Our friend Martin is hard at work on another album of new material. Martin has been keeping a journal during the mixing sessions, and he's been so kind to share his thoughts with us. We'll post Martin's writings and musings every Monday throughout February.
Enjoy part two.
Day 1: January 23, 2012
Very excited about getting started today. Eddie Jackson has worked with Alex Wong [producer] on many projects, so I'm doubly stoked about being part of the dialogue between two veterans who have made rock & roll magic on many occasions together. Eddie was in New York and came by the studio while we were recording the song "You're Heart Will Be Broken Again," and did a bit of engineering during the session as well. It was nice to be able to put a face and sense of humor to the name and talent. I had briefly thought that the prospect of being on one coast while this album, my baby, was being mixed on another coast would be daunting, but seeing Alex and Eddie's rapport in person, and getting to be part of it, wiped all of that away.
Part of the mixing process that I'm really enjoying is that I'm leaving the choice of which song to mix on which day to them. The first time I heard which song was being mixed today was when I got a text from Eddie saying, "'C'mon While We're Young' will be ready for listening in an hour." Giddy with anticipation, I grabbed my headphones.
"C'mon While We're Young" is the first song that was written for this album. I went through a bit of a health scare after having ankle-fracture surgery in 2010, with a blood clot forming in my leg, and a bit of said clot traveling to and lodging in my right lung. I could have died quite easily. I'm still vocally affected by the remnants of the clot, despite being medically free and clear. I don't have the singing stamina that I once did. As a result, I don't play live shows as frequently as I did (although, 5, 6 or even 7 shows per week might have been a bit much). An entire EP's worth of songs came from the experience (The Convalescence EP, which I released in June 2010), and this song, I feel, closes, padlocks, and welds tight the door on this crazy part of my life. I'll never be more scared than I was when it happened. I won't be that scared again. Get back to the glory of being alive. C'mon. While we're young.
Probably the coolest part of this entire process is that Eddie is using a product called Source Live to allow Alex and I to listen in to the mixing session in HD-quality over the internet.
Eddie is in Los Angeles, moving sliders and pushing buttons and tweaking knobs, and it is as if Alex, in Brooklyn, and I, at home, or at the gas station, or backstage at Rockwood Music Hall, or at the DMV, are listening in, live, as if we are right next to him. The internet was created for this moment, and this moment alone! Additionally, we are communicating our mix notes and edits via text message and iChat.
It almost doesn't seem real.
We began listening together about 6pm EST, 3pm WST. Eddie and Alex shared notes (I almost felt as though I could only get in the way and destroy things with commentary, but I shared nonetheless), and we had the final mix for "C'mon While We're Young" in the can by 10:30pm EST.
Isn't it supposed to be more difficult than this?
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