New Christmas Song - Freebie

[teb]

Well, for the first time in 33 years we sat down and recorded a new tune with the group. We actually did it by e-mail with no face-to-face contact and not even any phone calls. The guys recorded their parts at home using Pro Tools, Audacity, or in my case, my Korg D1600 deck and everyone sent them to Jim in Philly and he mixed it in his studio. I tried my best to sneak in some McGuinn licks on the twelve, but they wouldn't go for it, so I ended up playing bass and doing some of the percussion and back-up vocals. Jim wrote the song, sang lead and played acoustic. Mark added piano, sax and vocals, Billy did electric guitar, mandocello (like a big, lower-register acoustic mandolin) vocals and percussion (our drummer has a broken leg at the moment), and Steve added some vocal tracks. Jim's daughter Nora got to play a gig with her old man and his band (which is kind of cool - make your own backup musicians, what a concept) and added some lovely cello parts.

What we really wanted to see was whether or not it would be feasable to record another album this way, because we have enough new tunes to do it. I think the answer is "yes". We figured that this song would be a good one to try it on and once it was done, we would stick it on our website as a Christmas greeting and free download for anyone who wanted a copy. Hope you like it.

It's on the front intro page of the website link below and also on the "Music" page inside the site. (That's my very own pine tree in the picture, too! I about froze my butt off standing out in the back yard taking close-ups of a branch.)

[kiramdear]

Wow, that's beautiful, Todd! I saved it to my collection. I liked the words to the refrain.

Thanks and Happy Holidays!

[ajish4]

AMAZING!

The lyrics caught me by surprise!

It started so CLASSIC NEW AGE style, then the words....I LOVE IT TODD!

You are all amazing musicians, and that cello is SO HAUNTING, vocals silky smooth, very cool!

I vote for a COMPLETE CHRISTMAS CD! You guys have something there.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH for sharing it with us!

[teb]

Glad you like it. Considering that we didn't script, or even really discuss, any of the parts (people just played what they thought it needed and we sorted it out in the mix) it worked out pretty well. Our cobbled-together system didn't really give us any trouble, but mixing by e-mail is a slow process. Jim would post a mix and over the next day or two, everybody would listen to it when they got time and send in their personal laundry list of little things that they thought needed tweaking. Do this scenario ten or fifteen times and you have a final mix. That's a lot different from the old days with everybody sitting around in the control room, where a new mix only took about ten minutes to make, but it can be done.

[walker]

Great one, Todd. It has a nice warm feel to it. Amazing that you guys were able to retain the intimate feel of the collaboration via the email mix method.