It’s snowing. The light outside is blue. The horizon is dismissed for the day and it’s quiet, the way a bath is after the faucet’s turned off. Deer wade across the wide white landscape —calm as velvet when it’s running the same way. I wasn’t going to write today — frankly, there’s been little to write about.

We dubbed Michael White, “El Blanco,” this week because ‘Blanco’ is his last name in Spanish and because Mike’s skin is whiter than milk, a consequence of working in studios all his life. El Blanco is skinny too (no correlation to his new moniker) due in no small part to the calories he burns eating. He insists on chewing every single bite 32 times to promote digestive health. It’s not the only reason but, no doubt, has contributed to the two days it’s taken to get the right guitar tone for “Split Decisions,” A song I wrote a couple weeks ago. Every chew chews into studio time. “Do you think we’re still on target to finish the record by February?” I ask El Blanco between bits of tabbouleh. He doesn’t want to speak with his mouth full and by the time he’s done chewing we’ve both forgotten my question.

Chris Soucy sits atop a wooden swivel, bar-chair trying not to move or breathe. The slightest gesture could be disastrous to the recording process and might completely change the tone he and El Blanco have worked so hard to find. None of our patience can afford that. We’re tired, and our ears hurt from having to hear the same song over and over for two days straight. So, Chris sits dutifully like a stuffed sparrow on his perch. He remains expressionless except for moments he looks disappointed, after a take when El Blanco turns to him and says, “Try it again.” The room is hot; the control room electronics heat it up all day until we’re in tank tops and shorts and still sweating. It’s dark too because we’ve been too focused on tone to notice it’s becoming night.

Hours slip away under the music. We forget to pee, we forget to turn on lights, we forget to eat (and I’m not about to remind El Blanco!!!) My role is pretty much to sit on the wall-to-wall, parsley-colored rug — back against the paprika-painted paneling — listening, disapproving, listening again, suggesting alternatives, approving, and trying, unsuccessfully, to move things along. I do some calculations.

• “Split Decisions” is a 5-minute song
• There are twelve, 5 minutes in an hour
• We’ve worked on the song from 10 am to 10 pm the past two days
• That means we’ve heard “Split Decisions” approximately 1,440 times.

You’d think it would be almost impossible to like a song after that many listens, but miraculously we find ourselves humming it on our way home and more miraculous still, we find a way to still like each other.

I wake up, as usual, at 3 am and vaguely recall hearing something about sleeplessness during specific hours indicating an imbalance in certain organs in Chinese medicine. Was 3-5 the liver? I wonder. They’re definitely the hours my demons wake me up with trivialities: “You need to call the new booking agent back,” “You’ve got to do laundry today” and “Oh my God! You total jerk, you forgot Heidi’s birthday!” Agitated as a felted sock, I find myself staring at the ceiling. When suddenly, I’m flooded with all these “great ideas” for the album cover, a new sticker, and lyrics for a new tune. Stitched to the sheets moments ago, I rip myself out of bed to write a “to-do” list and while I’m up, I figure I may as well dash the song lyrics down.

This life,
It breathes me in
I’m a puppet
In a beating production

Clothed in skin
I tend the fire
And find the courage to
Leap
In

Once that’s done I think I better draw a quick sketch of the sticker idea.

And once that’s done I think I better peruse some magazines to find something that matches the mood I want for the album cover.

The next thing I know, I’m up for the day. I read. I put together a photo album. I wander around the house in my baby blue flannel PJs with the clouds on them (A gift from Mike Nichols) cleaning out the drain in the kitchen sink. I hang pictures on the walls wondering whether the neighbors mind me hammering nails at 4:45 am.

At 10 am, coffee in hand, I make it to the studio. We listen back to the songs we recorded yesterday and decide, with fresh ears, whether we want to try to get a better take of them today. Then, infuriatingly, nothing happens. I mean NOTHING. It’s as though someone hits pause on the studio and leaves me unfrozen and exasperated. It might look to the outsider like everyone is doing something, after all, Michael is touching knobs on the soundboard, Brian’s stretching his wrists, and Kenny and Soucy are snacking in the kitchen tossing grapes into each other’s mouths but nothing is really getting done. I sit in the bathtub (where a Sharpie penned sign now reads “Sally’s office.”) I make calls, return emails, and knit Kipp a birthday sweater (never mind his birthday was 3 months ago).

