The Brit from Malibu

The first thing on my virtual “to-do” list is to find a producer for my album. Mark and I met with our first candidate yesterday afternoon at a Starbucks in Malibu. With a resume as long our drive from Studio City to Malibu, this Brit was surprisingly laid back and incredibly humble. I’d love to tell you who he is and the people he worked with but again, the anonymity thing, so we’ll just call him “Roc.” He has produced some recent Grammy award winners and had some very telling stories about them as well as other household names. Some of these stories were unbelievable. Like one guy had poor Roc fly a 7 piece band down to New Orleans where they were recording and then attempted to sabotage the session by forcing the musicians to swap instruments (like the drummer played the guitar, bass played the drums, etc) and record that way. Roc thinks it’s because he was intimidated by what good musicians they were. It only made the “sabotager” more angry when they still sounded pretty damn good on different instrument! So, he told Roc to send them all home and they finished the album alone.

It was a fascinating meeting and pretty cool that Roc told me he liked the demo of mine that he had heard. “Your songs are really pretty good.” Wow. Not that this guy is the voice of God but considering all the musicians he’s worked with, it felt pretty good to hear him say that. He did say he thought I was “singing” too much in places, like with too much attitude and I needed to lay back more. Hmmm. I’m still thinking about that one….not quite obsessing over it but more being hyper conscious of it. This is difficult because I am not even really sure what he means. Note to self: definitely something to bring up in meeting #2.

Yes, meeting #2. That should happen in the next few weeks. Before that, two things need to happen: I need to get the rest of my songs (10-15 more) down on a basic recording (just guitar and vocals) for him to hear, and second, Mark needs to have a serious budget conversation with Roc. Is an album with him something I can even afford? With publicity and marketing taking up the bulk of the budget, we can’t afford to spend much more than 20% on the actual making of the album. I mean, if you create a masterpiece but you have no effective way of letting people know about it, what’s the point? To sit in your living room and listen to it saying, “Wow. I sound great.”??? Then again, if you skimp on the production so that you can afford to market the hell out of it, who cares? How many people are really going to buy a highly publicized piece of shit? (Alright, nevermind, I forgot – this is the good old USA.)

So that’s where things stand now…..Alright, I am at work at the moment, sneaking this all in….need to get back before I get caught. ;)