Day Five – Is It Me?

That is a question I have been asking myself a lot these last couple of days. When we arrived in Nashville last Saturday and I first heard the mock ups that Joe Hand had sent over, I wondered “Is this me?” It was odd, to say the least, to hear my songs through the eyes and ears of another person. But once we were in the studio and I got to play guitar, they were my songs again. Now, we have wrapped up the recording of basic tracks and the experience has been wonderful. The sounds that Joe got out of me and the other musicians was crazy! Hearing these tracks sounding so great, even just half finished, has got me asking again “Is this really me?”

Day Four – Magic

12 hour session today at OMNIsounds Studios… we got basic tracks down for 6 songs – drums, bass, rhythm guitar and some keyboards. I was in the acoustic guitar booth most all of the day, a small isolation booth about 8×8 with a double sliding glass door. Danny and Bill laid down some incredible drums, Joe did the bass and several Wurlitzer tracks… songs that were once just bare bones are now magically taking on muscle… dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones… it’s late so I will let pictures tell more of this tale…

Day Three – Buffers and Preparation

Today was the wild card day… a buffer built in should we need the extra time to finish pre-production. Today was also about preparation, probably the single most important ingredient for the week and one, I have discovered, that is often overlooked. When we finished rehearsal yesterday, Joe Hand made a point of saying how thrilled he was with how quickly and effectively we moved through the pre-production portion of the recording, how impressed he was with our preparation. Leading me to ask, “Doesn’t everyone come prepared?” It just makes sense to me to come prepared, to know your songs before you get here, to have changed your strings, warmed up your voice all prior to getting to the studio so that you don’t waste time. Isn’t this one of those moments we have been practicing for our whole life?

Ironically, even though we didn’t need the buffer time, we spent the day preparing. A trip to Fork’s Drum Closet so Danny and Bill could get some supplies, sticks and heads, etc. Fortunately for me, there was a guitar shop right next door. Then a couple of hours of drum tuning… And finally, we got to load in to OMNIsound Studios, Studio A… WOW! As soon as I walked in, I knew that play time was over and it’s time to get out the A game. So, my last bit of prep for today? Finish this blog and get some sleep!

Tonight’s picture… Danny and Bill tuning drums, completely oblivious to all non-drummers in the room!

Day Two – More Rehearsal

Day two of pre-production and rehearsal… finished mapping out the remaining songs, hashed out various arrangements, discussed instrumentation and laid out a plan for the two days at OMNI studios so that we make the best use of our time there. I am getting very excited about the tunes, the arrangements and instrumentation. We are all pretty relaxed and ready to get into the recording phase!

Day One – Preproduction and Rehearsal

It has begun… today we spent in preproduction and rehearsal at producer Joe Hand’s home studio. We will be tracking 14 songs and probably whittling that down to 12 for the final release. What we are doing now is creating grids to lay basic tracks to. Some songs are well fleshed out, a loop, some basic drum programming, guitar, bass, keyboard and scratch vocal while others we just rehearsed live to get a solid feel for arrangement. Then later in the week we will take this into the studio and use them to build the actual tracks. Sort of like when you blow up a baloon, paper mache all over it and then pop and remove the balloon… we will take these grids in, play to them and then piece by piece replace and remove the scratch tracks.

Joe Hand is an accomplished producer asnd arranger as well as a top notch bass player. Along with him, I have two great drummers, Danny Clausen who backs me up in concert and Ceili Rain drummer Bill Bleistine. I got a couple of blurry cell phone pics of the drummers as they made some noise… I promise, we brought a camera so i will get better pictures as the week goes by!

And Away We Go!

Welp, it’s time. I’ve done all the practicing I can do, prayed this project up, restrung my guitars and after a quick few hours of sleep, we’re off to Nashville… I will be updating the blog daily this week, hopefully some photos as well… check in, comment, be a part of the project with me!

