A Race to The Finish

Well, sorry for no updates last week.

I (Chad) was out on a week long tour with a High School aged choir that I conduct, a holdover from my former life. It was a great week. We sing in places like Juvenile Detention Centers, Drug and Alcohol Rehab Centers, and Homeless Shelters, so it’s the kind of week that can spin everyone’s head around straight. It’s so easy to get caught up in one’s own drama, but next time that happens, go down to the mission for a Friday evening dinner and chapel service, and you’ll get your wits back in a hurry.

We had to make a tough choice this year. See, usually Erica goes on the trip with me, even singing in the choir in years when I needed a strong female voice on stage. We have two young kids, Ella and Zion. Have I mentioned that here? Well, we do. Ella-Bee and Zee-Boy go to their grandparent’s house in San Diego for a week such as this. That’s where they were the week we were all at Eldorado.

Since the Eldo week, we’ve completed what I’d estimate to be about 30% of the vocals for the record. Why is it taking so long, is it because we suck? No… quite the opposite. We’re both really quite good singers, with a lot of professional experience in a wide variety of musical genres. We have a very wide palate of tones available to us, and we have to find the right one for each song. This takes time, and focus.

So, during the day, I work in here. It’s taken several hours to sift through the 100+ gigs of audio we recorded that week, and get our tracks prepped for vocals. Erica teaches voice students to pay some of the bills, so she works in the afternoons during the week. Everyone gets together at the end of the day for dinner, maybe a bath, stories, teeth brushing, goodnight kisses, goodnight prayers and so on.

Next thing we know… it’s 10pm, and we’re beat. The conversation always goes like this:

“We need to track.”
“I’m exhausted.”
“Me too.”
Both: “Bummer.”

Sometimes we muster the energy, sometimes we can’t. We work in the margins. An hour here, two hours there.

Our tough decision was asking ourselves the question, “Does it make sense to spend a week’s worth of childcare on a choir trip that has nothing to do with The Dailies.” The answer, was no. So, Erica stayed home and played single mommy for a week. Adding insult to injury, her birthday fell right in the middle.

The payoff is this: Starting July 11th, we will have an entire week devoted to the completion of this record. We want to finish every last bit of recording and go to mix by August. We’ll be posting like mad that week, letting you all in on every aspect of our process that we can. We’ll shoot some more video, post some audio, and maybe even figure out how to stream from the webcam.

We’re pretty stoked. If you’re a praying type, send one up for us that week. We need for our voices to be strong, ready to give 100% for 10 hours a day, 7 days straight.

Stay tuned here, because yesterday I miced up a toy piano for a little overdub on one of the tunes, and shot some funny video of me sitting on the floor, tinkering like a toddler.

Later!