Tips / advice on recording a 4 piece band - not live!

Hi- I have recorded a friend's band that is a typical four pieces -- (drums, bass, lead guitar, rhythm acoustic / electric (also the lead singer) and occasionally the lead guitarist sings); in a bar / club setting several times, with some pretty good success. This time they asked for a "cleaner" more studio-style recording for a new demo CD. I am more interested in the process/ steps, since I am pretty much stuck with the current equipment. My home studio is way too small, but I have access to some nice - quiet large conference room settings in an office building unoccupied on weekends. The band has a typical array of decent dynamic mics, run through a Behringer Eurorack MX2642A, to their PA. In the live recording I came off the direct  ¼ inch outs of the Behringer- to my Yamaha MG102C (10 channel) mixer, so as to have my own versus the “house levels” – then this all down to just a two channel USB, Focusrite Scarlett 8i6 --- into my DAW – X1.  Crude compared to a lot of set ups, but surprisingly good results. I have a few condenser mics large and small – some of which I worked in as overhead on the live drums before. So anyway – any tips for how to step and sequence this project for some multi-tracking of the band will be very appreciated.

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I echo what Mike said on his 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th posts? Allow me to do that officially by saying,
 
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Now in addition to that I would add, that the best technique "bar none..." Is to;
 
1. Have the band jam on the song and determine the BMP.
 
2. Create a project with that BPM, and have the guitar player (rhythm) play along with the tick track, maybe with a singer, to establish a scratch track with guitar and vox.
 
3. Have the drummer listen to the click track, along with the scratch track, and "track that drummer..." Listen to it? Quantize it, fix it, compress it, spread it, saturate it, mix it, excite it, EQ it, create envelopes as necessary for it.
 
4. Now how the bass player listen to the scratch and drum track? And comp the bass in, bring it down the pipe, make it sit with the drums.
 
5. Go back and redo the scratch guitar part, with the tick track, the drums and bass? Mute the original scratch track. 
 
6. Once all of that rocks hard, have the vocalist listen to all of it and comp in their part.
 
Add a splash of your favorite libation? Shake and serve... (delay, reverb, mastering, panning, bla blah blah)
 
This is the technique I use? But I am the guitar player, bass player, drummer, singer, keyboard player, etc...

Yes, you can get a good sound, depending upon the band.
 
Yes to the click track - it can make your (the engineer's) life easier, but don't allow that to kill the groove the band has.  THat is one of those band dependent issues.   Some bands play better loose.
 
Get the drums and bass down first.  Mic the drums (natch) and di the bass and guitarist, having them all play in the same room.  If they are a live band and studio virgins, they'll do better most likely playing together.  The key here for you is headphones.  You'll probably need a different room for the singer - many bands need one to keep track of where they are in the song.  Once again, this is the live thing rather than the musicianship of your band.  Not everybody can be a studio musician - that is why they get paid the big bucks in Nashville etc.  They ain't better, but they can hear/read the music once, understand the structure and not make mistakes at $1000s per hour.
 
IF you have separate rooms for miking guitar and bass, cool, but you'll still need headphones.  One particular home recording I had everyone bring their home mics and ran one off of a boombox.  For the bass, an ARt mp is cool.  It is a good studio/live tool.  Good preamp/DI that you can dial in starved plate tube (be careful, it starts to sound fluffy which may or more likely works).  It is a spitter, too.  For $50 a handy tool and great for live stuff at low end venues.
 
Overdubbing is the key.  IF they can't do that might as well stick to the live track version - just do the same thing but w/o the audience.  But most players can overdub their leads.  Also, live bands often don't understand that their distorted guitars won't sound "big" on CD.  Fuzzy gets small real quick, so most studio recordings have several guitars layered - playing different lines.  Not something a live 4-piece band can do, so they don't get it at first.
 
You'll have to play producer, too, I imagine, just not engineer.  Such as the layered guitars.  And figuring out the way to record their best performance.  You might get away w/ live gutiar if they need it and damn the bleed.  And remember a few well placed drum mics will beat a bunch of close mic'ed drums if the drummer is good.  I'd prefer bleed.  Most of the older stuff was recorded w/ lots o bleed in one big room.
 
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