Letter to DC

Hey,

I had not had a chance to listen to any of the songs by the time I got your letter last night. Since then I have worked with the last song we did by adjusting the EQ, adding some effects and experimenting with levels. I also added another guitar part that's played with a capo and it sort of took the song in another direction so I started another version.

I am very encouraged by what I listened to, even if it was only one of what, five? Six of them? It's not perfect but a good place to start, a good foundation and that's what I've been lacking. When I compare what this is turning into with what I accomplished the last time I borrowed the Boss studio it's apparent that the former will be fleshed out and likely will sound noticeably better than the latter. I won't say the songs are "better", necessarily, but who knows. They might be. When I did the earlier recordings I chose from songs that had already been written, some were years old. Most of what you and I laid down yesterday was totally improvised. They are in a stage that is open to editing and probably some slight changes.

Also, the last Boss project I completed had no vocal tracks. One of the reasons for that is because the lyrics to most of them weren't "set in stone" and I wasn't confident that they were good enough to include in the final mix. But I wasn't in a big hurry to return the studio then, either, so I could have taken a few days and tried to iron out some decent words. I didn't because even though I did have a microphone I was having absolutely no luck getting it to sound right through the studio. Since then I've figured it out so I will definitely add lyrics and vocals. It will be a challenge because I don't want to do the typical same-old-same-old kind of realist lyrics that I've been stuck in a rut with for so long. I want to write something that people can relate to, that would touch them on a heart level instead of the head level I try so hard to reach. I make the mistake of assuming that everyone LISTENS to music the same way that I do and I should have learned long ago that this is not actually the case.

I know it had to have been frustrating to play drum lines throughout the length of songs and then as it turns out I didn't have the input levels right or for whatever reason you can't hear them back. I take responsibility for it because I have not mastered the studio console so I make a lot of time consuming mistakes. If you want to hear something back you must not hesitate to request that I play it back to you. The vast majority of the time it will not be a problem but if I can tell a take is not worth using I would much rather expend the time it would take to listen back to tracks we aren't even using by loading up the studio to try again. If you feel you have not played well even though the guitar part made it through to the end you can always go back and re-record it as many times until you are happy with it. But if both of us break down before a song ends I think we should just scrap it and start all over again. This paragraph has been an attempt to say "I feel your pain".

I'm sure I'll hook the Boss up again today and listen to the other songs we recorded. My head is clear, if you know what I mean, so I will be better able to gauge their quality. It could really go either way. I have a good feeling about them though. I have an even better feeling about what's to come. I think Jeff will let me keep the studio as long as I want it. He hadn't used it in a long, long time when he loaned it to his brother Dock, who passed away while it was in his possession. That's been well over a year ago and Jeff never touched it once in all that time. He didn't even know that the songs I'd recorded on it were on it and that's been 2 years ago so at least that long since he actually used it himself. He and I are in a really good place right now insomuch as we get along very well and he trusts me, and I've seen him give away equipment of comparable worth just because he wanted to help further the talents of his friends. He gave Bryan what was at the time it was new a very expensive Alesis keyboard for him to learn how to play on. I'm not saying I expect him to give me the studio (or should I be so lucky the guitar) but I am saying I don't put it past him to do it. He's got a big heart. It's a shame that he's sort of turned his back on music but that may well work to my advantage. When he hears some of the things we're recording he may well decide that we could put it to better use than he's ever been able to and at that point who knows? And if we get that studio on a full time basis there's so much we could do with it. It's exciting.

Once again I have to thank you for steering me back to Daniel Amos. I hadn't listened to that stuff in years. A funny thing happened after I'd been using Spotify for as long as I have. It leveled the playing field, as it were. Access to SO much music, although I would not trade it for anything at the moment, is probably NOT such a good thing in certain ways. Especially not for a person with anxiety issues. Not just SO much music but in a way TOO much music, I want to hear it all (or at least all of the good stuff) and I have to realize that not only will this never happen but I probably should be thankful it won't. Why? Because it sends me out looking for new new new new all that time and I don't take the chance to settle in and get familiar with an artist or band the way I used to. Not to say that I haven't found some artists who I was so impressed with that I listened to all of their music more than once (and I still listen to Mahler's 9 symphonies continuously. But my favorite thing has been music discovery. Then I hear Daniel Amos and it reminds me that I have a rich history with Terry Scott Taylor and the boys, having championed them, if not from the very beginning, at least from the point where they switched musical directions from the typical folk-country outfit they began as to the new wave inspired cerebral rock group that has always been at the crossroad of thinking and feeling.

