The Last Full Week (A Beginning)
Tuesday, July 7th, 2009
Good times.
We were very lucky to be visited by good friends this past weekend! (Shoutout to the Vances, who came to the studio on Fri and then spent their holiday weekend with us in NY.)
Kingston’s a great town, and we’re mostly too busy to feel terribly lonely… But there have definitely been several moments when we’ve just really wanted to see the people we love. So this was a welcome gift, for sure.
So Saturday was of course the Fourth of July, and we had ourselves a little unintended adventure… I (Tasha) have some strange food allergies, which have sometimes brought me a little gift my allergist calls “exercise-induced anaphylaxis.” (Not a good time; I don’t recommend it.) So– we’re not sure what I ate on Saturday that set it all off, but my afternoon jog came to a pretty scary end. Thankfully, since this has happened before, we knew how to avert a total crisis. Mostly there was the seriously-crazed waiting for the hives, etc to die down, and then a good bit of time knocked out from Benadryl. Happy Fourth! 
But actually, it wound up being a really great day. I have a great husband who took amazing (and patient) care of me, and our friends were awesome. Totally understanding and helpful. We were all able later to get out for some serious MiniGolf. (Okay, it wasn’t at all serious. And fireworks overhead.) And we had a great meal around our little dining table; made the apartment feel so like a home.
"Near, far, wherEEeever you are..."
After sending off our visitors, we got in some rest on Sunday, and spent a lot of time listening back to rough mixes from our studio work. This was the time to determine what we wanted to change, redo, or add to any of our songs. We made our notes and headed in yesterday (Monday) –
We spent Monday finishing up all our vocal work, and seriously: It’s crazy to be finished. (And by “crazy” I mean “awesome.”) :) After we finalized all the lead vocals, we added some more background vocals (thanks to Justin and Malcolm), and then spent the rest of the evening with instrumental parts.
Today (Tuesday) we’ll see what else needs work… We’ll fill in any musical gaps, make some corrections and decisions about parts… And then tomorrow we’ll have Jon Graboff in the studio with us, working on guitar and pedal steel. We’ve been looking forward to seeing what he adds!
So: Off to a great start so far today. Had some great conversation and we’re spending quality time with Xing the cat.
More pictures coming soon… And another Fan Love song!