A DAY IN THE RECORDING STUDIO

John Nugent and I went into Smooth Sounds studios on Sunday, February 17th at noon and amazingly recorded sixteen of the scheduled seventeen songs in a five hour time block. The singers were amazingly prepared. They included Keith Kraft, Thomas Dolan, Tara Hadley, Lori Schroeder, Molly Summer. Karmyn Tyler, and Paul Hovannes. We recorded new songs from the various musicals that John and I are writing including SEVENLY-- our big "Spamalot" type spoof about the Seven Deadly Sins, the romantic fantasy THE RUNAWAY HEART, another Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale THE WILD SWANS and our tribute to the "Great White Way" A LITTLE BIT OF BROADWAY. Robert Roth was our engineer and Jeff Urband was at the piano. We reecorded a wonderful song that we had dedicated to our dear friend Tony Westbrook called "THERE'S A LITTLE BIT OF BROADWAY IN ALL OF US"-- a song that was inspired by a poster that he had seen last year promoting last year's pre- publicity for the 2007 Tony Awards. Our friend Tim Doran was there in spirit-- he was nursing a bad tooth and a failed root canal at home. Old friend Terry Snyder showed up with his young son Vincent and his friend Rodney. Terry wants to sing again and that was very good news indeed. He and Tony recorded some of the best songs in my library. I learned so much from these guys! Everything went very smoothly. This time we had sent the singers the material up to a month before the recording. This makes such an incredible difference. Some of the best songs recorded were "THAT'S THE WAY THE COOKIES CRUMBLE" and "MARRIAGE WAS HIS WAY OF SAYING GOODBYE" -- a song that was a bit biographical in that the subject of the song is a character who is married eight times and fails fidelity once the ring and the ceremony is over. In reality, that song was inspired by the same true life story of librettist and lyricist Alan Jay Lerner who was married an amazing ten times. He could never remain faithful once he had comitted to a woman in a marriage cerenony. The songs that we recorded for SEVENLY were great-- especially finfding the perfect vocalist for Satan, himself in Paul Hovannes. So it was a day blessed by God and John and I are very grateful for His guidance and help and for all of the incredible singers there that day. STRANGE LITTLE TOWN was recorded for the Broadway musical and that was the toughest challenge of all. The President's Day holiday was quiet at the store and our big inventory comes up this weekend. The new car had a major electrical short and had to go in for servicing-- thank God I had purchased a bumper to bumper warranty when I bought the Ford Focus in February 2007. Well, on to the rest of the week!