Blank Page

Nothing is more intimidating than a blank page(/screen), which is what I just had in front of me for quite a while. When I'm writing a song, it's often the first riff or the first line that is most difficult. The rest usually falls into place over time.

Sloan River Project is in the midst of undertaking a series of recordings. We officially sold out of our Live 2009 CDs at our last gig in Nags Head, North Carolina. We've been talking for quite some time now about making some "studio" recordings. After much discussion about how to proceed, we decided to take a DIY approach and put my college degree to good use (B.M. in Music Production & Engineering from Berklee). 

A couple weeks ago, we laid down drum tracks for 11 songs in the lovely city of Charlotte. Over the next couple of days I will be compiling the best takes and doing minor tweaks in the time domain. Then we'll spend a day or two overdubbing bass here in Nashville. After that, everything will start to fall into place. I will overdub some of my electric guitar parts. Meanwhile, some tunes will make their way to the west coast - thanks to the magic awesomeness of the internet - where Josh will lay down his acoustic guitar and lead vocal tracks. At some point in there, I will head to Roanoke to record Sam's acoustic guitar, lead vocals, and harmonies. I will finish up the electric guitar leads while stuff gets sent back to the west coast for Josh's harmonies. Ben and I will lay down our harmonies in Nashville. Then I will probably spend about a week mixing. We'll send files back and forth. People will chime in with comments and critiques. We'll touch up the mixes. Josh will probably master it. We'll once again send files back and forth until everyone is happy. Licenses will be secured for cover songs. Then thanks again to this magical "internet" thing, we'll have an album's worth of songs to release online.

Each step of the journey is the journey.