Recording: Days 2 and 3

I am indulging in cheese fondue before dinner at Winberie’s, a cool little restaurant in Ridgewood. The weather here today has been picture perfect – bright blue sky, weather in the mid-to-high 60s – everyone was outside, enjoying the springtime. I was able to get out a bit during the day today, taking a drive through the country to get to the local Apple store (I needed to get a new external hard drive to offload all the video I’m taking). How do you know you’re in the Tri-State area? Ultra-Orthodox Jews scoping out MacBooks at the Apple Store. Maybe if I go to Philly, I could find an Amish fellow at an Apple store…that would be a funny experiment, trying to find and photograph the most incongruous people at Apple stores…but I digress.

As a California boy born and bred, I’d always had the impression that the entirety of New Jersey was the brick, stone, and grey skies of Newark and Trenton, and that everyone here sounded funny. I was half right. This part of Jersey is full of green hills, rolling farmland, back-country roads, lovely tree-lined streets with cute little houses…not quite pastoral, but it’s still hard to believe that these little towns – they’re called villages, actually – sit within an hour’s train ride to Manhattan. I’m guessing that most people commute into the city from here…maybe anyone who reads this who is from the Jersey area can help set me straight.

Days 2 and 3 have flown by. Yesterday I went to the gym in the morning, and then we started work on a song called Wherever You Are. Again, we began with the arrangement process – but unlike the first two songs, where Ben had relatively little to say, he had some changes to propose to this one. Major changes. (Gulp.) Keep in mind that I’ve written and rewritten this song at least a dozen times to get it to where I liked it (I’m not kidding about the dozen times, btw), and that I happen to know that this song is a favorite of many…so I was more than a bit apprehensive when he started to make some suggestions for changes. Ultimately, I think the song turned out better than before. I’m creating a video clip of the process we went through to modify the song, because I think it is by far the most interesting thing that happened yesterday, and I’m guessing that a lot of you may be interested in watching it. I'll provide the link soon - hopefully in my next installment.

Later in the afternoon we recorded a second song (You’re Gonna Find Someone), and then I put on the good jeans to meet my friend Leslie and her new fiancée for dinner. It was so nice to relax a bit with an old friend. I realize now that I totally should have taken a picture of us all for the blog, but I forgot…so here’s a picture of Leslie and Paul that I’m certain they’ll love to know is posted for all to see.

This morning, after a short walk around the neighborhood, we worked on Hearts in the Graveyard. No major arrangement changes this time, and the recording went well. Then came my noontime jaunt to the Apple store for my hard drive. One more thing about driving out here in this part of Jersey – they appear to have a strong aversion to street signs. It’s a lot like my years in Boston, where directions basically amount to “turn Right at the big tree stump, Left at the blue house…you know you’re getting close when you pass the Citgo sign and the broken streetlamp. If you pass the big farm with cows, ayuh, you’ve gone too far”. Check out a really funny SNL skit on the subject here (transcript only - couldn't seem to find it on video). Needless to say, I got lost several times on the way to the Apple store (which, for reference, was only 5 miles away). No, I still won’t get a GPS – you find more interesting stuff when you get lost, anyway. Once I got back, we attacked a song called Halls of Your Heart, which proved to be incredibly challenging. Not too many changes to the arrangement, but playing the guitar part of the song is very hard on my fingers…my fingertips were burning by the time we finally finished. My voice was getting pretty tired by the end, but I think I’m noticing a bit of improvement…hopefully I’ll get stronger as I go.

Ben is starting to talk about having a couple of folks come in to do background vocals and guitars the beginning of next week…I’ll keep you posted. Much will depend on whether we’re able to keep up this pace of recording two songs a day (which is really a lot).

That’s all for now - feel free to post comments or questions, or things you’d like to know more about. Thanks for being there, and – as always – thanks for listening!

Steve