Project: Recording Kaleidoscope

Looking for an opportunity to learn and grow? Record a CD.  Better yet, record a collaboration CD with a friend!

Lisa Ferguson and I took the plunge in March of 2012.  Being that neither of us are the type to go into anything lightly, nor are we quick decision makers, the mutual accountability really helped move this project along.

I live in northern Illinois and Lisa lives in Chattanooga, so distance also proved to be an issue for us.  In order to plan and rehearse, we met up in Louisville, KY several times during the winter.  These long weekends, cooped up a room at the Country Inn & Suites were exhausting, but they really prepared us for what was to come.

In mid-March I drove to Chattanooga to spend a week recording at Lisa's home.  Steve Seifert was our sound engineer.  He essentially brought the recording studio to us. 

We recorded for 7 days, 12 hours a day.  Stephen Humphries played percussion on 5 tracks so we spent about 1 day total recording percussion.  

What a roller-coaster!  By the end of the week, we'd finished off several bottles of wine, a couple boxes of thin mints, an entire bag of pistachio nuts, and who knows how many pots of coffee.  There was a lot of laughter mixed in with the disagreements.  After a week, the three of us had bonded. Steve likened it to being at some sort of "weird" summer camp. He is a master of metaphors.

Upon returning home and listening to rough cuts, we decided that a steel pan part in one of the tracks wasn't where we wanted it to be, so I called upon a local friend of mine, Mike Schwebke, to help out and record a new steel pan part for After Midnight. We recorded this in late April at a studio in Aurora, IL.

In the end, the project was worth the sweat, tears, and thousands of miles on the road.  It was completed in June of 2012!  I'm so thankful for Lisa, Steve & Stephen Humphries for putting so much into this.  I'm also grateful for Dan Landrum for allowing us to borrow his recording equipment and Mike Schwebke for lending his steel pan talents on short notice!