Sunday, Sep. 26, 2010
Now we have entered into my favorite season: Autumn. Maybe it's because I became a teenager in the early '90's when stealing your dad's flannel and wearing it for a week straight was all the rage (just me?). I just love the Hudson Valley this time of year.
Just a little update: The Desire Project will be released January 5, 2011. This will be the 35th anniversary of the original recording's release, so we thought it would be fitting to do it then. Just to recap: some friends and I re-cut Dylan's Desire in 3 sessions throughout August and September. To say the least: I'm excited. We jammed ourselves into the recording studio called Woody's House and took turns singing and playing different instruments. We recorded it live, which means what you hear on the CD is actually all of us playing together in a room, from start to finish. This may seem a strange aspect to point out, but musicians don't usually do it this way anymore when recording a CD. Most record one instrument at a time so if you screw up, you can do it again and again until you get perfect. Perfection sounds great (this is how I recorded all 3 of my previous albums) but often times in the achievement of perfection, the artist also risks losing the soul of the performance. And what good is a soul-less performance? All humans make mistakes, and it's stupid for us as musicians to pretend we don't make them too. This is one of the details that drew me to the original Desire - there are so many imperfections in the playing and the singing. It has been said the Emmy Lou Harris disliked the Desire recording because it was riddled with accidents and mistakes. I really have no idea if this is true or not, but when you listen to the recordings you can see how someone seeking perfection would be turned off by most of these tracks. I love them because they are alive. I hope you'll give them a listen and love them too :)
Be good, Jules