Deja Recording Update

Hello All,

Well, on July 5th it was about 75 degrees when I arrived at the Blue Ewe Studios at noon. Once all the gear loaded into the studio in the woods, it was up to David Malony--owner, engineer and ace drummer--to figure out "what am I doing here?". Once he finished his breakfast (which we so rudely interrupted) and downed a cup of joe, he remembered what his task was and began grabbing cords, setting up the mics, moving the amps, setting volumes, balances and all the important stuff that goes into making a recording session work.

While David Malony is getting his bearings, which took about an hour and a half, the band got tuned up.

Here's the voice of Deja Blooze tuning up the telecaster for some slide work later in the day. When the gear was tuned up, we still had a few minor things to hammer out....like what is the intro for this song, where do we want the solos in this one, and did we come up with an outro for song three? No matter how much we practice, sometimes little important things like a beginning and an ending are left unattended to until you're going to put them on a disc permanently.

Once David Malony got all of the wires in and checked volumes and made sure we were all connected to one another, then our work began for the next three hours.

I had written six tunes that I wanted to get recorded for an upcoming EP-CD as well as a Celebrate Whidbey CD project. While you never know how things are going to unfold in the studio, I went in with every confidence in the talent of my two band-mates; based on Ed and my previous trip into the studio, we knew that if you are dutifully rehearsed, the odds are better of a smooth studio experience. Such was the case once again. We got all six songs laid down in three hours, with several making it in one take. Which is not to say that recording is an easy task. On the contrary. It's very exhausting. You get very focused because the more takes you have to do, the less spontaneity you get. The quality of the live performance, especially on my part as the lead vocalist, can quickly degrade. And if you lose the "fire" in the delivery, you've lost the song. Actually for one song we tried it twice without hitting the sweet spot, so to speak. Malony suggested we put it aside and go on to another and come back at it "fresh." We did just that. Two tunes later we revisited the song and the suggestion worked. One refreshed take and it was in the can. We also tried another song--"Six Feet Under"--at a slow bluesy tempo with some slide guitar This version did not rock the engineer's world, so we tried it again more up-tempo without the slide, and we got a thumbs-up from maestro Malony. We also trust the engineer, with his musician's, fresh ear, to give us the straight poop on a take.

So at 4:30 pm, we called it a session, happy with what we had accomplished. We'll go back for a brief session to put in a couple of backup vocals and some additional lead guitar work. Then our work goes into the engineer's hands to mix the material and gives us the final product. And as soon as that happens, we'll have our efforts available to you. We'll keep you apprised of availability.

Deja 1 signing off.