falling in love with a pump organ

Last Saturday's session was notable, mainly for the fact that I think I have finished (knock wood) my vocal tracks on all tunes. I will be paying careful attention to each playback to any possible vocal issues I overlooked, but it is safe to assume that this part of the process is finished. No big deal, I don't fancy myself much of a singer...in fact if I did not write songs I am not sure I would have even attempted singing in the first place. (OK...there was that appearance in the musical Bye-Bye Birdie in the seventh grade, but I digress...) It is enough for me to have communicated the song the best I can and to leave it at that. I want to get better as a singer but when you boil it down I think the recording process is about capturing things that have already happened.

When I initially came to the conclusion that I needed to start recording a bunch of my tunes, I thought that there would automatically be three distinct projects/directions I would go in: an album of singer/songwriter (rootsy, folky) stuff, a hard rockin' in-your-face up-tempo garage rock-fest of an album, and finally, a more experimental ambient and quirky project. This just seemed to result from the fact that I have a bunch of material that seems to want to divide itself into these categories. I hear things in my head. And to borrow from Sesame Street, sometimes "one of these things is not like the other." Sometimes I think certain songs could never be on the same recording...and while this might be correct I also need to keep challenging my assumptions about what belongs and why.

Which brings me to my point: I am falling in love with the pump organ. It is a mournful, quietly desperate, aching carnival sound that I have grown to love through many songs, especially on numerous Tom Waits recordings. While I heard this in my head, I was unsure if this sound would "belong" on the current project. But all is fair in love and war, and so I hope to use the pump organ wherever possible on this project. It is going to add a lot to many of the songs, especially those recorded without drums (i.e., 9 of 15 tracks)..it suffices to say that the easy divisions in my head of what is appropriate sometimes blur...and blur they should...that is how we make new colors.