Tuesday - Acoustic guitar, Scratch Vocals, and Bass track

Today was a busy day in the studio. As soon as we got in Todd and Thom began hooking up the microphones in the booth to begin tracking acoustic guitar. We'd end up using the same setup to lay down the scratch vocals as well. If we haven't explained that one before, "scratch" tracks are tracks that will be thrown away. They are just thrown out there for a point of reference.

Although today was one where we sat around a lot, it went very quickly and it was totally cool because the songs really began to come to life. Here's a video of Thom laying down a Bass track on "Don't Tell Me It's Over". One thing to note, you can tell the vocals are scratch vocals because there are points in this video that you can't even hear the vocals as we did not do any microphone placement.



We did notice that Kaci has been doing all the photography and hasn't been in many pictures (none in the studio yet), so we plan on changing that tomorrow. Nothing much to say, so we're just going to show you a few rooms of the studio (more pictures of the guitar\vocal booth to come tomorrow).

Here's the console where the mixing and overdubs are controlled. From here, Thom can have a conversation to whomever is in the booth.


Here's a picture of the couch that Kaci and I park it on while checking messages and working on songs. To the left of the couch is only one of the many racks of guitars and racks of effects. It's located at the opposite end of the room from the console.


Here's the drum room where Brett lays down the FOUNDATION of ROCK!


That's it for today!

Our first day in the studio!!

First, I have to tell you the third guys name (see the previous post). His name is Thom. So there is Brett (drums), Todd (guitar), and Thom (bass).

So back to what all of y'all are asking: How was it? AWESOME! We learned so many things today it is unbelievable. The production level, the musicianship...just the whole package is something that we've never experienced anywhere else. So where to start...hmmm.

First we report to Zodlounge at 10:00AM and the guys sit us down and get to know us some. Then we head down to the control room and we begin to dissect "Don't Tell Me It's Over". During this time we are brainstorming flow, some alternate chords to spice things up and create good "tension" in the song. Here's a picture of that process:


In the picture above you see myself (Jeremy), Brett, Thom, and Todd.

An added bonus during setup and some of the "song flow" process was that a guest stopped by to drop off a project. He actually sat in and helped the guys dial in some of the equipment and gave some good feedback on the song. After he left the guys excitedly told us that this guy was John "Roush" (can't spell his name I'll try to fix it tomorrow). John is a Grammy Award winning engineer/producer/mixer and he was digging our stuff! You'll see John in this video as we are running the flow against some initial drum tracks Brett laid down (video is 33MB, so be patient).


Once we had the flow set and everyone was digging the new direction of the song, Brett laid down the "scratch" drum tracks. Basically that means he laid down drum tracks that probably won't survive the final mix, but are there to serve as a foundation for all the other scratch tracks laid on top. Brett's amazing...he went into the drum room and nailed the song with no more than a piece of paper telling him how many bars are in each section, a click track, and the memory of what we all just covered.

After the scratch drum tracks for "Don't Tell Me It's Over" were laid down, we started working on "Falling Down". The nuts and bolts of "Falling Down" will remain the same, but the song will flow so much more smoothly. In "Don't Tell Me" I learned about alternate chords and alternate voicing for chords. In the process of creating the flow for "Falling Down" I learned a tried and true Nashville trick: Don't bore us, get to the Chorus! Again, once we were done Brett went and nailed the scratch drum tracks.

About 12:30 we broke for lunch (we ate at Pei Wei's which is a less expensive chain in the PF Chang restaurant group) then got back to work, this time on "I'm Alive". We really didn't change any of the flow on this song nor did we change any of the structure.

During this process we had some more visitors. Chris (a fellow Kansan who used to play for Nameless Faces) and his friend Shawn who is the Tour Manager for Watermark and Selah. These guys hung out while we finished up the flow of "I'm Alive" all the way up to the drum tracking on "Peace Be Still". Amazing guys...I know we'll stay in touch.

At this point Todd will begin to lay down some guitar tracks tomorrow and we may begin to lay some vocals down. If not tomorrow, definitely Wednesday before we leave to play for a group in Florence, AL.

At 5:00 we rushed out of Zodlounge and headed to the legendary Blue Bird Cafe. You should have seen the line of people waiting to get in, most of them wanting to play. Fortunately an acquaintance of ours from Church gave us his ticket which ensured us that we would get to play. We were drawn as the 21st songwriter(s) to play and we only were able to play one song as there were so many songwriters there.

