PART ONE OF MAKING THE CD
IT ALL STARTS WITH AN IDEA ...
After making the rounds with the doctors, I was faced with the reality of living with Amyloidosis, and choosing a course of treatment.
But the disease also forced me to take a good hard look at things and to decide what I wanted to accomplish in life in the time I have left.
Initially, my idea had been to record an album of jazz standards as a special gift to members of my family and close friends. Quickly, though, I learned that there was a lot of interest in my music from people outside my inner circle of family and friends. At first, this surprised me, as I had never envisioned really distributing the CD to the public, but when an overwhelming amount of interest was shown in the music, I decided that the music could help raise needed funds to increase public awareness of Amyloidosis, and to help provide some measure of comfort to patients and their families.
I began this project with two goals in mind - (1) I wanted to produce and record an album of jazz standards and some original compositions I had done, and (2) I wanted to enlist my music to raise funds and rally support to help combat this devastating disease.
As I would practice my trumpet, I started to write down some of the different songs I had performed over the years, something over 400 songs that I could pull from my memory, and started to develop a short list of songs that I might want to record. I had also composed and started to arrange some original material that I wanted to put on the recording list.
As I started to develop this list, I wanted to include some of the classic jazz standards that most people knew, so although people had not heard my version of certain songs, they would at least be very familiar with the songs themselves. Songs such as "Someone To Watch Over Me", "When I Fall In Love" and "My Funny Valentine", immediately came to mind as classic songs from the Great American Songbook.
But I had something else in mind in the arrangements and the recording of these classic standards. I call my style of music "intimate jazz", because I wanted to establish a very personal connection with the listener, and to perform these classic songs with all of the warmth, tenderness, and romance that the composer had intended.
The trumpet itself is at once a very demanding and unforgiving instrument. If a player does not practice diligently and master all the instrument demands, the trumpet can sound harsh, overly bright, and brassy, almost tinny. Nearly two hundred muscles come into play when a brass musician produces a sound. Great musical educator and brass instructor, Carmine Caruso, is fond of saying that "...playing a musical instrument is a muscular activity not unlike performing in a sports event, and for a brass player, his horn is just a piece of plumbing, it's his muscles that do all the work."
One of my important musical goals in recording this album, was to take this horn, this "piece of plumbing" in Caruso's words, and to make it something magical, an instrument capable of producing strong, flowing, melodic lines, of playing warm and romantic passages exactly as they were intended by the original composer.
Coming Soon ....PART TWO .... RECRUITING SOME GREAT MUSICIANS TO SHARE MY VISION ...
Part Two - I'm Going to Need Some Great Musicians Here
The very first musician I thought of was Mark Kieswetter. Mark is a very gifted pianist, arranger, and a wonderful friend. But as happens many times, even close friends begin to lose touch with each other over the years, and as I was busy raising my family down here in the Washington DC area, I had lost touch with Mark.
How does one go about finding a very good friend that you have lost touch with, when you don't know where he is living, where he is performing, what he has been up to?
After a lot of searching, I was finally given the name of member of Mark's family, and left my name and contact information in the hope that Mark would give me a call. It had been so many years since Mark and I had even seen each other or performed together, I wasn't sure if he would even remember me.
Sure enough, within a couple of days, Mark did call me, and I described for him what I wanted to do with this project. To record a jazz CD with the added hope of raising some money for public awareness of Amyloidosis and for patient and family education and support. Before I got much further into it, Mark said "Count me in". I was thrilled to rekindle my friendship with Mark, and was really thrilled at his commitment to and enthusiasm for the CD project.
We started by discussing some of the songs I had in mind for the CD, and got his input about his ideas for some of the arrangements. A short time after our conversation, I sent Mark a list of songs I wanted to record, and Mark began the hard task of putting together some of the arrangements of these songs.
Thank God for modern technology, as many times during our collaboration on this project, Mark would call me from Toronto, and I would be down here at my home in Maryland, and we could both listen to MP3 tracks of the arrangements Mark had been working on, and talk about them in more detail. A few times, we actually had speakerphones employed so that I could play my trumpet here in Maryland while he played his piano in Toronto, and we could collaborate musically.
