We’re finally done recording at Timber Trails (YAY/Thank GOD) and Mike and I have moved our recorded tracks East. We’ve been invited to mix* our album in Whitney Houston’s home studio in Mendham, New Jersey. So far there’s no sight or sign of “The Voice,” and El Blanco thinks there’s little chance we’ll run into her over the next three weeks. “It’s probably better that way,” I tell him, “I’d no doubt embarrass us both with my fawning all over her.” The grounds are impeccable. The studio walls are a rich purple and the luxurious leather sofas are white as snow. We spent the morning moving into our new studio (much relieved to be out of Chris Wright’s, Timber Trails) and the afternoon preparing to mix.

Preparation for mixing involves a laborious process of inventorying each track, adjusting settings, checking tones, and notching pesky frequencies.* A loud 2K feedback rings out of the monitors.

I imagine this is what an ant’s amplified death cry sounds like. The ring stops temporarily before piercing the air again … and again … and again until that damn ring has found a home in my left ear.

It’s the sound of silver
It’s traffic
It’s the sensation of biting into an overly frozen raspberry popsicle with your back teeth
It’s tinsel
It’s nasal spray
It’s too much coffee
It’s the sound of exes echoing complaints years after their last fight
It’s annoying.

As a means of defense, I have a full bottle of Bach Rescue Remedy in my purse (now half empty), essential oils, chocolate, a picture of my brother, my knitting, and most importantly, earplugs.

---

Footnotes:

• Mixing: Mixing a record happens once all parts (drums, bass, guitar, strings, horns, vocals, etc.) are recorded. It is the process of balancing various elements of each song to ensure they complement each other. It includes balancing levels, panning, EQing, adding effects, automation, and creating cohesion to shape the final sound and prepare the album for mastering (the final polish before distribution).
• Notching Frequencies: Eliminating unwanted frequencies that can muddy the mix or cause issues. This process includes identifying and reducing frequencies that may cause problems, such as feedback, resonance, or muddiness. This fine-tuning ensures clarity and a cleaner sound.

There was a party at the studio Saturday night.
It was warm on the terrace overlooking the lit-up treasure chest of downtown. The city lights were corrugated by heat waves pouring from the mouth of the studio’s open doors. People, in silhouette, spilled onto the veranda to smoke cancer sticks and make out with strangers.

Everyone I knew was there though it wasn’t my party. There’s no way in HELL I’d throw a party in the studio. The chance of someone spilling a drink on a computer, moving a knob on the soundboard or tripping over a power cable, guitar, or storage drive was way toooooo great. But no one was asking me. This was Chris Wright’s studio and according to him, he was “damn well going to have a party at his house if he damn well pleased.” Apparently, he didn’t mind putting our work in jeopardy and I vowed this album would be the last I recorded at Sky Trails Studio.

Partygoers were adorned in the latest Urban Outfitters had to offer. Girls entered the house giggling then grimaced as they noticed the other bodies wearing their same sequined dresses. Luckily, though my publicist Ariel and I, had been to Urban Outfitters earlier, looking for what the invitation called for (Whimsical Attire) we found nothing inspiring and instead, opted for hoodies and sweatpants as a form of silent rebellion against the party. Frankly, I was only going to keep an eye on the equipment and to make sure no one walked with our instruments.

“NO DRINKS PAST THIS POINT” read the sign outside the control room and I breathed a sigh of relief. Chris had promised he’d post this for me and I felt grateful. But inside… were drinks! and people listening to our rough takes with Chris Wright at the helm pushing all the soundboard buttons and twisting Michael’s carefully adjusted knobs. Drunk people were playing my guitar while their dogs jumped all over the strings. IN THE CONTROL ROOM and I felt completely out of control.

