Even though I’d previously spent one day laying down the acoustic and vocals scratch tracks to disseminate to the musicians who’d be a part of the live tracking of each song, Saturday February 8, 2015 really felt like the spiritual beginning of my new album. Standing in a room with real musicians who were prepared like pros was just an extremely satisfying experience. The first song was track in 2 takes and the second probably took three.
Ironically, the song, “False Judas” was the first song laid down. It’s a tune that wouldn’t exists if someone hadn’t done me dirty over the initial work tape production of some of the albums songs. 2012 -2014 the Lord knows that I struggled with trying to bring new church music and these secular songs as well. I really felt led to bring real inspired music to the church I was attending at the time but sadly TPB chose to stand in my way over a desire to maintain absolute control. Standing there playing this amazing instrument with these fantastic musicians in such an awesome studio, I was definitely reminded of Romans 8:31. “What shall we then say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?”
Listening to the playback was just amazing on both tracks. I’ve left production of this record in the capable hands of Eddie Snuggs. His arrangement tweaks and instrumentation on the first two songs has already added so much character to the material.
“For False Judas,” he pumped in the prerecorded bass and drums, organ and 1 rhythm guitar went down live. For “South Hill Road,” it was the same except that two guitars went down live.
By the end of the session I had a huge smile stuck on my face because I already that this record was on track to exceed it’s predecessor, Faster. I’m just really so thankful for these guys working with me on this. It’s like having access to a super group at my disposal for an album. God is truly great! A very sincere thanks to these fine gents.
I could easily go an about how playing with new, more polished musicians is really the shot in the arm that a songwriter like me has needed for so very long. It’s a trend that seems to following some personal alignment changes I made last summer with regards to collaborators. Following that same trend I’ve been having such a fantastic time putting together my new live performance acoustic duo thing. I’ll be making a formal announcement and launching a Face Book fan page for that very soon. We’ve been practicing weekly for about a month and will have our first live performance on February 27. More to come on that of course.
2015 is off to a great start.
