Sunday, January 27, 2008
The New Album, Day One
Yesterday was the first tracking session for my upcoming CD, Every Day's a Holiday. After several years of songwriting and planning, it's finally happening! And I think it's going to be pretty good.
We assembled at Laughing Tiger Studio in San Rafael for a day's worth of good music. The crew included: Stephen Hart, my producer, formerly chief engineer at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley; Brad Dollar, his assistant; John Cross, guitarist; Eric McCann, bass player, and Jeff Myer on drums. Each of them has worked with many "name" artists over the years - Jeff was the original drummer for Charlie Daniels, and I'm guessing that Stephen's worked with anyone who ever used Fantasy Studios. And everyone's experience was obvious, and we created some very nice stuff together.
We managed to track eight songs - everything we needed Jeff for. The result so far really feels like what I was hoping to get - somewhat of a mix of my first album, which was almost all me, and my second album, which was all studio players plus my vocals. I haven't listened to all of the rough mixes yet, but what I heard in the studio sounded excellent.
We still have three more songs to track without a drummer, though one or two of those will use congas. We'll also overdub congas on a number of other songs, and add some other instruments - pan (steel drum), piano, and sax from a Special Guest Performer to be named soon. :) Monday, in fact, if you listen to my interview on WBWC-FM Cleveland (www.wbwc.com) starting around 7:30 PM PST.
And, of course, I'll need to overdub more vocals and guitar, to fix the stuff I didn't do right the first time. :) But that's the joy of ProTools.
I'm aiming for a release somewhere around May, and I hope to remember to blog a bit more about how it's going between now and then. Or get onto my mailing list - the form is on my home page - and you'll get regular updates that way.
We assembled at Laughing Tiger Studio in San Rafael for a day's worth of good music. The crew included: Stephen Hart, my producer, formerly chief engineer at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley; Brad Dollar, his assistant; John Cross, guitarist; Eric McCann, bass player, and Jeff Myer on drums. Each of them has worked with many "name" artists over the years - Jeff was the original drummer for Charlie Daniels, and I'm guessing that Stephen's worked with anyone who ever used Fantasy Studios. And everyone's experience was obvious, and we created some very nice stuff together.
We managed to track eight songs - everything we needed Jeff for. The result so far really feels like what I was hoping to get - somewhat of a mix of my first album, which was almost all me, and my second album, which was all studio players plus my vocals. I haven't listened to all of the rough mixes yet, but what I heard in the studio sounded excellent.
We still have three more songs to track without a drummer, though one or two of those will use congas. We'll also overdub congas on a number of other songs, and add some other instruments - pan (steel drum), piano, and sax from a Special Guest Performer to be named soon. :) Monday, in fact, if you listen to my interview on WBWC-FM Cleveland (www.wbwc.com) starting around 7:30 PM PST.
And, of course, I'll need to overdub more vocals and guitar, to fix the stuff I didn't do right the first time. :) But that's the joy of ProTools.
I'm aiming for a release somewhere around May, and I hope to remember to blog a bit more about how it's going between now and then. Or get onto my mailing list - the form is on my home page - and you'll get regular updates that way.
# posted by Loren Davidson @ 8:28 AM 
