Once upon a time there was a Song.

ABOUT THIS PROJECT
‘Sure of You’ - a compilation I’ve been putting together for several months now has come together better than I expected. This is a little sampler and we’re releasing a limited edition run of CD’s this Friday at our BIG BASH.
I recorded, mixed and mastered all of it here in my studio, but what I think is pretty special is that I think a lot of it was actually written here too which is quite unique and I love that. All but two of these songs (Let my Love & Your Love Endures) were written by my Song Writing students.

I was really happy to hear how well it flowed, which is hard to achieve in a compilation, but I think because the musicians were almost all on my songwriting program together, they were all meshed and working together for months. So something beautiful and creative came together with a innocent and indie vibe to it. If you haven’t already seen the video of some of them tracking ‘Sure of You’ the title track, you got to check that out.

THANKS TO
I want to thank Reggie Fisher for his input on this record especially in the mixing phase. Reggie I’ve gained so much from getting to know you.

Thanks also to the Queen of Indie Swing, Molly Reeves (Check out track 2) for all your hard work on the artwork for this project!

Lastly, to this group of song writers. It’s been a special year and it’s been amazing to be a part of your development and your music. It’s been an honor and I’m really proud of what we created together.

‘KEEP ME IN YOUR LOVE’ - Part 1, Writing the Song

I wrote this spiritual song recently on a hike up a hill behind my house. It’s a prayer of surrender and is totally where Jessie and I are at in our life. I was planning on nicking some words from a an old hymn book and writing something, but I sensed that it was important for me to sing a new song. If you’ve ever read any of the psalms or the bible, you might notice God was big on new songs.

The vocal tracks you can hear, are the original ‘scratch tracks’ I recorded the day after I got down from that hill. The rest of the song has totally morphed, but that original heart felt vocal take was what I used to build the rest of it up. After a bit of a struggle to find the right part, Jessie and I came up with that third part of the song, the tag, which we later recorded a bunch of our friends singing for the haunting layer at the end. I’ll chat more about the recording process in another post….

I always listen to mixes and songs-in-process in my car, so our 3 year old son gets an earful of music. The original version I did had me playing acoustic with some fancy finger style playing that I thought was really cool, but I asked Reuben if he liked the song and he said “No, it’s REALLY boring… it’s SO boring”… So that was a kill joy, but kept me working on it until I finally got his stamp of approval after adding the drums with my brother in law Steve Goetz. Then he finally liked it. And I hope you like it too…

We’ll release it as a single and then it will also be on our ‘Your Love Endures’ EP when we can eventually get that done!

Please let us know if you like it, and share share share!

p.s THANKS AGAIN to the amazing IG artist @TheHudson for his artwork here.. Check out his feed Instagrammers! He’s the bomb.

Dean Malmberg and I co-wrote this song this past few months. It’s cool working with Dean because he’s very creative and has his own sound. I’m really happy with how it has come out, we just love the indie vibe and the lyrics - who doesn’t know an insane woman!!

We wrote the song really fast in about 30 minutes. One of those magic sessions. And then spent the next two months beating it to death in studio. Hopefully it doesn’t sound like that! But we worked really hard on the vocal, using different mics and techniques. In the end the best take was us sitting together at the desk with Dean and an SM-58 singing it line by line. Then Bri Bloemendaal added some crucial backing vocals…

The guitars are triple tracked which gives it that jangley jangle sound. I can really picture this song on a sound track so hopefully that will happen.

Hope you enjoy it. Like it and Share the heck out of it! It’s going to be available to buy & license very soon! I’ll keep you posted.

LET MY LOVE (PRE-RELEASE) by Molly Reeves and I

I’m really excited to play you this one. I’ve been working with Molly for months and it’s always a great feeling to have a finished product. This song is our co-write. Molly and I decided we needed to write something from scratch for her solo EP, so we sat down and wrote this.

I love the way it sounds. We’ve got Molly on vocals and guitar, Pam Sheffler on Violin, Sam Boorman on electric guitar, Ken Davis on drums, Jamie Mather on Stand up bass and my lovely wife with her magical Backing vocals. I also played ukulele and some guitar textures.

This will be available to buy very soon, but here’s the Pre-Release exclusive! Tell us what you think, and if you like it please do share it.