But it had been a long, successful day leading up to this point —the kind of day that has the power to take your mind off a broken heart. The kind that affords you the luxury of brushing off a blatant slight. I’d woke to a message from Kyle Comerford agreeing to be our new drummer. This was a huge relief after a long, arduous search. Kyle is a gem, our first pick from a lineup of 10 players we auditioned. He’ll pick up from Brian once the record is done. Tom Rush called later in the morning to invite me to tour this summer with his production company “Club 47” which is a huge opportunity. And in the afternoon, I’d recorded some songs for The Farrelly Brother’s new movie, Me Myself and Irene, at a studio downtown. I was honored that my buddy Pete Farrelly wanted me on his production and at his request, recorded a handful of Steely Dan songs and a Beverly Breemer’s tune called “Don’t Say You Don’t Remember.” I’m not sure any of them are good enough to make it onto the movie but recording with Soucy in a different studio for a different project was a great distraction from my heartache.

Despite the many glorious, uplifting events of the day, the party made me tired. My exhaustion was fueled by Chris Wright’s blatant disrespect for Michael’s and my hard work, drinks teetering on the soundboard, dogs humping my guitar, and the sad, soundless strum in my chest of missing Kipp. As people began to fade into chemically induced slumbers, Ariel and I faded too — down the switchbacks in the snowy driveway, down through the stoic, sentinel pines, and back into the melted, gold puddle of lights shining brightly against the horizon.

Gretchen Wigan, a massage therapist who does intuitive touch on both Kipp and me, was working on my legs Wednesday when she mentioned, “I’m picking up relationship energy really strongly in your ankles.” Her room was a womb – dark, warm and soothing. A candle flickered in the corner. She continued, “If you stay in this relationship, you’re gonna lose yourself.” The statement was bold and rang true from my feet to my head. The words she gave breath to were already beating in my heart (and apparently my ankles) when she said them.

I’ve been folding my life into his for the better part of two years despite knowing, days after we hooked up while on an ecstasy trip in Crested Bute’s backcountry, we were probably wrong for one another. But by then, I already adored him—his humor, his strength, his heart, his sense of adventure, and his generosity and it wasn’t just the ecstasy talking. Of course, he was out of my wheelhouse. I’d never dated someone so blatantly alpha — so macho, bold, and self-assured. Perhaps, I remember thinking at the time, I should go against my instincts and date against my grain. Maybe the guys I’m intrinsically attracted to have all been wrong for me because I have a bad picker. But nearly two years in, the love was bleached out of our relationship and my insecurities had magnified tenfold. Though Kipp is a glorious soul and fun as all hell, the light he shines on my character leaves me feeling so broken that I grow more and more convinced I’m lucky that Kipp even puts up with me. Of course, I don’t blame him solely for my insecurities. The smoldering embers of my unworthiness were with me way before Kipp came on the scene. I only mean that his presence amplifies my self-doubt and leaves me feeling hopeless.

And now my ankles were screaming for Gretchen to say what my heart had failed to convince me. It was time for this to be over. He wore a faceless expression on his bald head. “Come here,” I beamed with a smile across a universe of emotions. I held him when I said, “Maybe we should think seriously about whether we want to stay together.” He knew this was coming. It had been a cold slap through the phone when I’d asked if I could come over to talk about the health of our relationship.

“I’m sure I want to stay together, “Kipp said robotically, muffled into the crook of my elbow. I swallowed hard and spoke from my ankles when I finally owned my long-resisted truth
“Then, I guess, I mean, I guess I need to think seriously about whether I want to stay with you.” It was painful and I don’t know which bothered me more—that I was burning a bridge I’d help build, or hurting someone I loved deeply and truly.

“It seems to me,” I continued, “That we’re driving each other crazy and have been for a while. It’s hard to know whether we’re growing from the pain we’re causing one another, or just chipping away at what’s essential in each other. You know?” He didn’t know.

I drove away through the canyon through tears, to the studio where the hours trickled by. The slow ones itched. The fast ones bled. I couldn’t mention the breakup to the rest of the band. Some of them are Kipps housemates and at best it would only be a distraction— one we couldn’t afford at the rate we’re tracking. I floated amongst my bandmates like gristle in an otherwise healthy soup. Back in my office of a bathtub, I found the misery that loves company, very lonely inside of me.

We worked on vocals the rest of the day. We’d been working on them all week. The one exception was when Maceo Parker (James Brown’s saxophone player) came to the studio on Super Bowl Sunday to lay down tracks on “Dvoren” and “Forty Years.” What an honor! I knit him a hat to say thank you when he refused any other form of payment. He promptly regifted it to his manager Natasha.

