The Home Stretch: Why It Took So Long To Make This Album, Part Seven

At this point in the story, we’re nearly caught up. There are no more excuses for the time it takes to get things done. This is the last chapter, for now.

The way you sing a song changes, depending on the arrangement. Something more sparse might call for a mellower, more subdued performance; something lush and alive might require more energy, more singing out. And so, it’s very typical to wait to record vocals until all the other parts are done.

It was an important piece to leave waiting so long. Watching our work chart slowly turn from red to green, inching toward completion, was only somewhat satisfying because I knew I still had all of my heavy lifting ahead of me. I had already finished my guitars, but they aren’t front and centre the way my voice is. They become so buried in the mix of things - and rightly so; I’m not a fancy guitarist, I just hold down the rhythm alright - but my voice is what brings you into the song. The arrangement sets a scene, and my voice is the hand in yours, guiding you through it. Even though the album was virtually complete, I still had to draw my vocal performances out of me, and, as much as possible, I tried not to think about it, to give myself less opportunity to doubt myself.

But, over the course of production, I had become somewhat estranged from my own album, and it felt as if I needed to find a way to take ownership of it again. So many sessions took place in the daytime, when I needed to entertain Adeila, keeping her quiet and away from the studio. I didn’t sit in on a single session for the better part of 2019. I was so scarce, I felt guilty, like some pampered, uninvolved third party.

When we started recording back-up singers, finally, that changed.

Our Sennheiser E935, all set up to record some back-up vocals, in view of our record collection.

I’d decided to enlist two female vocalists, one of whom I’d only just met in August, and I knew I would need to be present for these sessions, to break the ice and make sure she settled in comfortably. I couldn’t, in my right mind, send a girl unchaperoned into my basement to work with a man she’s never met before. No matter that my husband is a saint, it’s just not the sort of thing one should allow.

As strange as being absent had felt, sometimes being present was odd too - I worried that I was creating extra pressure with my presence in the room, so I did my best to express all of my enjoyment, and truly, it was a pleasure to hear those beautiful voices sing in the room. You’ll never hear them the way I did, blended as they’ll be into the final mix of things, but I got to hear them hanging in the air like little fireflies, and they were magic. In a few short weeks, a few quick sessions each, we’d recorded the last of the back-up vocals, and the lead guitars too. Finally, it was time for me to get this album off my chest.

I was strategic - I picked the easiest songs first, so that the victories would motivate me, and left the most challenging songs to the end. I’d have a short window of time to record - however long the baby would nap for, or however late I could stay up before I was dead on my feet. To rein in my highly inefficient perfectionism, I’d sing each song only three times, comp together my favourite parts, and then redo any ugly spots.

Studio vibes during one of my final vocal sessions over Halloween.

It was nice, getting to know my voice again. I’ve only ever recorded one song at a time in recent years, never enough to really see patterns emerge the way you do in an entire collection of songs. I noticed I never enunciated clearly in the first vocal take. And I always found the first verse lacking. So many times, I’d get to the end of the track only to realize that the first few lines hadn’t been so good after all. Those first impressions are important, so I made a point of going back to nail them down anytime they stuck out.

As planned, the last couple songs were the hardest to do. I foolishly tried to run into them the way I had everything else, and I demolished myself. The final song, “Just Friends”, was a nightmare. I attempted to sing it without warming up first, straining my voice and wasting an afternoon. My “three takes” approach was exhausting on a five minute long song, so I tried to work through it section by section, but I only made it to the first chorus - I could hear Mike walking on the floors above me, I was looking at the clock and knowing the baby would be awake before long, and when Mike finally came downstairs and interrupted me, I just blew up crying and was emotionally decimated. I didn’t try again for two days.

In that time, I began listening back to the songs I’d finished, and in this dark frame of mind, I heard so many ugly moments in my vocal. It was a beautiful album, but the worst part of it was my own voice.

Most of my problem was that my headphones were too loud - I need to hear every nuance of my voice in order to control it all, and I have terrible hearing if there’s any sort of white noise, so I like to record with my voice very loud in my own head, and everything else quite quiet. Unfortunately, it’s very easy to mistake loudness for goodness. Once my vocals were placed into a more appropriate level in the mix, all sorts of painful moments emerged.

I took out a notebook and started to write down all the words that had come out wrong, but there were too many, I couldn’t keep them straight. I had to print out lyric sheets and then highlight the phrases that needed fixing, only, I hadn’t actually written out any lyric sheets yet. I frantically pulled them together, sobbing the entire time.

With my marked-up sheets, I once again started with the easy victories, because I needed to dispel my discouragement. I corrected seven songs in the first night. I felt like I had new feathers the next day. I had arranged them just so, and they were keeping me afloat. Nothing flashy, just blending in with the flock, at last. I had a gig the night after, but the following night, I finished the last of the album, “Just Friends” included (for a few moments there, I had debated cutting it, but the instrumental was just too good to throw it all away). I drank half a bottle of wine while I did it, but hardly enjoyed it. Where I was struggling with a phrase, I’d just let out a good cry of frustration, finish the bottom inch of wine in my tumbler, refill, and get through it.

And then, last Friday, we put all 35 gigs of it onto a flash drive and mailed it to Edmonton to be mixed.

So little, and so much.

I can still decide to fix things - it’s easy enough to make little adjustments, re-record a thing or two - so it doesn’t really feel done. And even then - when will it ever be done? Once we get mixes, it still needs to be mastered. Then the artwork needs to be done. It needs to be submitted for digital distribution, it needs to be submitted for manufacturing. It needs to be stuffed into a hundred bubble mailers and sent to radio stations and reviewers across the country. I need to throw an album release show - rehearsals, advertising, logistics. So much still to do.

But it feels pretty good to look at this.