F E E D I N G : the soul

If you've been reading this blog since the very begining... then these boys are no strangers to you! the Makepeace Brothers have been such incredible friends and an inspiration to me since we met. In moving to LA, I've been so blessed to get to see them perform all of the time. On there most recent album " Slow Down , Feel Love" - they wrap up the album with a beautiful song called " Thank You" It has become such an awesome song to wrap up shows in our community. One of the cool things about the song is that it has Dozens of verses and on the album it sung by so many wonderful folks. All 4 MakePeace Brothers, Bushwalla, Alysse Fischer, Tristan Prettyman, Jason Mraz - and more....

Live, whichever singers from our wonderful group of friends/singers who are around typically get asked to come on stage and join in the sangin!

We have so much fun turning this song into a straight up church whether it be at Aviator Nation - Hotel Cafe- or here, at the Feeding the Soul Foundation's event in San Diego! The event was at LinkSoul Labs to support the Super Food Drive and provide local charities and food missions with healthier supplements for those in need.

Again, it was such a wonderful honor to get to not only even be in the same place at so many wonderful but to get to sing for and with them as well. Check out the video above. It got sweaty and dancy real quick.

Congrats to Matty & Avasa Love, Jason Mraz, and of course Conor Gaffney & Finian and Ciaran Makepeace on an incredible show - and to the beautiful women of the Feeding the Soul Foundation for another Succesfull event.

Our soul's got nourished <3

S T U D I O : day seven

Today is day Seven. The Final day!

It is hard to beleieve we have been here this long, last night we slept here in the studio. ( literally) so the days are starting to all run together. when you sit in the same room for 12 or so hours a day ( and in this case.. over 24) it gets a little bit blurry. I didn't know that your ears and mind could get so tired until tonight.

Today we recorded the rest of the additional instrumentation, and then finally did the Piano recordings. Justin has a beautiful upright piano in his home that just had a ton of work done to it and was freshly tuned. He has cathedral cielings and hardwood floors that resonate the sound beautiful. We opened the guitar, and took the front panal off as well, placing 2 mics on top and 2 below. It has such a geniunly beautiful sound that in mind is so much more crisp and beautiful than some of the keyboard sounds people are using these days.

We are so unbelievably lucky to be working with Justin. He is a phenomenol Producer and Sound Engineer but also, musician. He picked up piano parts on a whim that I could never even dream of creating. It added such depth to the songs and where in some places added new melodies, also backed the guitar chords nicely as well for a very round sound.

S T U D I O : day six

I drove back fom South Carolina this morning, to head straight to the hotel, check out, grab Scott and get to the studio by 11:00. This meant a 8 a.m. wake up at my sisters lake house. Luckily, she is a mini-mom and packed me brakfeast! ( Doughnuts in a bag. Mmm) I called Scott when I was about 15 minutes away “ Are you all packed up and ready to get into the studio” … “ yup” …” ok cool” !

(My sister and soon.to.be brother in law!)

I walked into the room and the lights were off. He was still asleep. Unpacked. Unshowered. And the remaining m&m cookies had apparently all dissapeared. I tried not to be too frusturated. Its hard not to laugh, because Scott looks really silly when he gets woken out of a deep sleep.

Anyways, once we made it into the studio, we felt pretty great about where we were at. Finishing so much of the vocals was such a great feeling. Scott finished up the song he forgot about today as well – and now was the fun part. We began adding on to each song and building them up. Although we are an acoustic duo, it was beautiful to get to bring these songs to their full potentiol on this album.

Some of the instruments we used and used to build were:

Drums ( Snare, tom, kick)

Cymbals

Xylophone

Sleigh bells

Tambourines

Acoustic Guitar ( Taylor GS mini )

Electric Guitar ( 72 Gibson Hollow Body)

Shakers/ various hand percussion

Piano

Today had a lot of drums. Some of them are so rad it’s silly! Especially on the song “As happy as I am “ ( Title, still not official lol) Ugh it is so killer! Somehow though, with the HORRBILY loud banigng, scott, with headphones on that were pumping the drums into his ears slept through an hour of them recording. It was truly astonishing… he has a gift.

S T U D I O : day five

Sometimes these blog posts take the format of my middle school diary ( which is a very good read, and I recommend it, if you are ever – in my room. ) That is, “Today we, and then we, and I felt like this…” I will try to be more creative. I will try. If not, read scott’s blog again. He tries to be funny.

This morning, we were coming off a crappy nights sleep. We have been staying at a rather swanky hotel in Ballantyne. ( We got a very nice employee discount to make this possible) the problem with a hip hotel though is that they have parties in the lobby/ bar. Which happens to be about 15 feet from our room. We came back Friday to a Full band ( drums, amps, the whole shibang) playing some god awful covers so loud you could hear it through our walls crystal clear. This went on until 12:30 or so, and then the staff proceeded to drag the equipment along the floor down our hall for 30 minutes of clean up. WOMP WOMP.

The good news… this party had a food room. I sent scott on a secret mission, he blended in and stole us about 25 m&m cookies. He felt super 007 . and then he felt super full.

We needed the sleep, because it was an early Saturday morning session….Today we did things a little different then usual as we went to finish the last 2/3 of lead vocals between the two of us. I went first, but rather than doing one song at a time, we did one singer at a time. Scott quite a fair amount of nap time this morning, And I went through 6 songs. Many of them were much easier than yesterdays and I blew right through them.

Once I was done, I left for the rest of the day to see my Sister Jessica and her Fiance Neil. When I lived in DC I saw them 5 times a year at least, and now, never L I went down there to Columbia SC to take their engagement photos for the afternoon while Scott finished his lead vocals. Justin and him had tons of “ bro time” and proceeded to lay down some Ebow and such on Scott’s song “ Can I have this dance” …. All in all, even with little sleep- it was a VERY PRODUCTIVE day on all acounts.

S T U D I O : day four

Well today was a true test of patience. Day 4 was layering lead vocals for both Scott and Myself. Scott & I have a lot of vocal parts that layer eachother without being direct harmonies, so getting your take to be EXACT as far as timing goes was quite an interesting task. We also did a little bit of reconstruction in regards to trimming the fat off some phrases. Justin is really good at making sure you don’t have too many syllablls while still getting your point across.

There were very many a moments were one of us screamed out in frusturation. Once we changed things it was hard to get the new format or words into our mind and voices. This was especially true with the first date song.

We also wanted to make sure that we weren’t wearing our voices out since some parts of this song are especially demanding vocally. Oh grrr. We only got through 4/12 songs, but we got the hard ones out of the way :/

For your E N T E R T A I N M E N T

LAUGH WITH US

In the studio, there are a lot of silly moments. Naturally, when 3 people are stuck in a room 12 hours a day for 7 days straight.... those things happen. Frusturating moments happen to. But, most importantly silly.

Everytime I have been in the studio with Justin, there is always a song or video we watch everytime we need to giggle. It use to be the " taco bell pizza hut song" ( which weird coincience we JUST had taco bell for dinner ) ... this time it's this.

Now while I don't condone laughing at people most of the time... I assume this wound is old ( it's about 20 years old...) but on top of that... I am mainly laughing at myself because if my insides could talk sometimes on a lonely saturday night, this is what they would say.

When he rants at the end he says " I shouldn't have to rumuge through the dumpster looking for a Playboy" ... amazing.

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