By the time Michael’s ready to record it’s 3 pm and I’ve already been on my feet, strapped into my guitar for an hour itching for momentum. I stand in furlined slippers in the middle of the living room, in front of a mic stand, to the right of the piano with the flowers (which are mostly dead now) facing the door. But maddeningly, It’s another hour before the recording actually begins. First, we have to get drum sounds, then bass sounds and then we have to get the right mixes (for each of us) in our cans.*

By the time we’re recording, it’s 4 pm. Believe it or not, it only takes 3-10 times playing through a song (barring technical difficulties like computer crashes, pee breaks, and re-tuning) to get what we need on tape. There are always a few things that need tightening up after we’re satisfied with a take: the bass is late, the drums are early, you can’t hear the snare, and stuff like that so things need to be patched in, glued on, so to speak. By 6 pm or so, it’s time to prep the room again for the next song, decide which bass drums to use, which angle to place the microphones, which bass tone, which version of the song to try first… fast? slow? samba? techno?

By this point it’s 8 pm, I am exhausted and there are people I don’t know hanging out in the control room,* listening in to our recording session, drinking wine way too near the control board for anyone’s comfort. These people are residents of the home studio. They’re getting off work from a long day of tree trimming or serving coffee or bank telling. All of them are ready to cut loose and all of them feel entitled to hang out in our control room, smoke grass, and talk drunkenly while we try to work.

This infuriates me. Sometimes I’m cool about it and drink a glass of wine with them and listen to what it was like to fell a knotty pine with one chainsaw. But mostly, I’m exasperated about having to step over reclining bodies between takes, and the thought of having to rearrange the room for yet another song feels unbearable. But just as I’m about to revolt, kick everyone out of the control room — just when I think I can’t stand being in the studio one more second and want to cry that my liver is waking me up at 3 am, we listen back to what we’ve recorded — what we’ve given birth to. The noise we’ve made has been transformed into music. The lyrics have taken shape and found meaning, propped behind chords and harmonies and I am rejuvenated — exhilarated like a proud mother watching her tiny baby take its first steps.

And at 11 pm, as I walk out into the parking lot, under a star-filled sky, guitar in hand, I know I can sustain another 3 am wakeup call if it means watching this album come to life.

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FOOTNOTES:
Basic Tracks: Recording Drums and Bass.
Cans: Headphones
Control Room: The isolated room where a Producer and Engineer work and where playback and listening happens.

Yesterday had its ups and downs.
Our first day of basic tracks* was productive until nightfall when we started experiencing some concerning glitches. Tracks we’d recorded moments before stubbornly froze, refused to playback, and then disappeared entirely. It was extremely frustrating to finish a great performance only to watch the recording of it vanish into thin air. Losing tracks means losing studio time, equipment rental time, and most importantly, what money can’t buy, enthusiasm and energy.

Fortunately, today the computer gods are with us and we’re making progress on “Dvoren,” A song I wrote about a geeky-longhaired physicist I once struck up a conversation with in a hot tub when I was at ‘college. Jeff sat on the ledge of the broiling, color-changing tub, the steam enveloping his white, overtly hairy legs and skinny arms. He spoke with a lisp and a faint stutter as he told me he’d discovered the rate of disintegration of something called the “Z particle” and thus had been given a full-ride scholarship to Penn State. As he went on enthusiastically about his little-known “Z particle,” I found myself edging closer to him. I was so taken with his brain, so excited about his knowledge of physics that I insisted he stop talking. I was going to have to kiss him. We dated throughout the spring before he left for Penn and I for Colorado. I have no idea where he is now.

The studio’s beginning to look more like home … probably because let’s face it, we’re living here. My clothes are strewn about the living room, my favorite mug and house plant have moved in, and I’ve adopted a couple slow-moving, stinkbugs bugs which I hang out with between takes in our vast common room which smells of cedar and marijuana and warm apricot honey. The sun rays spread throughout the room and dust fairies drift through, oblivious to the musical which they appear to sway and dance to.