The Horrors of Fund Raising

Let’s face it… recording a CD is expensive. I know the costs have come down dramatically in the last 10 years, but when you don’t have any money, it doesn’t matter if the cost is $10,000 or $100,000. One of the goals of the project I am currently working on is to significantly raise the bar on quality, the quality of the songs, the quality of the recording, the quality of the packaging, all of it. And that means money. And money means fund raising…

I imagine there are as many ways of doing this as there are people, but this is how we did it…

First, we set a budget. A detailed budget, taking into consideration all the costs associated with the CD from the pre-production, to the Producer, the studio time, additional musicians, mixing, duping to the (often forgotten piece) marketing for the CD once it is out. In my opinion, it also doesn’t hurt to add a little on top to cover things you didn’t plan on. Then we wrote it all out in a detailed proposal, outlining the purpose of the CD, the theme, the need for a higher level of quality, etc. We also outlined the budget, where it would be spent, the credentials of the people we hoped to bring on board and finally what we would be doing with the CD once it was released. This part of the process was the hardest, in my opinion.

Second, we needed to find Partners. My management team and I decided to seek out Partners on three levels – Corporate, Personal and General. The Corporate entities we approached had to have some reason to be interested in the theme and concept of the CD. Everyday With You is a CD based around the theme of the whole motion of marriage so approaching churches with active marriage ministries, for example, makes good sense on both sides. We also approached companies that while not directly connected to ‘marriage’ could certainly appreciate the concept of the CD and wanted to be a part. The people we approached on a Personal level were people that I know who have, for a long time, supported not only my music, but also my family and myself. Not just a catch all of folks, but a very specific list that we sent the proposal to, and then followed up on a couple of occasions… persistent but not pushy. Finally, we did make the opportunity available to the General public via e-Newsletter and website.

Finally – Keep At It! Like anything, raising a budget is a time consuming process. I was hoping that I could send out the proposals and then just count the money, but obviously, that is not how it works. It takes follow up and the fine line of ‘persistent and not pushy.’ Especially with the Corporate folks, I found I needed to set appointments for conference calls, email correspondence and regularly following up. With the Personal folks, I sent the initial proposal and then followed up with a couple of specific emails. In regards to the General folks, that was mentioned in e-Newsletters, blogs, and on my website. No follow up needed there. I also got good at jokingly inserting my need for budget into almost every conversation imaginable… not a bad idea.

Along with that, I also set up multiple levels of Partnership. That way there was a place for everyone to participate. And giving folks the feeling of ‘ownership,’ of having a stake in the outcome really gives tem more of a reason to be involved.

The two things I found hardest about the process were these… first, being thankful for the amount raised when I was still worried about the amount left to raise. I remember a specific conversation with a friend of mine about halfway through the process – he was thrilled about how far I had come and I was worried about how far I had yet to go. Forgetting the thankfulness, really impairs finishing the race, I think. And secondly, conveying the idea (primarily to the folks in the Personal category) that any level of partnership was great. I know several folks who felt their available funds at the moment were too small to be of consequence, but once they knew that even what they felt was small, I knew was huge because it all adds up, both from the financial perspective as well as the spiritual and support perspective, they really wanted to get on board.

Finding Co-Writers

I mentioned in an earlier blog that I avoided for years the process of co-writing. I will admit that it was partly out of arrogance, but it was also partly out of ignorance… where do I find co-writers?

Actually, that is a really good question, but not the first one I had to answer. The first question was “What am I writing these songs for?” Is it to learn how to write better? Is it to build up a repertoire? Is it for a specific project? The answer to this question would determine what tier of writer I would have luck approaching. For me, the answer was ‘a specific project’ so that made the collaboration more attractive to higher level writers. The second question I had to answer was “What am I willing to put into this?” Obviously, my time and talents, that is a given, but would I be willing to pay up front for someone’s time to write with me? I know some folks who are put off by this idea thinking that the potential payback of a recorded cut should be enough, but let’s be honest… music can be such a crap-shoot in the best of times and with an artist like myself who is seeking out co-writers who are ‘above’ me, I think it is totally fair to compensate these folks for their time, for their mentoring of me in the song writing process.

OK, I have an upcoming project, I have a direction, I am willing to compensate a higher tier co-writer if need be… how do I find them? On this project I co-wrote with 5 different writers and the means of finding them was different for each. Two were people I knew from my association with Indieheaven.com and the other 3 were essentially strangers to me personally, but known by reputation. However, knowing who you want to write with and getting them to do it are two different things. But in all 5 cases there were 2 commonalities that, I imagine, hold true for every new co-writing relationship.

