Studio Blog 7 (12-12-07)

Today was kind of different. I woke up early and went to pick up Ash and headed back to the house where I had a meeting with the stylist who is doing the styling for my photo shoot for the album, which I am doing next week. She came by the house and just looked through all my clothes to figure out what we have and what we need. Thankfully, Idol did give me some really cool clothes, so we just decided that we needed a few things.

After that, I went to get a massage. I have been having some serious pain in my back, and have been really needing a chiropractor, but haven't had the time or the chance to get to one. Today, Sarah called at the last minute and got me an appointment with the massage therapist close by...I only got 20 minutes with her but it was well worth it, plus I set up an appointment for Friday. Anyway, the 20 minutes was great.

Then it was over to Brown's house/studio at about noon.

Today was really cool because Brown brought in a guy named George Cocchini who is a legendary guitar player in Nashville. He's actually the guy who wrote and played on dcTalk's "Colored People" (in fact tonight, he showed me how to play that guitar part, which is pretty surreal to learn an influential guitar riff from the person who made it up - weird). Anyway, Brown brings George in to be the "Tone Chaperone". Basically, he brings in a bevy of vintage amps, pedals and extremely expensive, vintage guitars that I play. It's great...the work gets done by George and I just get to play...no tuning, no lugging stuff in and out. It's a great concept.

We got the amps set up and the speakers set up with mics on them and once we figured out the right alignment of speaker/speaker cables/amps/etc. then we got to work (this actually took about an hour and a half to get set up). We decided to start on "Know". I got to doing my rhythm parts and was actually in the pocket. As we all know, I have "rhythmic difficulties" so I was pleasantly surprised that I was in the pocket. I actually only took about 45 minutes to lay down my rhythm parts and we all were excited.

A lot of talking and joking around goes on with these guys because they have all worked so much together. As we finished up "Know", Brown thought it might be cool to add a couple of rhythm parts on the riff during the breakdown and on the outro. We added a really high pitched kind of distortion that cut through the mix really well. Then we did a deeper sounding distortion in drop D tuning. Put all together, it sounded great. Then George suggested putting a jangly part at the end of each phrase, so we pulled out an old Rickenbacker 6-string and laid down a nice little section, basically 1 bar at a time. Anyway, you probably won't even notice when we get to the mix, but all of it give a sonic texture.

As we were finishing up all that, Steve Jones, the president of my label stopped by with Mitch. We hung out for a little bit. Steve was in town for a sales conference for Word Distribution, which is the company that my label is distributed through. They invited me to come and perform a couple of songs and to get the sales team on board with the project and get them excited about it as soon as possible.

We got there and Steve got up and told the story of how we had gotten hooked up with each other and then introduced Brown who got up and spoke for a few minutes, basically conveying his excitement about being on the project, saying very kind things about me and the music...and then he introduced me. I went up to the stage and took a seat, cracked a joke and went into the first song, "Pleased". It went well, I think. Then I gave my testimony about coming to the decision to make a CCM record and then sang "Empty Me". I think it went over really, really well. Like I said, I think this might be our big song for this record.

After we got done, many of the sales reps took pics with me and encouraged me that they thought "Empty Me" was a big hit. That's encouraging because it is these guy's jobs. So, I left that feeling very encouraged and good about our chances of breaking in the CCM market. If you have sales guys behind you, you have a great chance of getting great retail space. So, "schmoozing" is a good thing.

We got back to the studio and worked on "Empty Me" (oddly enough) and laid down some really great sounding big guitar parts that filled out the choruses. Seriously, when it hits that chorus, it just feels huge. I can't wait for you to hear it. Stuff is sounding big and huge and Brown is just doing an incredible job of making things sound really, really great.

I should finish guitar parts tomorrow and start vocals on Friday. It's a good possibility I could be done with my parts of the recording with Brown by next week. I'm pumped...one step closer to you guys hearing some music.

By the way...someone asked if it was possible for me to post the new recordings...unfortunately I can't put out the actual produced tracks until the record comes out just for copyright issues. Well, we may put some stuff up on myspace a month or so before the album comes out, but before then, it's not possible. But with that said, I'm counting down the days to you hearing this music.