Several years ago, someone at Carthage got the interesting idea of putting together a CD recording that would feature members of our music faculty performing an array of Lullabies. After some tentative first steps the project stalled, but this summer an email came from the head of the depart- ment, announcing that things would be moving ahead again! And indeed, this past Tuesday I made my way to Renwood Messenger, the finest recording studio in Kenosha, to record my two contributions to this project.
As I walked through the front door, i was immediately reminded of the previous occasions when I had been there for other recordings- and what a completely pleasant experience it had always been. And frankly those memories also triggered some more unpleasant memories of my first time in a recording studio. This has to be at least fifteen years ago, and the occasion was when Caritas (at the time a quartet with Kathy, Kate Barrow, Chip McCrary and me) wanted to record our first CD. Someone had highly recommended a studio located on the northside of Racine, and we decided to give them a try. (Whoever we talked to on the phone sounded pretty nice.) The place turned out to be a hole-in-the-wall, but we figured that they were probably putting their money into equipment rather than a fancy reception area, so we tried not to jump to any hasty conclusions. When we spotted nothing but rock and punk rock posters on the walls, we still hoped for the best.
What made it undeniably clear that this was not going to work out very well for us was when the proprietor insisted that I record the accompaniment tracks first, without us singing along – and then he wanted us to lay our vocal parts on top of it…. one at a time! (In other words, he wanted one of us to sing our part all by ourselves- and then have each of us in turn add our respective part, layer by layer.) That was an invitation to disaster and we insisted that we had to sing together – but then they wanted us to be in separate booths, where we could not see each other. We tried that once before prevailing on them to put us together in one booth- but even then we were, to quote Wayne Newton, “as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs!” These young men recording us were most concerned that they retain as much technical control over the recording as possible- including the potential to manipulate our singing down to the smallest detail….. which was completely contrary to who we were and what we were about. We muscled our way through the evening, but the preliminary results sounded rough and effortful- and we had to hope that thing would go better once we were used to this unfamiliar way of doing things. But we’ll never know, because when we called to set up our next appointment, they never answered the phone- and never responded to the messages we left, as though they figured we weren’t worth all of the trouble. It was months later before we somehow figured out that they had gone out of business. And we had learned a valuable lesson about how making a recording is a very personal matter and the last thing a producer should do is make a lot of decisions about how to make your recording without taking the time to know you and understand what will make you most comfortable and able to do your best work.
That scared us back into our collective shell for awhile, but we decided to give it another chance when Kathy and I met a young man from Appleton who made a presentation at a music convention we attended. We had the distinct impression that he would be a better fit for Caritas, and he was. We made the recording on a couple of warm summer days in the sanctuary of Evangelical United Methodist Church (where Kathy’s folks were members) because they had a wonderful grand piano. (Holy Communion had none at that point.) It was challenging in its own way, but it felt so much better to be singing in a church – together – without acid rock posters confronting us from every direction – and with someone who was guiding us much more gently and sensitively. We were delighted with the results- except for the booklet, which the guy failed to proof-read before sending it off to be printed. (You can probably imagine how maddening it was for the three of us who were teachers to find the booklet riddled with one spelling error after another. Arrgh!) Otherwise, we were very pleased at how well How Sweet The Sound had turned out!
A year or two later, we made our Christmas CD Great and Glorious Light, but this time with our friend Eric Carlson at the helm, and in the sanctuary of Holy Communion – which now had its own Baldwin grand piano. Unfortunately- and I still can’t believe that none of us thought about this – we did not arrange to have the piano tuned, and there are a few moments when the out-of-tune piano seems cruelly at odds with our vocal harmonies. Mostly, though, it turned out splendidly – and we were pleased to once again utilize the artistic talents of a Carthage grad (and former voice student of mine,) Renata Sievert Waack, for the cover art.
Eric is also the mastermind behind God Gives Me Wings, a collection of 21 of my original songs – featuring me, Caritas, Tom Hagemann, Trevor Parker, and the Holy Communion Senior Choir. Some of that was recorded at the church, while others were done at Eric’s house- which started to feel like my second home through the course of that project. A lot of sweat went into the recording, but it made me all the more grateful for the finished project, which was financed by the Bednar family in memory of their son Dan. This was the project where I really saw Eric’s amazing genius – as well as his overwhelming passion – in fullest bloom, and I sort of wish that his name had been on the cover right next to mine.
He was as essential to that recording’s existence as I was.
Anyway, Tuesday I was back in Renwood Messenger, which is a beautifully appointed recording studio in the heart of Kenosha – complete with state-of-the-art equipment and — wonder of wonders- a grand piano in its largest studio. But far more important than what’s there is who’s there. Matt and George are smart and sharp, as well as kind and patient…. and they have a way of making you feel like you know what you’re doing (unlike studio folks who manage to make you feel like a complete idiot) and that you’re going to be well taken care of (unlike studio folks who seem most interested in taking care of themselves and their own egos.) As I settled myself on to the piano bench, I felt this utter certainty that everything was going to go well- and indeed, it did. I started out with the piece which had been specifically requested of me – the most famous of all lullabies, “Wiegenlied” by Brahms. After that I recorded my own arrangement of the Swedish hymn “Thy Holy Wings” which perhaps stretches the definition of a lullaby just a bit, but I couldn’t think of a more soothing piece of music to sing. In my arrangement, the time signature is changed from 4/4 to 3/4 to give it a gentle lilt, and I wrote these words as an intro and interlude: Feel the wings. Feel the wings of our loving, gentle Savior. Feel the wings. Feel the wings of our mothering God who will never let you go. If I had been in that Racine studio, festooned with those dark and harsh rock posters, singing for people with not the slightest idea of what this song was about, it would have been so hard. But instead, I felt so at home- and that mattered a whole lot more than the fact that I was singing into a magnificent microphone worth $18,000 – one of only 42 in the world. No, the greatest microphone in the world wouldn’t be worth a thing without the right person on the other end of it, listening with loving, sensitive, appreciative ears.
pictured above: just a small portion of the huge mixing board in the main control room. By the way, as I reread what I’ve just written, it certainly sounds like I have nothing but contempt for anyone from the world of rock music- and I don’t mean to imply that at all. All I’m really trying to say is that recording music is an incredibly personal sort of self- expression, where you feel really vulnerable, so it’s very important that you feel close affinity with the person who is recording you.