I looked at several different recording studios where we could record the CD. It is vitally important that during this process that the producer (me), the musicians, and the engineers at the recording studio are able to agree on what is going to be done, and how it will be done. Since most of the musicians we would be using in the recording were from the Detroit and Ann Arbor, Michigan area, and Mark was based in Toronto, it made little sense to record the album down here in the Washington DC area, and to make all the musicians travel down here, and stay here during the recording.
Therefore, we selected a great recording studio in Ann Arbor, Solid Sound, a place where Mark had recorded before and he highly recommended. As Mark and I continued to work on the music and the arrangements, I worked with the people at the studio about booking recording dates. Mark is very busy, and as the year was quickly drawing to a close, I knew he would be booked up throughout the Christmas season and the first part of the new year.
Another problem presented itself. Being a native of Michigan, I knew only too well the kind of harsh winter weather that is par for the course. So I booked recording dates for the end of March, thinking that by that time, even in Michigan, the harshest of the winter weather would have run its course. But that is another story entirely that I will get into later.
Mark was able to recommend and make contact with several musicians in the Detroit/Ann Arbor/Toledo area that he had recorded with in the past. Since I had never met any of these guys, I had to tell Mark what I was looking for, and trust his great musical ear and his great musical judgement, to get the very best musicians for the type of recording I had in mind.
Mark told me about a gifted young tenor saxophonist by the name of Ben Jannson, who was originally from Ann Arbor, and had studied with the great professional sax player Pat LaBarbera, and had performed with such luminaries as Aretha Franklin, Dianne Schuur, and others in the Detroit area. He told me about Rodney Rich, a great jazz guitarist who played in the style of Detroit's own Kenny Burrell. We discussed the need for a great bassist, one who was able to play both the acoustic (upright) and electric bass equally well. Without a second thought, Mark highly recommended Kurt Kranhke, who is a very renowned bassist that performs equally well on the acoustic and the electric bass. Mark checked into using a drummer that he had worked with several times previously, and unfortunately, this particular drummer had an engagement at Carnegie Hall in New York the night before we were scheduled to record. We were able to contact Scott Kretzer, a great drummer that had played with the University of Kentucky jazz band, with several well known recording artists, and is a professor of drums and percussion at a local university.
So at this point, we had all of the great musicians we would need to record the album, everyone booked the recording dates on their calendars, and everybody involved was enthusiastic about recording the album in Ann Arbor the last week of March.
What could possibly go wrong?
STAY TUNED FOR PART THREE .... TRAVELING TO MICHIGAN ....
PART THREE - TRAVELING TO MICHIGAN
I should have known better. I was born and raised in Michigan, and I know from personal experience how rough and how looooonnnnnng those winters can be. But here it was, nearly the end of March, and temperatures here in the Washington DC area had been in the 60's and 70's for a couple of weeks. Granted, I thought, the temperatures in Michigan might well be cooler than that, but snow and ice, and dangerous driving conditions, NO WAY, I thought.
Stupid me.
I left for Michigan in a well packed SUV with my son Chris volunteering to drive because of his concerns about my health. Chris arrived that morning rarin' to go, with a t shirt, shorts, and his running shoes on and a temperature here in the Washington area in the low to mid 70's with blue skies and narry a cloud in the sky. I had packed carefully for the trip, packed some warmer clothes "just in case" and very carefully packed my horns, which I did not want to entrust to the airline baggage folks!
We set out for Michigan that morning, and the first part of the drive of uneventful, as we rode through beautiful scenic Western Maryland and on towards Breezewood, Pennsylvania the famous (infamous?) "Town of Motels" where one picks up the Pennsylvania Turnpike westward toward Pittsburgh and Ohio. We were making good time along our route, but in this day of high technology and instant communications, my cell phone rang with news from my family up in Michigan. Major winter storms were predicted to move in that afternoon, with heavy snow, near zero visibility, ice, and treacherous driving conditions.
This was still hard to believe for Chris and I, who were still enjoying pretty sunny weather and temperatures that remained in the high 60's and low 70's. But as we made our way west, past Pittsburgh, and on toward the Ohio Turnpike, the steel gray of snow clouds began more and more to replace the blue sky we had enjoyed up to that point.