Actually, that is the first commonality… relationships. Two of the folks were people I knew personally and had interacted with both online via the Indieheaven Network and face to face. Two of the other three were people that were known to people I know, sort of the ‘friend of a friend’ route. The last was sort of ironic, in that I met a man after a gig who turned out to be the brother of one of the folks I wanted to co-write with. His having seen me play, and passing that on, gave credibility to the possibility of a partnership.

I remember reading about an exchange that took place in the early days of Beatlemania. A car pulled up beside the limo holding the band and a girl yelled to George Harrison, “How does one go about meeting a Beatle?” His response? “One starts by saying hello.” That leads me to the second commonality… ask. The worst thing that can happen is they will say no. But you may be surprised how open people are to new co-writing relationships.

Lastly, I had to be prepared to work on their timeline. Folks who are great songwriters are usually very busy and my song was one of many they were juggling. There is a fine line of being persistent and involved in the process and becoming obnoxious. Also, knowing when to postpone the process with a writer is important too. A sixth writer that i was working with was simply too swamped, and it was better for both of us to call it off this time around, while keeping the door open for a future collaboration.

I Hate Admitting This…

Having been a professional musician for nearly 20 years, I have enjoyed going to several conferences… industry conferences, indie conferences, performance conferences, songwriting conferences… all sorts. I took home a lot of great info from all those experiences but there was one area where I pretty much just dismissed what they were telling out of hand. Songwriting…

It seems that every time I got in a room with songwriters, they would start talking about co-writing and re-writing; writing songs and then rehashing them and then tearing them apart and then re-writing them yet again. And all of this with a blissful look of abandon on their faces… I would always dutifully take notes and then toss them on my way out the door. Sure, maybe that’s how you all do it, but not me. I argued that I did all of my rehashing and re-writing in my head before pen hit paper and if you didn’t like the song, I would write another rather than try to re-write the existing one. Frankly, that is how I wrote papers in college, too. Maybe with my GPA, THAT should have been a red flag… As far as the co-writing thing, I had no real experience with that and didn’t know anyone who wanted to do it, so that was pretty much a non issue.

All of that caught up to me with this current project. Really pushing to take everything up a level on this new CD, from look to sound, it was time to face the whole co-writing/re-writing thing. So, after having co-written with 5 different folks and written, re-written, and re-re-written over 40 songs, grown a thicker skin, tried out ideas, thrown out ideas, stared at lyrics trying not to sing that melody that everyone hated and find a new one, fought to resurrect ideas and then thrown them out again… I hate to admit this, but… they were right. Iron sharpens iron, as they say. The songs on this CD have benefited from the co-writing and re-writing process and are a cut above my previous work. So, yeah, those conferences were right… but don’t quote me on it, I’ll just deny it…

A Little Bit of Back Story…

I suppose a little bit of back story is in line here… March 2006, I was in Nashville for the CIA Summit, and while hanging out with my manager I played her a song I had written for my wife a few months earlier. The song was called ‘Send her Angels Tonight’ and dealt with a time that my wife was in a hospital for treatment of her eating disorder and the prayers my sons and I prayed for her. The concept of an album centered around the songs I have written for my wife started to emerge. As time went by, the theme broadened to more than just a collection of love songs to really embrace the ‘whole movement of marriage,’ the good times as well as the bad, the ups and downs, the challenge to stay true to the vows we have taken.

Jump forward to October 2006, I am back in Nashville for a photo shoot and while there I started the song writing process (and that, my friend, is a whole other blog…). I met with a couple of different writers on that trip, Renee Garcia and Jill Parr, and saw the first couple of songs emerge. From that point until now, I have been writing songs both alone and with others, re-writing songs, re-re-writing songs, throwing away songs, and have finally gathered 17 songs that made the ’save pile’!

Staring last June, while the writing was in full swing, I also started the fund-raising process. Honestly, I hate this part of things. One of the goals on this recording was to take everything up a serious notch. Past CD’s have been done in my home studio, self produced, most all instruments played by yours truly, etc… to get this album out of the basement, I needed only one thing… a budget! So, after many phone calls, partnership packets, phone meetings, face to face meetings, reminders, emails, and let’s be honest, a little begging… we have our budget in place and now the recording starts.

In the next couple of weeks, before I head to Nashville yet again, I want to populate this blog with some background on the songs, the writing process, pics of the gear I hope to use and then after Thanksgiving, I will update daily as the actual recording begins! Thanks for coming along!!!