I’m doing quite a bit of catch up here from my trip.  I have to say the best part of this trip was going into a Nashville studio to do some recording on Monday.  In Nashville there’s a section of town called Music Row.  I at first thought it was a bunch of music venues away from the downtown, but when you drive down 16th and 17th streets, it looks like a middle income residential neighborhood.  Just that what lie in those homes are studios, ad agencies, and other music related services.

After meeting with Mike Proctor on Friday, I was nervously excited all weekend to get into a studio.  My only prior experience with a professional studio was my work on my debut album, and I felt like the expectations were higher in Nashville given Mike’s experience in town.

I arrived with Courtney Monday morning at 11am to Tin Ear Studio.  Tin Ear Studio is on 17th Street in a grayish house.  When you walk in you arrive in the “brains” of the studio–the main soundboard where things are mixed and heard (pictured above).  Mike was there with another guy setting things up for the session.  My voice wasn’t feeling 100% ready yet, so I was chugging down warm coffee to loosen it up.

It’s hard to describe what recording is like to someone that hasn’t done it.  It’s a meticulous process and depending on the artist and engineer/producer, the level of detail and meticulousness varies.  For what I do, which is solo, you record each instrument and vocal in takes.  Mike put me in a separate room to record the guitar part first, then my vocals, and then other parts.  You get the basic foundation of the song down first and then add layers.  Typically, if you don’t have a drummer present, you will play your parts to a “click”–which can be a metronome or a basic drum beat.  It’s best to be in time otherwise the engineer has to clean up and even out the song later on.  Luckily, I am someone who can keep rhythm pretty well, so we were able to record the guitar parts fairly easily.

Singing in a studio is a bit awkward for me because I don’t get to sing and play my guitar at the same time.  So I always feel a bit naked without the guitar strapped to me and not playing the guitar live.  While it allows me to focus on the vocals, I put pressure on myself to get every note right and sometimes end up doing things I wouldn’t typically do if I was singing live.

Either way, Mike was great to work with.  He was flying blindly since he didn’t know my songs at all, but his process was what I was used to.  We were able to talk much of the same recording language and he was encouraging throughout the process.  He worked quickly.  The quality of the sound (and all of this is pre-mixing and mastering, which is too much to get into) in the studio was incredible.  I chose to do a slower folky song and then an upbeat rocking song of mine to see how each would turn out in working with Mike.  I’ll say it looks promising to record with him again in Nashville.  We also had a chance to talk more about our respective careers over lunch as well as other things and we came from much of the same life philosophies, music interests, and even had other things in common.  I’ve always felt the best professional relationships are the ones where you not only work together well, but can connect on other interests too.

During the entire session, which ran from 11am-7pm, the weather in Nashville was very bad.  It poured, there was thunder and lightening, and for a brief time we had to shut the studio down so that the equipment and files were not destroyed.  I heard later that day that three tornadoes touched ground just outside the city.

It was a great experience though and I feel the more I record, the better I will get at my vocal performances and preparation for recording.  Whenever my next project is ready for recording, it’s very likely I’ll go to Nashville to record it.

After getting two songs demoed, I ran out to Pick’s which is a bar at the bottom of a Best Western hotel.  Originally I had planned to play at the Bluebird Cafe’s open mic, but there was no way in hell I was going to cut a recording session short to play one or two songs.  Pick’s had an open mic that I honestly did not enjoy.  Most of the songs people sang were unoriginal country types about whiskey, Ford trucks, women, and those sorts of things.  So I did my three songs and got out of there.

I ran over to Dan McGuiness across the way to see a fellow musician friend, Jenae Cherry play.  The bar is an Irish themed spot, but does not feel like any of the Irish spots I play in DC–maybe because the bartenders are not Irish.  Well, I arrived a bit late and Jenae had already played, but I found her with her band hanging out.  I had met Jenae back in Decemeber, when I was last in Nashville, where she was playing a bar called Big Shotz on 2nd Avenue, and we’d been in touch here and there on Facebook.  She just put out a five song EP, and we traded each others albums and autographed them.  I love what she wrote to me:

Jenae eventually had to leave and I was still riding the high of being in the studio that day, so I ended up with her drummer’s girlfriend at the table talking about everything from jobs, life, music, and what we wanted to become.  It was a great conversation, one that went in depth quite a bit.

When I returned to the Kane’s, Courtney was awake, and we talked about the studio session, my trip so far, and not that I meant to–ended up talking about my friend Jayna.  I find it helps to talk about her memory as a reminder to myself and those who hear who she was that it’s so important to live life as fully as you can.  That’s why I made this trip and have been incredibly grateful to have met so many kind people in Nashville and felt inspired by this city.