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.

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.