The Process

Thinking back on it now I’m surprised I found this concept so counterintuitive. When my producer Steve first mentioned what we’ve now come to call The Process, I remember being supremely confused.

“So like, we make songs, and then as the songs change and evolve, we go back and make changes and updates to the older songs until we have a cohesive album of music that we like?” I asked.

“Yeah, basically,” he said.

In my mind, it was a task so monumentally backward and so exceedingly time-consuming that I figured it would never work.

So I said, “I’m in.”

Because in reality, I knew that there was no other way to truly get to the heart of what I had to say. There was no way that I could go in the studio with a band and bang out an album’s worth of songs in a day and be happy. But there was also no way I could wait until I had already written the perfect album and then find a professional studio to record them.

So when Steve offered me a way to figure out my sound and basically do whatever I wanted musically (within reason) so that we could both end up with an album we were proud of…well that sounded pretty fucking great.

And we got to work.

The first step was firing my band. Which was no easy task because my husband was in my band and we were both rather attached to it being that way. We met playing music. We’d been playing together for years by that point, as a duo and in various projects around town. Straying from our musical dynamic was scary and a little heartbreaking for both of us. But I really wanted absolute musical freedom for this album. Taking that first step was terrifying. I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t know where I’d land without my band, without my husband beside me. But I had to try and I’m glad I did.

The second step was sussing out which songs were good enough to work The Process on and which ones should wait and/or never be started in the first place. This step was particularly difficult for me because it was hard to trust myself at first. When you write a new song, most of the time you feel like it’s the best thing in the world:

“Behold! Look at my song! Feast your eyes upon it! You are unworthy of this truly majestic thing I have made!!!”

But then you listen to it the next day and think, “Well, that was shite. Back to the drawing board, I guess.”

It can be a constant struggle with your inner critic, imposter syndrome, and your ego. Eventually, Steve had to tell me, “You know we both have good taste right? We wouldn’t be working on this if it were complete garbage.” And I finally let myself start listening to the songs constructively but also…joyfully. I started asking myself, “Is this song fun? Do I like it? Is it saying what I want it to say?” Instead of, “Are people going to like this? Are they going to think it’s dumb? Should I even be doing this?”

The third step was “getting out of my own way” as Steve calls it. It felt like an Awakening. There came a point, after maybe 3 years of working together and truly putting our blood, sweat, and tears into the Process that I started writing songs that were My Sound and My Voice without even trying. Whenever I sat down to write something, I would blank my mind and just let whatever needed to come out come out. And damn, did some shit really come through for me. Like, deep therapy shit. Shit I didn’t even want to talk about with my therapist. Secrets and lies I didn’t realize I was telling myself. In other words, the truth came out. And that’s when Steve and I really knew we had hit the jackpot. When I got to the point where the songs were me and I was the songs and I didn’t even really have to think about it anymore, they just were. It sounds fucking weird because it is. The Process broke me open and showed me my true self. And in a lot of ways, I’m glad it did. The album became something that was happening to us as well as something we were creating. It came to life.

At this point, I really have to take my hat off to Steve because he did so much of the creating. I mean, obviously, we both did a lot of it but Steve built the palettes. He colored the canvas. He spoke life into the ideas I didn’t have words for. The album became its own thing but only because of Steve’s supernatural ability to let what needs to stay and remove the rest. And because he built a bunch of dope sound libraries that we spent hours poring through together trying to find the perfect snare and bass sound for each song. Really, it was a true labor of love how many hours that man spent listening to every single tss of a hihat and kah of a snare known to man just to make me happy. And the amount of times I exclaimed, “That bass is subsonic!” Just for him to say, “Is that a good thing or can you just not hear it?” Truly mind-boggling.

The fourth step has been aligning every sound in every song align with The Vibe of the album.

Does this specific sound convey the message of this particular song? Does every sound in this song also match the message? Is this cello sad enough?

We did this with the lyrics especially but also with every other note and melody that you hear. One message that Steve could not stress enough during the making of the album was that every moment had to be intentional. I have never heard the word “intentional” as many times as I have since I’ve known Steve. That has become the bedrock of this whole project: What’s the song’s intention? And how do we make every moment and note share that same intention? This endeavor eventually became easy, like second nature to us. We could feel out what the song was and what it should be in a matter of months (yes, months. It still takes time!) Because ultimately, The Process can only be done slowly. It does not work when you rush it. It is uncomfortable at times and incredibly vulnerable. It nearly drove me crazy honestly.

But here we are. We made the album. We survived The Process. And now we’re ready to share it with the world.

There’s been a lot of back and forth between us as to whether the songs are ready. As to whether we’re ready. But just as I had to open myself up to The Process to begin with, I’m having to open myself up to this.

It’s been 5 years in the making and I’m finally ready to present this album to you, dear reader. I hope you like it. And if not that’s okay too. Because these past 5 years have been truly life-changing and The Process in and of itself was worthwhile. I would do it all over again.

But for now, here’s this.