One Year Into This

it has been just over one full year since i started working on this record. a year. i started the writing process in mid to late june of 2009. i remember when it first started. i just released the “how much more difficult will this get?” record and thinking how less than satisfied i was with that, in every way you can be disappointed with a creative effort.

that’s when i decided that this next release was going to be different. i wasn’t going to leave anything on the table with this one. that meant spending massive amounts of time writing. this record will have seven songs on it, that is from a pool of 16 songs i wrote just for this release. i also decided that recording this at home wasn’t going to cut it either. yeah i can record stuff that is good enough for a demo, but since day one of this project i heard it in my head and i knew right up front that i could not get that on my own. so, in february of this year i entered dirty water sound and started recording this. it hasn’t been easy. it’s been filled with poorly executed drums, 3 different passes of guitar parts for almost every song, re-did bass parts, not to mention the anxiety involved with making sure that each time a guitar part is re-tracked for re-amping that everything is in tune, and fits within the song and dealing with the absolute vulnerability of letting other people into this intensely personal creative experience.

so, finally after spending a few hours this past sunday evening in the studio re-amping some re-did guitar parts i started to feel more comfortable with things and started having that “light at the end of the tunnel and it may not be a train” sort of feeling. so i think just one more session, to re-amp one more song and then we go through the list of bugs with the mix and well, that’s pretty much it.

a year spent on this project. i’ve been asking myself all along if any of the time and effort will be worth it. but ultimately i don’t think that question needs to be answered or if it’s even a valid question. the issue is that it will be a project i will have finished. and i’ll know that i gave it everything i had.