Album Update #1

Getting to fly to Boston and record my single “Woman Being” in August 2023 was intense. Not least of all because I didn’t realize I’d scheduled my studio session on the same day and time I was flying, not the day before!

I’m going to level with you: I don’t have many memories from this point in the trip, I went into survival/problem-solve mode.

I have a philosophy that, 98% of the time, works one hundred percent of the time. “Outsmart the dumb”, I call it. A lifetime of being me has taught me that I’m, by nature, not a detail-oriented person. So the moment I think of a task I talk to my phone to tell me to remind me at a date/time I can take care of it. Or I literally drop everything to do a task that, in that moment, is unimportant but later will be imperative. I did pretty good implementing this during my partner’s pregnancy. I can’t think of any other misses. But this was one, and it was big.

Boston highway on my way to Waltham, MA, where Plaid Dog Recording is nestled.

I called my producer and engineer for the project at Plaid Dog, Carter Sanders in a panic. He seemed either unconcerned (like maybe this happened a lot), or like it wasn’t his problem. Either way, the parental panic I reflexively expected from him he didn’t seem to have. This actually set me at ease.

The next 72 hours were a whirlwind of a session. I met, for the first time (and not to be the last!) Russ Sternglass and Daniel Yoong on drums and bass, respectively. (I’ll put their contacts down below). I’ll write more about the session later, but this was my first time working with session musicians on my own music and wow. I think every young musician has a moment they consider becoming a session musician. Of those, there’s a percentage that try. And even of those, such an incredibly small fraction actually end up on a short list of a local studio, engineer, or producer. The skills and precision required are pretty high. Every second that passes you’re essentially lighting cash on fire, so people that can get it right as close to the first time as possible are super important.

I actually remember the rest of this session vividly as a few more fiascos happened. I didn’t have a shower, I tried some local gyms for one, got kicked out of one of them. I had to record the promotional video for the campaign fundraiser in which I forgot how to pronounce the word “Massachusetts”. I tried to take public transit back to the airport and the bus never arrived so I walked part way and then just ubered the remainder.

All for a single that sounds incredible! But I’m definitely going to tweak before release with the album now that I’ve recorded all these other songs.

In the next post I’ll talk a little bit more about my most recent trip to Boston to record the bulk of the music for my upcoming album.

Thanks for reading, choir!

In love,

Reverend Doctor