Recording, Burgers, and Stories

So we are still recording. It's been an intense 7 days of working on music and singing our hearts out. I imagine this is how Kei$ha must live, only more sober. The songs are sounding great and the finished product is going to be unbelievable.

We've been meeting a lot of great people during this experience which only adds to it all. Paul Colman's 2 young girls have become big fans. They're singing our songs non-stop which I'm sure takes that fine line between cute and annoying and obliterates it for their mother. We stayed with Jeremy Michael, our engineer, over the weekend and recorded some things in his studio. His wife, Bonnie, and 3 kids, were gracious enough to let us crash at their place and eat their Digiorno Pizza. I got to read stories to the 3 kids before they went to bed on Saturday night. I think they liked it even though the only voice impersonations I can do are 1920's flappers and bootleggers. Here's some footage from our recording sessions with Jeremy to show how serious this all is.

We also got to do a show at Riff Burgers (www.RiffBurgers.com) and it was phenomenal. We hung out with John Thatcher, who booked us, and his family there. His 6 year old son, Jackson, told me that he thought Brian and I really work well together. He may be 6, but his half-British accent and fedora made it sound much more mature.

We're wrapping up vocals on 2 more songs today. We also have Dan Haseltine (Jars of Clay), and Jennifer Knapp coming in later tonight to throw down some guest vocals. We are very thankful to Paul Colman and the other who are working on this project for their belief in what we are doing. It's very cool to see this thing going to the next level and higher, way higher.

Dave

Happy Thanksgiving (We'll be recording)

I promised a blog everyday, but unfortunately I did not get around to it yesterday. We have been quite busy working on songs and pulling this all together. It has been a really awesome process so far, and we are really looking forward to how this album is going to sound.

Our days kind of look like this: We wake up and do about 2 hours of Pilates. I'm kidding. Each night, Paul puts together some programming loops for us to play to. Then in the morning Brian plays his guitar parts over them. Then he does his vocals, which usually takes 1 take because he has the voice of an angel who was birthed by another angel and Josh Groban. Then I do my parts which usually takes a little longer because I have the voice of most child stars after they've gone through puberty.

We then take what we've done and send it off to a guy named Tedd T, who is programming the album. This means he'll be adding beats and other various sounds to give everything a nice full sound. We hung out with him on Monday and this guy is no joke. He won a Grammy, and has worked on songs for MuteMath, Jewel, and Rebecca St. James. He actually did the song that my wife and I danced to. I thanked him, but also mentioned I would've preferred it a little slower.

So far we've knocked out Red Rover, Branta Canadensis, Hot Pockets, and Smalltown Gangstas. There is some new flavor added to our older songs and they are sounding great. We also had our friend Adam Agee of Stellarkart come in to help on Branta Canadensis. We're working on some other big names to come in next week, and I'm pretty sure Jennifer Knapp will be coming in on Monday or Tuesday. Not sure what she'll do, but should be fun.

Those of you in the Nashville area, we are doing a show at Riff Burger's (www.riffburgers.com) in Franklin at 5:30 PM and 6:30 PM. We got the show through John Thatcher, who was the bass player in the band, Delirious. He came over yesterday and we talked about websites. I would've rather talked about "I Could Sing of your Love Forever," but websites are cool too.

Dave

Atlanta Has been Rocked

We have left home and will be on the road a total of about 15 days. There are shows, recordings, hockey games, and hanging out with music industry peeps that will be going on. It's going to be a little crazy.

This past weekend we were invited to perform at the National Youth Workers Convention in Atlanta. We had the pleasure of performing in the "Big Room" right before the main meeting. It's a little bit of a tough spot, because people are still trickling in and it's early in the morning. A special shout out to Captain Bobby Parker and his wife Nicole for showing up extra early so as to not miss us. It was either that or they just wanted really good seats for Dr. Robert Epstein. Either way, they were winners that day.

Saturday night, we performed at the Late Night Comedy show in the Marriott Marquis in downtown Atlanta, with Taylor Mason (www.taylormason.com) and Jeff Civillico (www.jeffcivillico.com). There were well over 2000 youth leaders in attendance, and it was a blast! The High-5 was brought back, and Canada was sent a message about their geese.

Sunday night we had the pleasure of performing at The Salvation Army's Atlanta Temple Corps. I can't describe to you how fun this show was. Some had seen us before, some had not, and even though there were over 130 people there, there's something about performing for Salvation Army folks that feels like performing for family. Our good friend Dan Kulp opened for us and as always was awesome to not only work with, but hang out with. A special thanks to the Atlanta Temple Corps, Bernie Dake and the Territorial Music Department, and Major Art Penhale and the Territorial Youth Department for making it happen.

We have begun the recording process. Expect at least 1 or 2 blogs everyday to update. We are working on getting different artists to guest such as Adam Agee of Stellarkart, Jennifer Knapp, and maybe Leigh Nash of Sixpence None the Richer.

Dave

New Blog with a ton of videos!

I don't know what happened. One thing lead to another and now here we are about 2 months without a new blog. Shame on me. My punishment is that I am skipping an episode of Ellen to write this (or just part, depending on how long this takes me). Brian and I have been very busy since I last wrote. We've been to a Youth Councils in Maine, a Campus Fellowship Retreat in Kentucky, The National Youth Workers Conference in San Diego, and did some pre-production work in Nashville with Paul Colman. I would love to go in to great detail on all these, but let me just give you a bunch of videos that came from these trips. I'll write more when we get down to Nashville to record and keep everybody up on that process. You won't want to miss those blogs! We're going to be working with Paul Colman, Adam Agee of Stellar Kart, and maybe John Reuben, Leigh Nash of Sixpence, and Jon Schlitt of Petra.

Kentucky:

New Song "Branta Canadensis" performed at NYWC in San Diego:

Branta Canadensis from Daveandbrian on Vimeo.

Paul Colman and Pre-Production:

Only a few hours left to donate to our fundraising campaign for the new project! Check out this cute video:

Thanks everyone!

Dave