Heirloom: The Finishing Touches

I check the clock - it’s almost 11PM. My contact lenses are dry on my eyes and I’m pulling my headphones off my head. After so many extensive, attentive listens - and god, they are hard to come by with a toddler in the house - I think we are finally ready to call this album complete.

In the morning, I’ll begin uploading the songs to my digital distributor, so that they’ll hit all the online platforms on February 29, as planned. And then I’ll scrutinize all the details on my CD layout before sending that off to the manufacturer to start production.

Oh my goodness, I can’t wait to have it out of my hands, at last. The past couple days, we’ve been picking at these tiny but very essential little details - the way songs fade out, how much silence should be at the end and start of each track, whether or not tiny imperfections are worth going back to fix - and it’s been especially trying, because, these last few days, I keep walking away from all different kinds of performances feeling a little disappointed. I feel like I need a win right now.

Last week, Mike and I and the Soul City Music Co-op had the great honour of being the subject of a short documentary. Filming spanned across three days and started with an interview in our home. The co-op is still so new that I think Mike and I have barely figured out how to talk about it. We walked away from that interview asking one another, “was that alright? did I do okay?” The filming ended with footage of our songwriters’ circle at Phog on Thursday night. Of course, I played better after the cameras left at intermission. Once more - was that alright? Did I do okay?

On Saturday night, Mike and I played what was easily the most emotional performance of our lives. We were so nervous all day, we could hardly eat. We were to perform at a very upscale gala, held annually by a local charity, Transition To Betterness, accompanying a video of honourees who had passed away due to illness in the past year, with their families in attendance. T2B requested the songs: I started out with Celine Dion’s “How Does A Moment Last Forever”, Mike followed with Ed Sheeran’s heartbreaking “Photograph”, and then we finished with The Beatles’ uplifting “In My Life” as a duet. In the grand scheme of things, it isn’t a big deal, but unfortunately, our performance began with an utterly humiliating 30 seconds where I was singing and nothing was coming through. The wireless mics had fallen asleep, but I didn’t realize that at the time, and I floundered from mic to mic, trying to find one that worked until the MC, David Hunter, came onstage and most graciously gave me his. I’m hoping that because the lights were dimmed, maybe nobody really paid attention to what was (or wasn’t) happening onstage, especially since Mike blessedly continued playing. But in all honesty, I feel like it’s taken until today for me to actually get out of the fog of embarrassment and disappointment. It was not my mistake, but the appearance of unprofessionalism was cast on me. I am internally writing a very indignant letter that I will never send; I am making a rule that I will never sing into a wireless mic again.

So once more - was that alright? Did I do okay? Trying to put it all aside, I’ve had to make my final notes on Heirloom with my deadline painfully close by. It’s been so hard to not dwell on all my imperfections on the album while dragging this silly rain cloud around with me.

And, at the eleventh hour, I had to re-order my track listing, because it turns out that I’ve been spoiled by CD manufacturing, where you can stick a song wherever you like - but you can’t do this when you’re making vinyl. I asked Mike to look into vinyl mastering, since we’ll be doing it in-house, and it differs from digital mastering in some very essential ways (and if you mess it up, the vinyl actually becomes unplayable). He discovered that you can’t end a side of a record with a loud song. He explained it to me and the reasoning went over my head - something to do with the smaller surface area and the greater number of revolutions per minute, maybe? At any rate, my great dramatic closer, which I blogged about a few months ago, is very shamelessly loud, and had to be relegated to track 9 out of 11. I considered having a different track listing for the vinyl only, but quickly dismissed it. A track listing is, or so I like to think, one of those puzzles with the potential for a select number of truly perfect combinations. (I feel this way about words when I’m writing music.)

In the end, I’m pleased with our new track listing, and I am still licking my wounds - I still can’t bear to actually talk about Saturday night with anyone face-to-face except my husband, especially because my feelings are pathetic in the face of what that video represented. My little wound is just a paper cut in contrast (but maybe like a paper cut on the index finger of your dominant hand that is constantly getting snagged on everything for a couple days).

But, my album will be out the door by the end of tomorrow, and I hope that when it’s done, it’ll feel like a win.