that teach the ins and outs of the art. Nor has he taken music lessons, though he now teaches drumming. Broussard warns that while there's nothing wrong with structured classes, "it will change your output."

"I am the type of person that if I am not interested, I really won't get into it," says Broussard. "Kind of like when I was at UL for three or four years for mechanical engineering and I was making OK grades, but I just wasn't really excelling. So I got out of that."

In his sophomore year of high school (class of 1996), Broussard rented out a four track and some microphones from Vince's Backstage Music to record several songs by his then band. Word spread, and he did work for others, learning as he went. Later, he'd take out a loan and invest in his own equipment, running Leap from 2000.

"You didn't have to tell me to go work on any kind of music. I had my own drive," he says. "I realized I did like recording, and I had been recording since high school. I had totally not even thought about going into that -- probably 'cause my dad said something about is there a market for that around here."

At UL, Broussard pole-vaulted on the track team. One of his teammates passed away, and Broussard named his studio in honor of him. At the time, the term studio applied to his apartment where he could record vocals and little else. For the louder recordings, he'd have to take his equipment to the bands, recording CDs at practice locations and the first Frames record at singer (and three-time Times contributor) James VanWay's house.

With the house, the loudest instruments -- the drums -- barely peep out into Broussard's quiet neighborhood near the Pinhook Wal-Mart. For a better part of a year, Broussard and his father, also with no studio experience, got the house insulated for sound. Separating the control room, there's a foot-thick wall. Acoustic panels help control sound in the studio, which is dressed up with bluelights, art, a disco ball and a cushy chair. The house is wired to where Broussard can broadcast from the control room into speakers in the living room.

"Everyone that comes through here, they are the boss," relates Broussard. "I am a recording engineer, I am going to help you get whatever sound you are looking for. If you don't like what you are hearing ... you got to like what you're hearing. Thats going to be bad business for me."

Broussard does admit to employing a slightly sneaky trick at Leap. Some engineers record a bands' warm up or practice takes, unbeknownst to them. Broussard realizes the value of catching a band when it is relaxed and at the members' full potential.

"I just don't tell them because they'll turn out some of the most genius recordings not even realizing 'cause they are not worried about it. "

2 p.m.

Although it is early afternoon, on the living room couch Broussard has been lulled to sleep by a retrospective on the career of Dan Marino. At his kitchen table, Bueker and Gibbens are using a double wad of ketchup packs on their Chris' Poboys as Griffith, who ate week-old chicken and dumplings he found in his fridge, flips through a Rolling Stone laughing at the fancy bands with two belts.

They are fresh off a gig the night before, opening for Pit Er Pat and Need New Body at Renaissance. Gibbens would later recount how the latter band spent the night at his house and used his shower, resulting in a vow he'd never clean the bathroom again. They rip on VanWay, who has yet to arrive. Griffith calls a cranky VanWay, who was up late, "Mr. Happy Face." Their bassist, Matt O'Neal, could not be at the session.

Bueker and Gibbens discuss politics and Air America. Gibbens uses the term metaphysical. Much of their conversation is off the record as they don't want people to consider them those damn bleeding-heart Frames of Reference. Just then, before Gibbens can begin one of his usual rants -- this one about people who abhor homosexuals -- a Franz Ferdinand song plays on a PSP commercial. Bueker interrupts with "We ought to write a song like that so we can sell it."

It would be a deserved break for the band, one of the most embattled in Lafayette. The group is now on its third drummer, if you count Dave Hubbell filling in one summer for former skin man Bobby Lirette. Bueker replaced Lirette when he enrolled in grad school at Ole Miss. Ensuring drummer trouble in the future, they picked Bueker, although he lives in New Orleans. Like many other local bands, the group rented a space at Billeaud's Boat Storage for practice, sharing it with another band. On the Fourth of July, one of their shed mates popped fireworks there, littering the remains and spray-painting an anarchy symbol on the side. It got both bands tossed out of the shed, putting a crimp in their ability to practice.

Since April, the future of the band has been in limbo after Griffith put in his notice to relocate with his then-band The Object at the End of History. By late summer, those plans and fears were quelled, but Gibbens -- whose solo album lent material to the group's first record and whose keyboard is a signature part of the band -- will graduate in December with a master's degree. He'll head to grad school out of state, plunging them back into uncertainty.

Still, the band worked on the new album, named The Things That Pass for Knowledge I Can't Understand in obvious honor of Steely Dan -- a strange move for a normally cryptic band. (Past albums were named Contemplate Lunches, We're Sorry ... About Your Brain and Vast Difference. They've written songs called "Also the Xanax," "Sgt. Slaughter as Sgt. Slaughter" and "Erik Discovers Mincemeat's Brain.")