This is the new and improved Sky Trails, the same home studio where I recorded “TomBoy Bride” but with an upgrade. The studio and all it’s equipment has been moved from Lyons, CO to Boulder, CO. Its new canyon view is a spectacular mountain scape, lined with tall pines that empty into a snow-kissed Boulder with its endless eastern horizon. The ceilings are tall and vaulted with plants peering like peeping toms behind high-ledged corners. There’s a kitchen to the left of the control room where we relax and eat popcorn and Brian taps on a wooden table with drumsticks. On a huge black grand piano sits a purple bouquet of irises next to a dozen or so red candles. Kenny sets his new mechanical hula girl doll beside the flowers — a gift from his father-in-law for Christmas. We gather around it like kids at a “show and tell” as Kenny switches it on and suggestively mimics its gyrating. We’re all a bit giddy—we laugh easily and hug freely. I think the boys are as relieved as I am that recording is finally underway.

Moving in seemed endless between Michael’s need to tinker and my need to nest. Like a bird, hauling twigs to a birdhouse, I collect props and assembe backdrops for my fledgling songs. Each needs its own setting, its own nursery. For example, when Michael announced we’d be starting with “All This Time,” a retro 70’s tune, I hung beaded curtains on Brian’s makeshift drum tent and adorned each player in rainbow sweatbands and huge orange sunglasses.

And in the evening, when we recorded “Forty Years,” I lit 30 candles and poured everyone a glass of cabernet to set the tone.

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Footnotes:
*Basic Tracks: Bass and drum tracks that scaffold each song.

Kipp and I waded around his refrigerator of a house dressed like Eskimos. The pale winter light shifted like ice sheets around our clenched bodies. We huddled over steaming porage and hot green tea wondering when the plumber would arrive to unfreeze the pipes.

Kipp drove me through the canyon to the studio. His clutch wouldn’t work. The car stubbornly refused to switch gears and when the gear stick ended up, detached, in his hand for the third time, he clenched his teeth and bashed his fists, apelike, against the steering wheel. I brushed his forearm with my numb white fingers until he breathed again.

The studio was warm and, there, I unwrapped my mummified body from its layers of wool and fleece. Michael was already at work at the soundboard* so I sat down quietly on the maroon carpet in my blue tank top and jeans, careful not to disturb his creative process. I hoped today would be productive. We lost yesterday to setting up and dialing in sounds — Deciding on the best mics to capture the sweet spot for each drum in Brian’s kit and selecting the tastiest bass amp settings for each song. We don’t have an isolation booth* at SkyTrails to control the sound environment so we have to be creative with what we’ve got. Michael and I built Mcrae a drum tent, which took approximately 2 hours yesterday. We strung rope across rafters, slung rugs and blankets over them, propped pillows and jackets at the base, and then shoved Brian inside to bang on toms like 5000 times for everyone’s listening enjoyment (joke! REAL Big joke!!).

When I say the past two days have been boring for me, I mean it in the most anxious-causing way. Not only am I unable to hear much of a difference between Michael’s settings I am also watching approximately $2,300 a day/$200 an hour* fly out the window while having to put up with very loud drumming. We really need to get basic tracks* by this time next week to stay on schedule.

Computer in lap, I typed away in a hunched position to distract myself from my boredom and anxiety. Soucy arrived and sat down beside me and stretched his quadriceps while changing his guitar strings—something I suggested might be considered for a new Olympic event. By the second hour of listening to Brian hit his snare drum I’d had enough of the terrible din. I stashed myself away in a little bathroom off the control room and used it as my office. I crawled into the big iron foot bathtub next to the window and wrote in my journal, practiced guitar, and did some gentle vocal exercises.

Though I’m not really necessary in the studio for basic tracks, I’m happy to play the mascot, rest my withering vocal cords, and finally get some computer work done.

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Vocabulary & Footnotes:

*Sound Board: a device made up of sliders and knobs used to mix signals (change volume, put on effects like reverb, or change the EQ for example) from instrument inputs in a studio or in a live performance

*Isolation Booth: a specialized room in a music studio that is designed to isolate a recording from outside noise and create a controlled recording environment.

