I'm trying to record three four-minute songs with my band. The genre is
"Americana" - think Neil Young, John Prine, Johnny Cash. I'm hoping to
record all the parts all at once with us playing in a room together, rather
than doing lots of overdubs, because I think that's the way we play best and
the way that we'll best capture these particular songs. Only exception is
we might overdub the guitar solos.

We are moderately good amateurs. We've all recorded in studios before,
though not often. We can play the songs correctly, and when I do basement
multitrack recordings, the music comes through just fine (but so does the
rattling of my heating vents, the echo off the concrete walls, and the hum
of the refrigerator). So I think it's realistic for us to expect to track
one song per 30 minutes of studio time, once we're set up.

We are not planning on anything "tricky" in mixdown: no weird sonic effects,
no pitch correcting, no shifting the bass notes around so they synch up with
the kick drum better.

Here are my questions:

1. How long should we budget for setup time - that is, loadin and getting
sounds?

2. Is it reasonable to schedule in 4-hour blocks of time? Or will we just
be getting drum sounds right by the time we have to pack up and leave again?
I think we probably don't have the stamina for a productive 8-hour day of
recording.

3. How long should we budget for mixdown? (I'm hoping to have the band
absent for most of this, and rely 75% on the engineer and 25% on me. I'm
the bass player.)

Thanks!
-walter