We played "I'm Alive" and received a very encouraging reception from the crowd. It was amazing to play in a place so rich with musical history. Artists such as Garth Brooks, Brooks and Dunn, and Kenny Chesney started the same way on the same stage...just the weight of that made me shake!

Today was an amazing day. We learned SOOOO much and look forward to another day in the studio!!

P.S. - we have a video that we took at The Blue Bird, but it's 200MB. We'll see if we can make it smaller and post it at a later time.

Sunday - Church and site seeing

We landed safe and sound last evening (Saturday) and made our way to Jodi and Julee Cobb's house. They were gracious enough to let us stay with them for most of our trip. This was a huge break for us by the way and is one of the main reasons we can record 4 songs this trip (verse 3...this freed up some major cash for us!).

So this morning we headed to The Peoples Church in Franklin followed by lunch at Pucket's in downtown Franklin. Here's a picture from Pucket's with Jodi, Julee, and Nick.


After Pucket's we tried to walk around downtown Franklin, but it was raining like crazy so we took a ride to drop Nick off at his house. On the way we drove by a housing development called "The Govenor's Club". Basically it's where Toby Keith, Carrie Underwood, and all those cats live. Those houses are MONSTROUS!!!

Then it was off to see downtown Nashville, or affectionately called "Nash-Vegas". We started out on Broadway which is where all the Honky Tonk's are. Here's a section of Broadway.


Even on a Sunday afternoon there was live music in every bar on Broadway and they were packed full of people checking out the "next Big thing". Seems that everyone is a musician here and everyone has dreams of "making it big".

Didn't take us long to have enough of Broadway, then it was around th corner to see the Ryman Auditorium.


Then there were visits to Starbuck's and a few Boutique's that we won't bore you with. Other than that, we are meeting some cool people and just hanging out before we report to the Studio tomorrow morning at 10:00AM

Nashville or bust!

Have you ever had the feeling of being "on the verge"? Standing at the edge of all that God has created us to be is an overwhelming place. We're going through a gamut of emotions on the eve of our trip to Nashville to begin recording.

Neither Kaci or myself can remember a time in our lives that we didn't dream of this. Granted, it wasn't until I was 21 years old that I began to take guitar lessons. Shoot, up to that point I didn't even have a guitar that was worth a hoot. For Kaci, she may have been in High School Choir, but she never sang solo until 2003 when she stepped out to begin singing "Peace Be Still".

In the coming week we are going to do our best to give you the inside scoop as we record 4 songs in Nashville. We will be working with Brett Vargason, Todd Shay, and one other fellow (we'll post his name later...sorry!) at their studio production company called Zodlounge. Hopefully we'll be faithful to taking pictures and videos to post on the blog as well.

Thanks to all of you that have made this possible! We'll work hard to make you all proud!

Jeremy & Kaci

Drained!

The last few months has been one of the toughest times for me. This region we are in is dead. I struggle with the words because I don't want to come off too sharply or even sound like I'm "Holier than thou". It is as if people in the Church here are in a comatose state and what's worse is they are in this incapacitated state and going out telling people "you gotta have what I have...this Jesus is so cool". Why would anyone want what we are showing on a daily basis? We are living no differently!

To get groups to work together for the Kingdom is like pulling teeth. Even within those groups (Churches) we are fragmented. We have all these rules and regulations to "strain a gnat" but we are empty and comatose.

If we are the body, then something is wrong. It's as if the body is working to destroy itself! The limbs are flailing around wildly and helplessly. We look nothing like the Jesus that is historically portrayed in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Matter of fact, we look more like the religious elite that killed Him and persecuted the Disciples.

My encouragement in this is that I've been blessed to be able to meet with a few others who have seen this (and I mean few!). Not only that, but they are ready to dig down deep to live out a life of worship, a life imitating Jesus. Though this journey seems daunting and seemingly impossible, they have a fight in them that has encouraged me.

Will we stand with these warriors as well? Will we lay down our lives, our wants, our passions for the glory of God? We must realize what we were truly created to be. This is the only way this world will change, and at that it will only happen one person at a time. And that person is the person sitting right beside us! Welcome to the mission field!

We must fight our passions and take on the life of Jesus Christ!