Message from BD Wong re: HERRINGBONE BDCD.
Hello friends and supporters and funders.
I continue to be very excited and happy about the HERRINGBONE CD, and while there's nothing snagging the project up or anything that in any way is putting the project in question, I have to report that the entire thing is simply taking longer than I had ever wanted or hoped it would take. This is because I am trying to juggle a few other things, and because I'm pretty much doing all the coordinating of it myself, and that has made things move at a much more leisurely pace. But we have gotten over a hump, I think, and I wanted to give you a more detailed report of our progress.
I am really happy with the way the recording sounds. It really is a cool recording and there won't be many other cast albums like this when it's done - it's really got its own thing going on. Scott Lehrer and Leon Rothenberg at 2nd Story Sound did a brillant job recording the concert live at Dixon Place, and it is a combination of honest, spontaneous and live but also pretty clean, and a very faithful recording of Tom, Skip and Ellen's wonderfully eccentric show. We all seem to be in agreement that it plays very well as a "radio show" even though it's only me playing all the parts. I hope everyone else enjoys following the characters and the story as much as we think they will. It's a tall, tall tale with some memorable characters and really great songs.
I went into a very detailed editing process with Scott, Leon and MD Dan Lipton, all guys I have worked with over the years many times. We put a lot of care into cutting the recordings of the two performances and dress rehearsal together seamlessly, and the result is the best of all possible worlds. I am proud of the loving work everyone did. The band (Ben Campbell, Rich Huntley) sounds great, and Dan is in particularly rare form on the piano. Skip's score is probably the hardest piano score I've ever worked with, and over the years I've found it extremely difficult to find pianists who can actually play it at all, let alone with the musicianship Dan brings to it. Dan is doing the piano equivalent of what I'm doing in the show as an actor playing multiple roles - in his two hands are the different instruments of an orchestra rolled into one piano score. There's some extremely difficult fingering throughout (yeah that's what SHE said, BAM).
After we got a mix that everyone loved, which took a while 'cause of everyone working on other projects and me traveling and Sandy and all that, we took some time and care to do the track-breaks, and with a live musical performance that's really tricky. We don't want people not being able to pull just the songs from the score, but we also wanted the play to have a strong identity, too, especially because the whole motivation for the CD is to honor bookwriter Tom Cone's memory.
So now that is done and the whole shebang is going to be mastered, which is a process I STILL don't understand. Scott has tried to explain this to me numerous times wearing various costumes and drawing whimsical diagrams, and I am still not sure what it is. But I do know it's a necessary technical part of this process, and the final one in the process of making a recording.
Mike Croiter at Yellow Sound Label has been great, and we are really excited about the packaging, it's gonna be kind of awesome. I won't say too much about it, but I am really liking working with Asaf Shurafa, who designs a lot of CD packaging for Mike, and we have a really cool concept. Asaf is knee deep in that now. This is a part of the process that I particularly love.
The mastering should roughly time out with the package design, and then the project will go to manufacturing, which I am told isn't a long one.
So, obviously I'm asking for your patience once again. I hope you can keep hoping and trusting that we are working on this and that the CD will be done soon.
It's important for me to say I don't take lightly that each of you gave the money to pay for this from your hearts and that, for the record, I would never "take your money" without doing my part of our deal. I am still overwhelmed that you all gave; it is a wonderful, full, supportive feeling tied directly into some of the things I love most about being on the performer end of the performer-audience relationship.
My plan is to get the T-Shirts out before the new year. In order to make this happen, we will need everyone to fill out the questionnaire we are going to email you through Kickstarter asking for your mailing information. We will probably ask EVERYONE to fill out the same questionnaire to keep things steamlined, so if you wouldn't mind, please let us know what your T-Shirt size is, even if you DIDN''T buy a T-shirt, so we can have it on file. I am slowly rolling out the "Twitter poems" so please be on the lookout for yours if you paid for one!
I hope this finds you warm and safe, and surrounded by one or two things that make you smile. I am deeply grateful to you for your support, and even though it's taken way longer than I had hoped, I promise I will not let you down. happiest of holiday seasons, friends.
xobdw