Though prolific in heading to the studio -- this is their second record of 2005 -- the group's material is less than vault-filling. Based on Yes' Fragile album, the records contain nine songs or less.

In the local indie hierarchy, the group garners respect and opener spots because its members are friends with many crowd-catching bands and active in the local scene. However, they are admittedly not as big a draw as they should be, though their albums have never lost them money.

The reasons are that their music is too mature, albeit quirky, for some of Lafayette's young audiences. It's crafty stuff, loaded with literature, wit and randomness. Avoiding the obtuse party, love and loss songs that fill rock 'n' roll, Frames' employ a mix of poetry and narrative techniques. In some songs, VanWay paints the pictures he sees in the band's music, leaning more towards artistic compositions of music and voice. In the last two records, VanWay has shifted more toward specific story telling through poetry as the Vast Differences is a more personal album and the new release is a concept album. The first two records mostly dealt with a lost generation theme.

"I wasn't singing about myself and my experiences, but rather for a whole host of people in my age group who are generally lost, confused, drunk, codependent and yet somehow hopeful," says VanWay.

Their growth through the years in terms of content mirrors the packaging of their releases. In 2003, they released Contemplate Lunches in a non-descript brown jacket with hand-written liner notes and track listing. While well-played, it and Sorry were more ribald, loud and young, somewhat random and dwelling in the catch-all genre post punk. By Vast Differences, their packaging was slick with a design done by friend Erik Kiesewetter. Likewise, their music was smoother, maintaining a melodic indie sensibility. Lyrically and vocally VanWay's raspy voice seemed more at home, singing anthems of mid- to late- 20-something, post-graduate growing into adulthood.

Friday, Aug. 5 found them back in the studio as Bueker wanted to tweak his drum work. On the double monitor before them, the band's recording dances as a wave, each different component represented in spiking and plummeting levels. Broussard speaks a language comprised of words like delay, resonance, distortion and faders as he isolates the drums and silences all the other sounds. With its backbone exposed the band can focus on how Bueker's drums should sound.

"I don't like toms that sound too you know like Phil Collins or something," he says of wanting the drums to be "dirty ass boomy"

Broussard answers with " I can make that happen."

They agonize over the minute details of the tracks, listening to one song over and over until it seems like a continuous repetitive drum solo. Between Broussard's nature and the band's shenanigans, laughter erupts often and Bueker's work is not getting tweaked. Elbow deep in the tracks, Broussard kicks out the band and even Spook so Bueker and he can work undistracted. They don't mind as they will make themselves more than at home.

"Basically I am trying to put a little bit of grunge on his drums," says Broussard. "They want it dirty. I'm just so not used to that I like the sound of dirty."

Bueker brought in an Mp3 player to plug into Broussard's system. Inspiration and examples of what he wants come from the rhythm section of The Meters playing on a singer's recording and other more obscure songs playing now piped through the control room's system.

"Its getting there, I'm liking it," says Broussard.

4:45 p.m.

Broussard and the band are winding down their session. Flipping through the channels on his television, they spot Jeopardy! Coming into work on just a couple things, they've been there for about four hours, making an afternoon run to Burger King and Dollar General. They are still working on a tub of Gummy dinosaurs and sour patch worms from CVS Pharmacy but Gibbens has given up on the Milkfuls candy he purchased at Dollar General. VanWay's crankiness wasn't eased by learning that someone beat him to the punch on combining a spicy chicken patty and burger at Wendy's.

After much thought, and jokes, they've settled on the finished product. Bueker's drums don't sound like Phil Collins, the right "Hey' is in the right place and O'Neal's back-up vocals are unscathed.

"I've had a really fantastic time," says Bueker on his first recording session with Broussard and the band. "Being a drummer, Paul being a drummer, it's been really good working with him. I feel like he's been super receptive to do the kind of sound we want. I know he records a pretty board range of bands and musicians, so I think it's cool that he's open to every possibility. I don't feel at all there's been any attempt to coerce us to sound a certain way or do a certain thing and that's really important 'cause I think that you can often end up in a situation where the engineer is trying to produce more than you want. I don't believe that's the case at all."

Leap has taken the brunt of a Frames of Reference attack. The mess of musicians, candy and magazines resembles a hang-out session more than studio time. Aside from recording projects, the band and Broussard are friends: he is used to their jokes and they respect his house, always cleaning up their mess. With all their records done here, in a way Leap is their home just as it is his. Likely, it won't be long before they again come knocking on Leap's door armed with fast food and mayhem for his tidy house.

"It's great, what can I say?" says Broussard. "It's way better than waking up and having to go to some job you don't like."