By the time we reached Cleveland, snow was coming down pretty hard, but we pressed on, thinking that it couldn't possibly be that bad up in Michigan. By the time we reached Toledo, however, visibility was near zero, with snow coming in on a strong wind, and driving conditions were becoming more and more treacherous.
I reached my family by cellphone and was advised that conditions in Michigan were much worse than they had been in Ohio, and it was getting worse by the minute. Businesses had begun closing due to the weather, so I told them we would make a quick stop in my home town of Adrian to bring pizzas to the house for dinner. So Chris and I made a quick stop at the Little Caesars Pizza place in Adrian, and got several fresh hot pizzas for dinner. As I got out of the car at the pizza place, an icy blast of wind struck me, and the snow was coming down like you would not believe. I muttered something about the Michigan weather to my son that had best not be printed here.
By the time we reached my brother's house, out in the country on a beautiful lake, it was pitch dark, and the snow was coming down so hard we couldn't see the end of our car hood. I can tell you, as a veteran of driving in Michigan winters, that we would not have made it the last 30 miles or so without a heavy SUV that was capable to handling the blizzard like conditions. By the time we reached my brother's home, it was all Chris could do to get the SUV off the road and parked into a snowbank so we could make our way to the house. And so it was, that a day that had begun with so much promise, with blue skys and temperatures in the mid 70's turned into a full scale blizzard with a couple of feet of heavy snow, ice, freezing roads, and death defying driving. Typical Michigan "spring"! I should have known better.
My brother's house was a warm and welcoming sight that night for sure. My brother had a nice roaring fire in the fireplace, and he and my sister in law showed us their usual warm hospitality, as we all gathered together, and enjoyed hot pizza and cold drinks, had a lot of laughs, and talked about our journey.
PART FOUR - RECORDING THE ALBUM
It was wonderful to see my old friend Mark Kieswetter. We got together the day before the recording session began to work on some musical arrangements, and to put the finishing touches on everything so we would be ready to walk into the studio with the other musicians and to begin recording. We worked long and hard on each of the songs, to smooth out any rough edges, and to make sure we were all on the same page. Mark is masterful in this process, and having played together before, we could quickly go through a lot of the music, and he has a great instinct to know just what I am looking for.
We arrived bright and early at the Solid Sound recording studio in Ann Arbor, Michigan, having made our way through the snow and ice. The Solid Sound studio is nestled in a very quiet area, a cottage type of studio among the trees in a secluded portion of Ann Arbor, far away from the hustle and bustle of downtown Ann Arbor and the bustling University of Michigan campus.
I immediately met Eric Wojahn, who would be Chief Engineer for our recording session, and Rob Martens who owns the recording studio. Both Rob and Eric were very friendly, and as musicians themselves, they knew just how to set up the session and maximize our recording time. Rob generously offered to run out to a local deli around lunch time and bring in some sandwiches and soup for the band, as working musicians do get hungry and need a break sometime during the day.
Mark and I were the first to arrive and started to get our equipment set up for the session. Minutes later, Scott Kretzer, our drummer and percussionist, arrived with a ton of gear, including his drum set and everything he needed, and immediately began to set up his drum set in one of the isolation areas in the studio to prevent a sound "bleed" into other areas that were going to be recorded. Kurt Krahnke, a very gifted bassist arrived, along with Rodney Rich, our guitar player, and I started introducing myself to all of the other musicians. It was a bit of a scary thought - here we were ready to record an entire album of music with musicians that I was meeting for the first time, and there had never been a minute of rehearsal time with. Mark, however, had worked with all of the musicians before, and assured me they were all first rate.
As we were getting set up, getting the microphones set up and such, I was placed in an isolation booth that was sealed off by a sliding glass door from the rest of the musicians. As I was to be the soloist on most of the tracks, the engineer wanted me isolated off from the rest of the band for the recording. As we were warming up, Ben Jannson, a very gifted tenor saxophonist came into the studio, and I introduced myself to him. Ben took out his tenor sax and we all warmed up for a few minutes before pulling out our arrangement of the Van Morrison favorite, "Moondance" as our first song.