*Daily, my expenses were: $1,285 for Michael, $275 for the studio, $100 per player, and $160 for hard drive backups and rental equipment.

*Basic Tracks: Bass and Drums are generally considered “Basic Tracks.”  They are recorded first for all the songs on a record.  They are the scaffolding the rest of the instruments will be layered on top of.

Waking up in a freezing cold house only increased my feelings of paranoia and excitement. It was Monday— 66 degrees inside, blank sky, jackets on people passing by, clenched white knuckles to the neck. My mind raced into the day second-guessing my overwhelmed todo list: ‘Was I supposed to special order those microphones?’ ‘Oh man did I tell Chris (SkyLines studio engineer/owner) we’re moving in today?’ ‘I need to call the keyboardest!’ ‘I really hope Chris called the cellist!’ Etcetera. I made myself a cup of twig tea in my black & white checkerboard tiled kitchen. I can’t find a mug big enough to accommodate my thirst recently so I’ve taken to drinking out of pint-sized Pyrex measuring cups. With 16 oz of a steaming hot beverage, I folded myself onto my windowsill wrapped in the Mexican blanket off the end of my bed. I relaxed for a moment, letting the tea’s vaporous ghosts rise and envelop my face. The barklike smell grounded my thoughts and smoothed my brow as I took tiny mouth scorching sips. ‘It’s not like me to sit,‘ I thought. I’m too much of a doer to sit unless my ‘doing’ requires a seated position. As I looked around the still room I realized I have couches and chairs I’ve never used. I stared at them like lazy employees.

‘Just sitting is nice.’

Today, we’re moving into the studio. We’ll start recording tomorrow and then every day (except Sundays) until we’re through — two weeks, thinks Michael, our producer. Sometime in late February think I. Pre-production was extremely tiring but constructive. We finished up Saturday night at 10:30 pm with a complete run-through of all 12 songs.  My voice was gone by dinner and so l had to speak most of the lyrics which sounded, to the band, very much like a William Shatner album. I kept laughing with them at myself even though my trachea was in terrible pain. Marji and the kids from The Walden School in Media, PA, sent the band chocolates for Christmas and that’s what I had for dinner — Chocolates and champagne, which I bought to commemorate the completion of preproduction and the beginning of recording.

I just really hope I wasn’t supposed to call the cellist.

Our pre-production space is a warehouse just outside of town. It’s where the second sock turns up. Where the dust under the rug gets swept and it’s where we feel most at home. In a high-ceilinged room, under a bright fluorescent light we play and bang and map the topography of our songs all day without concern neighbors might complain. Our only neighbors out here are tumbleweeds, a murder of crows, and a patient moon that hangs out like a fan for an autograph.

Our schedule runs each day from noon to midnight. Michael White, our engineer/producer, arrived from New York on Tuesday straight off a recording session with Whitney Huston. He’s agreed to produce our next record for a meager 18K (not AT ALL meager to me (que nail-biting) but much less than the fee he usually fetches). To soften the blow of his rate, he’s agreed to sleep on a futon in Kipp’s office for the duration of recording which we plan to track* in under two weeks. For this ambitious feat to be feasible, we’ve got to train, the way gymnasts do for an event. We need to learn and perfect all our parts: lyrics, solos, chord progressions, and harmonies. We need to memorize the shape of each song—where to bring the energy up and when to drop it back. We need to decide what reverb* and plug-ins* to use and which melodic parts are missing so we can start hiring session players.*

Michael White listens to each song. His skinny frame reverberates under the influence of Brian’s snare drum. At the conclusion of a song, he marinates in silence before instructing, “Again,” and bending his expressive nose into a question mark-shaped pointer finger. The next time we run through the song he might request an extra bar here, a bigger drum fill there, a complete drop out of all instruments coming out of a chorus. We rework each song like chefs at a culinary school until we’re satisfied the auditory recipe is perfect. Then, it’s on to the next song and the next. On average, we’re able to cook two songs a day, running each under a microscope hundreds of times before Mike agrees it’s time to move on.