I'm sure I first read about Daniel Amos in the pages of Cornerstone magazine. Or maybe from the Methodist youth director in 1980, Mark Pixley. But the first time I actually heard them, if memory serves (which is a hope, not a guarantee) was when I was working the night shift at KSLE in Seminole hosting the Gospel By Radio program (you knew I did that for a few months, right?). The stuff I played on that show was very generic, middle of the road music, the softer side of the Jesus Music movement and the records you would find in the store at Falls Creek Baptist Assembly. Some of it was good, some of it was horrid, I didn't really know what I was doing because I hadn't listened to most of this stuff (having a penchant back then for harder edged, "Christian rock" (although I hated the term "Christian rock" as I still do.

Anyway most of the records I had to play had been there forever. Every once in awhile the labels would send something new but what they sent did not always fit into the station's format of muzak (I hate to call it that because there were people like Keith Green and John Michael Talbot in the mix to up the quality but for the most part it was tripe like Barry McGuire's "Cosmic Cowboy" and Amy Grant's "My Father's Eyes"). I have grown to appreciate this music for what it is but at the time I wouldn't listen to it. I'd queue the record up, start it playing and then turn down the volume while getting the next one ready.

One night I came in a found that we had received a couple of Daniel Amos records. There was "Horrendous Disc" which had been recorded years before but was held up by Solid Rock Records because Larry Norman wasn't sure he wanted to put it out on his label. There was also a white vinyl 10 inch of the title track along with a couple other songs from that album ("Hounds of Heaven" was on it, I remember that). It was a cool promotional item which I wound up "stealing". The quotations indicate that I acknowledge taking it without paying for or asking for it. On the other hand it served practically no use to the station because no one was playing it but me. Oh, they played their first two country folk albums but the band's rock direction was alienating, they would have left it on the shelves to collect dust. So I took it.

"Horrendous Disc", if you haven't heard it, is a pure slice of late seventies rock by a group of musicians who are just discovering the "alternative" style they would eventually gravitate towards. Indeed by the time "Horrendous Disc" was released they had already evolved into a full fledged new wave band and released "Alarma!", the first of four volumes in "The Alarma Chronicles". It's a solid record with good songs but you can sense that they haven't quite mustered up the fortitude to play the kind of music they aspired to create. Compare it to any of the other "Alarma Chronicles" and you'll hear restraint, likely a result of trying to remain palatable to the ears of Contemporary Christian music fans. It may not have been so much their fault because they had signed to the Benson label, which was an established label populated by artists who were decidedly less "rock", even by the standard set by "Alarma". For whatever reason they were only on Benson for the one album before self-funding the followup "Doppelganger".

On "Doppleganger" you can hear them finally start to find a niche they are comfortable in. This evolution only continued with "Vox Humana" and "Fearful Symmetry". I fell away and didn't listen to "Christian Music" for several years not too long after "Vox Humana" so I didn't hear "Fearful Symmetry" until I found it in Daniel's record collection in 88. Those "Chronicles" records had a ton of thought put into them by Terry Taylor. Each one had a 4-page album-sized booklet that provided fodder for the concept he was trying to put forth, with song lyrics and passages from heady works by Dostoevski, Kierkeggard, CS Lewis, you know, the usual suspects, along with the obligatory scripture verses and stuff like that. The lyrics are pointed and often ironic. None of it was typical "Jesus Music" as it was intended for the mature Christian's own edification and not evangelism. For years and years these titles were out of print (at least a couple of them are still not available) and the band released a 3 CD "Book Set" which contained all 4 of the Alarma records packaged with a specially made book that I assume is an expansion of the stuff that was in the booklets I spoke of. If it gives you an idea of how rabid their cult following is, you can find that book set on eBay for $200.

I mentioned that I fell away after "Vox Humana". I didn't come back to DA until "Mr. Buechner's Dream" in 2001 so I missed what many consider to be their best work. "Darn Floor Big Bite" is heralded as a masterwork of the genre but I've only heard it casually a time or two, barely remember it. The title is interesting...it's a reference to an Old Testament occurrence in which the earth opened up and swallowed a large group of people who had not stood with Moses or something like that. The ground beneath opens up and swallows them - "Darn floor! Big bite!", you get it?

When I did finally get back on the Amos train I learned about The Swirling Eddies and Lost Dogs.

Okay, you probably didn't care anything about that music history lesson. I had nothing better to do than write it out. Let me know when you're ready to bring the drums back and do some more recording.

jc