After 10 hours of working on the vocal track for, “For Kim,” Michael and I agreed we needed a break from sound and went to town for dinner. As we drove through the dark canyon, shadows of pines raced out of the way of our headlights. Up ahead in the valley, airplanes looked like fireflies dancing over Denver’s International Airport.

Mike and I sat across from one another in a dark booth over Vietnamese food trying to explain why recording has been moving at a snail’s pace. The album release date* (April 15th) is a mere two months away, and from the corner booth at Chez Thuy, that time frame seems ridiculously ambitious if not straight up hilarious. The budget, well we’ve long since gone over that. But how is it, working 12-hour days – 7 days a week, we’re not further along by now? I don’t mention that I think Michael’s chewing habits are a metaphor for the pace of our production as he digs into a plate of banh xeo. We’re both exhausted and on top of that, I’m sad.

Back at the studio with fresh ears and a full belly, I find myself back in my bathtub, trying to psych myself up to sing another take of “For Kim” when my heart wants to shatter. I don’t know whether to call Kipp or let it lie. I recline in the empty, porcelain tub asking my Magic 8 Ball for answers. It’s reply? “Ask again later” and “Better not tell you now.”

---

FOOTNOTES:

*Release date- The projected date of an album release after all the elements have been completed: 1. Preproduction 2. Recording 3. Mixing 4. Album Artwork 5. PR campaign 6. Mastering 7. Booking the promotional tour 8. Pressing the CD 9. Sending merchandise to retail

The suede pants I dropped off at the dry cleaners on Monday are no longer suede. They’re more cardboard than leather and I ask them why?
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” the owners say in unison.
“So why is the stain I brought them in for, still there?”
“Oh, that’s a catsup stain, that won’t come out of those pants,” They say laughing as though I’d asked them how to get to Mars by bus.
“OK,” I say calmly, “so why is the hemline all taken out and shredded like that?”
“It was that way when you brought them in,” they say as though they’d rehearsed their bit 100s of times. I pay them their $24 dollars and drive my cardboard pants to the studio in my Rav 4 Toyota feeling robbed as though someone stole my favorite memory and insisted it was theirs all along.

We finished guitar on “Forty Years” in the morning and moved on to “Dvoren,” which, after 5 hours, we decided we didn’t want guitar on. Despite our chaos and indecisiveness, I felt relaxed in the studio for the first time in ages. With a full night of sleep under my belt, I could’ve recorded forty more songs. But I could tell El Blanco was stressed. Every other word he uttered was followed by a deep, lonesome sigh. He cracked his neck every half an hour or so, cupping his skull and chin in his bony white hands and turning his head like it were a stuck jam jar lid. He admitted to wishing things (guitar) were moving along quicker but neither of us could legitimize picking up the pace. Speeding up the recording process means slowing down the mixing process. Being less finicky about guitar tones means not having the best track possible.

“We just have to let go of this whole time thing,” I suggested sitting cross-legged on the floor with one reassuring hand on his knee. The electronics buzzed a furious hum and a magenta mote of carpet swirled around my teal, velvet skirt. We stared at the ground like a developing picture in a dark room. Finally, Michael agreed we needed to loosen up our reigns on the calendar, cracked his neck again, and sighed.

In the late afternoon we worked the wah-wah pedal into “One Step,” a song about confronting fears; taking one step into the unknown, finding strength in weakness, and giving yourself to the abyss. When I wrote it, the image in my head was of Wile E. Coyote suspended in the air.
The roadrunner’s scratched a line in the dirt which he’s crossed over again and again until he realizes he’s been tricked into walking off a ledge and stands suspended in the air with no ground beneath him. But, curiously, he doesn’t fall until he realizes there’s no ground.

That cartoon taught me that falling, floating, and flying are all the same action; it’s the fear that “no ground” means “down” that makes me “fall.” But I don’t have to, and that’s what the song is about – taking one first step out into the middle of the air, into the mystery, letting go of the fear that makes “no ground” mean “fall” and, instead, deciding it means “fly.”

The song is a reminder to me to lose control, and in the chaos, find freedom.

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.

---

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 day 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.

---

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.

---

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.