Time moves inconsistently, the way it does when you’re falling in love. Every second lasts a day and each day lasts a second. Sometimes I forget I’m tired, then walk out to find a new dawn gracefully lifting the sky like a stage curtain on another day.

Before an open garage door, atop a beer and oil-stained slice of carpet, we chart the road to a finished second album. Sometimes I forget the words. Sometimes Kenny forgets the chords. Sometimes Brian forgets to eat and then falls asleep on his drum kit but Chris never forgets ANYTHING, and for that, we are grateful.

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Vocabulary

*Arranging a song means modifying it to fit a new purpose. For example: I write my songs with the intention of playing them live. Together with a producer, the band needs to come up with additional parts, sounds, intros, and outros that will bring it to life on a recording.

*Tracking: A song is made up of a series of ‘tracks’—drums, bass, guitar, vocals, background vocals, etc. Each part gets layered on top of the next like a sandwich. When an album is “tracked,” it means the recording is done. The next two phases of making an album are mixing and mastering.

*Reverb is a sustained sound that occurs when sound waves bounce off surfaces in a space. It’s a natural acoustic effect that’s present everywhere, but in music, it’s usually an artificial effect added by producers to create a sense of space and depth, making instruments and vocals sound like they’re in different environments, such as a large hall or room for example.

*Plug-ins are pieces of software that enhance sound. Plugins can be used to enrich existing sounds or create entirely new sounds.

*Session players are professional musicians hired to perform in recording sessions. They are freelancers who work on a per-project basis.

Tonight I enlisted fourteen of my best and most discerning friends in Boulder to help me pick the songs for my next album. I was nervous. Kipp agreed to host the listening party at his house, ‘Timber Trails,’ off Boulder Canyon Drive. Outside, the winds fell down the drapes in the Colorado Canyon walls and roared to be let in from the bitter winter cold. Flickering like sunlight off a snowfield, fourteen smiles glistened at me above a sea of candles I’d lit for the occasion.

There were twenty-seven songs to get through, and though they were all great friends, I felt uncomfortable asking them to sit through two hours of shoddily recorded musical meanderings compiled over the past year in my bedroom with a dinky 4-track recorder. On top of feeling self-centered and unworthy, I was also vulnerable—concerned about how my friends would react to songs I’ve come to love, knowing I needed to ask them to help me abort half of them. I tried to relieve them of any pressure to save my feelings by constructing a rating system—one that would leave them anonymous after the music was over and the wine was gone.

I’d decanted several bottles of red wine and asked my guests to make themselves comfortable on Kipp’s L-shaped sofa and white, shedding, shaggy rug. I handed them each a sheet of paper with a list of all my new songs and explained with the air of an SAT monitor:

“On these sheets, are a list of all my latest songs. Since I can only put ten or eleven songs on the record, I need you tonight, to help me weed out at least sixteen. Next to each song, in column two, I would like you to rate each song. A #1 will mean that you think the song MUST BE ON THE RECORD. A #2 will indicate you can TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT. And a #3 will mean OUST IT. In the column on the far right, I would love your comments, suggestions, and/or production ideas. Please try to be as honest as you can. You don’t need to put your name on the sheets. If I catch you looking at someone else’s papers you will be sent to the dean’s office, do not pass go; do not collect $100 dollars,” I joked and hit play on the tape deck.

My friends took their job seriously. As the music started and the conversation quieted, I could hear their pencils studiously scratching away. I smiled and watched the floor. I couldn’t move a muscle (besides my drinking arm of course) for two hours. I felt the music might shatter like a mirror if I breathed too deeply, or hoped about a song too loudly.

My friends WERE honest, God bless their souls, and the effort was a success. We were able to eliminate all but 16 songs from the running and I was grateful none of my favorites landed on the cutting room floor. Preproduction starts tomorrow and while it will still be an undertaking to whittle away five more tunes—tonight, in the operating theater of Kipp’s living room, my fastidious friends performed a painful but necessary surgery on my song collection.

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*Preproduction: Before a band goes into a studio to record a record, they get together for a few days in advance to work out production ideas so that no time is wasted in the expensive studio.