mixin' it up

i guess i should have mentioned that the title of this blog, personal feelings aside is the expected title of my upcoming record. i'm not a confessional singer/songwriter, i like to make up stories, so that's kind of what that's referring to. my other idea was everyone in your town because all my songs are about people. it's the "music for people who like music about people" thing again. i have too many mottos.

over labor day, i drove (!) to atlanta to hand off my songs to one rob skipworth, my good friend who will be mixing this record. besides being a cool guy with good taste in music (especially r&b, which i know nothing about), rob works at silent sound studios down there in the land of outkast. he's recently engineered CDs by toni braxton, elton john, train, the ladykillers sountrack and a bunch of rappers whose names i can never remember. seriously, he's got more street cred than i think i've ever seen in one place. we talked about music and watched the office, season 2 on dvd.

as we sat listening to the tracks in sequence, i felt better with every chorus and worse with every sour note (the term "pitch correction" was uttered 312 times in one hour, i think). i finally began to relax after track four, "good heart", when rob said "i was not expecging this level of professionalism." i finally calmed down for good when track 10, "las vegas wedding" blared through the speakers, after which he said "i wanna hear that one again."

all this is not to say how awesome i am or how impressed my friend was. its only to convey that anytime you create something, you run the risk of ruining it for yourself if you hang on every ounce of judgement and criticism. having gotten through that part, i have finally begun to enjoy this for what it is: something i made up and finally got around to finishing.

i couldn't be happier.