Kickstarter

In my quest to record a live CD, I had a couple of options: Set up a date and record the whole night, cross my fingers and hope that everything goes really, really well. Option two was to take my recording gear on the road and record multiple shows at some of my favorite venues, cities and towns, and sift through all the footage to find the best and most magical takes. You can probably guess which one I chose. 

Over the course of the last 7 or 8 months, I've traveled about 25,000 miles and recorded shows all over the country, from Arizona to Texas, from Massachusetts to Iowa, from San Francisco to Seattle. And I think I got some pretty cool stuff! Kind of a greatest-hits from my last 3 or 4 CDs, and also some new songs I've been working on. I came up with the title, "Stages", a few weeks ago and kind of thought it fit the zeitgeist - it was recorded on many different physical stages, and for me it also represents the stages I've been through as a songwriter and performer. 

The recording part of things is just finishing up, and I'm moving on to the next part of the process, which is mixing, graphic design, mastering and duplication. You may not know exactly what all those things are, but it's the stuff every CD goes through to make it look and sound as good as it can, and it's also where the bulk of the expense happens. 

I'm really excited to be working on this CD - as a performer, I love hearing how songs evolve when they're played live. Sometimes they end up being completely different than how I first imagined them. And I don't know what it is exactly, maybe it's the risk involved with getting up in front of an audience - but there's something about a live recording that can really capture the essence of the song and the performer in a powerful and moving way.