I can barely describe how excited I was! A project that had been months and months in planning was coming together right before my eyes. Here we were, nestled out in a quiet recording studio, with lots of snow and ice on the ground, getting set to record a new album with musicians I had just met for the first time, and who had just met me. We talked through Mark's arrangement of "Moondance" and Eric, the engineer, positioned himself in the control room, in back of a huge recording board equipped with more gadgets, dials, and switches than you can imagine. Then we kicked off "Moondance", played through it, featuring a great tenor sax solo by Ben, and a beautiful guitar solo by Rodney. As I listened to this, our first take together, I knew instantly that this recording session was going to be something very special for all of us - these were great musicians, everybody had a great feel for the music and the sound I was after, and to top it off, all of them were really nice guys who were there to give 110% effort throughout the recording.
When we finished our track of "Moondance" we all went into the studio control room together and listened to a playback of the track. Believe it or not, that first track of Moondance is the same one you hear on the CD - we all listened to it, and it came out so well that I told Eric not to change a thing on it! And the tone for the session was set - wherever possible I was striving to keep the recording as close to a "live" show as one can get without an audience. Rather than using sophisticated recording techniques, overdubbing parts, and using recording gimmicks, I wanted to record the music "live" just as it was performed that day - and to give the listener the same experience that we had in recording the songs.
These musicians were all professionals in every sense of the word. And the collaboration between us was marvelous. At one point, Kurt, who plays both accousting and electric bass, asked whether I would prefer the accoustic or the electric bass on one of the songs. I turned the question right back to him and asked him what he thought. Kurt said he thought the accoustic bass would sound best - and I immediately agreed with him.
Such was our close musical collaboration in recording all of the songs - we were making great music together, and having a great time doing it!
Don't get me wrong - recording an album is hard work to be sure. But loving music as we all do, it was a labor of love from beginning to end. Around lunch time, Rob brought in some hot soup and sandwiches from the local deli, and we all enjoyed a nice lunch break and a chance to relax for a few minutes and talk. A recording studio is a funny kind of place. The accoustics are great and it is a wonderful place to play, but things have to be very organized and disciplined, as studio time is very expensive, and to waste time can also be the waste of a lot of money. Money we didn't have to waste.
We recorded song after song that first day, and decided to knock off that evening. Most of the musicians went home that night, but Mark and I were determined to burn the midnight oil to listen to all of the raw tracks from the first day of recording, and to plan what we hoped would be the second and final day of recording. We went out for a quick bite to eat, and Mark and I came back to the listening room of the recording studio, a room that had been designed by the famed accoustical designer George Augsburger, where we could listen to all of the tracks we had recorded that day and make detailed notes about any changes we would like to make the following day.
We finished up late that night, and by the time I got home to get some much needed sleep, I was ready to fall into bed! But daylight came early, and before I knew it, I was back on the road to the recording studio, getting ready for the second day of recording.
It was incredible to me that things were going so well. All of the musicians were great players - but I can't stress enough they were were all great guys too - no one complained about all of the hard work, and it was clear from the beginning that the music was really coming together nicely, and that we had something very special going on. Sometimes we would record a track, and I was amazed that everybody worked together so well - as if we had been playing and performing together for years, but in fact, we had just met and had never even rehearsed together! And I said to myself, this is the way that music should be played!
When all of the tracks were recorded on the second day, everyone, except for Mark and I, packed up all of their gear, and after talking for a while, said our goodbyes. Mark and I, however, went back into the studio to record a couple of songs that would feature just piano and trumpet. Among these were one of my mother's favorite songs "Just A Closer Walk With Thee", which turned out to be a lot of fun.
When we left the studio that night, I had a disk that contained all of the raw tracks we had recorded. A lot needed to be done yet before the final album would be complete, but the playing was all done, and all of the raw tracks had been recorded. Still to be done was all of the mixing of the tracks, editing, and final mastering of all of the music. That process would take several more months, but still, on that day, I knew we had some really good music recorded, and that the final album would be beautiful.
STAY TUNED FOR PART FIVE - POST PRODUCTION WORK AND THE FINAL ALBUM ...
