Session number two at TB’s house last night went from six to 10:45. We got two songs in the can… even though you can’t really say “in the can” any more, since no one uses tape – it all goes straight onto a hard drive. But still, we recorded Om Namah Shivaya Om and Glory Glory, and I think they came out well. I’d like to lay down about eight (or ten) (or twelve) more vocal tracks on Om Namah Shivaya Om because the changes are awesome, but I doubt I’ll get to.

We hit the pocket much sooner last night than the night before, and the vibe in general was pretty good. We had good fun joking around, too – this group of folk is really sweet. I mean, they’re amazingly sweet, to themselves and each other, and the space is really gentle; I almost feel awkward around such subtle people because my sense of humor is so very base… but I’m the funny chick. I can’t help it. Sometimes there’s a conflict between people’s idea of ‘spiritual’ and my sense of humor but I simply fail to see it. If you’re laughing, it’s all good. (Well, as long as its not at the expense of someone’s heart.) I have a hard time being quiet when there’s an opportunity for a joke, and I simply like to hear people giggle.

J put new strings on his guitar the day before yesterday (a recording no-no, because strings take awhile to stretch out) and he had a hell of a time keeping his instrument in tune last night. About the fifth time he stopped to tune his B string, he said, “This B just won’t stay in tune.” And I said, ‘You should just take it off.” TB laughed and told me I’m a nut.

TB, if you don’t know about him, is a well-known Irish music expert. He plays all kinds of things, flutes and bagpipes and I think some stringed instrument of some kind. He also a master pipe maker. He can be observed wearing kilts around town. He’s toured pretty extensively, and is, in a nutshell, A Monster Player. He’s also a great recording engineer, who gives impeccable but never hurtful advice. (He can tell you you’re flat without your ego noticing, which is an incredibly difficult thing to manage.) He will happily be a human metronome for the duration of a nine-minute song. His patience is endless.

J dropped briefly into a rut last night on the first verse of Glory Glory, which is many many bars of just him, alone, on guitar and voice. For about ten takes, he either sang sharp or flat, or did something wonky on his guitar. He started to feel tense about it – who wouldn’t! – until finally TB told us all that this always happens at some point during recording, and then related a brief story about what recording hell really is: five hours, playing the same four bars over and over and OVER AND OVER, take eighty-seven. Gack. So to break the funk, Snow and J did some breathing exercise together (I don’t know what discipline it was, some pranic thing) and when we were ready to record again J looked up at me with those big brown eyes and I said, “Did you feel that? Just now? THAT was us beginning to rock. Before was PR – pre rock. Now we’re AR. Let us rock.” He grinned up at me and said, “Well, all right.” And we did just that.

I once recorded a radio commercial, and for the LIFE OF ME I could not sing in tune that day. It was two hours of agony for me and the recording engineer. I breathed, I drank water, I did yoga, warmed up, I jogged in place, and I could NOT fucking sing in tune. My tone was great, my phrasing was great… I just COULD NOT HEAR PITCH until playback. It was the most painful musical experience of my life. So I had total compassion for J. Seriously.

Not to mention that I don’t really sing in tune myself any more. Snort!

The cute Australian “audient” (singular for audience? hah!) was there again last night, and her name I learned! It’s Virginia, or Ananda Ma. She’s planning on going to school in Boulder next year, after she goes home and makes enough money to come back. She’s friends with the Hickeys and is just a fabulous gal in general. Her accent utterly slays me. So cute. She knows how to shoot guns and drink rum. All my guy friends would eat their hearts out if they met her.

K’s drum work was great; I think last night’s charts were more beat-oriented overall because he played some great stuff. (He’s super cute, too, when you say, “Dude, that thing you did there was hot!” He just smiles slowly, and says “thank you” really softly.)

Snow’s keyboard work was solid as always… he seems to think he kinda sucks on keys but I think I would have NOTICED BY NOW if he actually did suck. I miss having him on guitar of course, because he is your basic California guitar god, but I guess he’ll be adding solos later. I love having keys. It’s nice to be able to hear chords entire, as God intended them, rather than the series of inversions and non-chord ringing strings you always get with folk guitar. Not that I hate guitar, but stuff’s always more locked in for me chordally when I can hear a piano. Plus Snow’s just a tasty player. He’s still working on brightening up his tone vocally, but I don’t know if he’ll be able to. He’s got a smooth, breathy, blending voice by nature – I like it the way it is, but he feels he’s having a hard time blending with J and me. I don’t know that I agree, but I tried to soften my own voice when singing backup with him last night, but I forgot to pay attention during playback to see if I’d succeeded in blending with him better.

J continues to remind me of Cat Stevens vocally. The tunes he writes are totally different, but he’s definitely got a Cat thing going on with the way he sings, and his actual voice is similar. Which I like.

I had some pitch problems in a few spots, and I turned diva and threw a bit of a fit at one point because I didn’t know the song well enough to feel I should be recording it. But they all told me to get over it and go for it, and I did, and over all I feel pretty good about the results. I’m unutterably hard on myself, and cringe every single time I’m even a tiny bit out of tune, or sloppy, or miss an attack… I find my mind divided between the drowsy groovyness of a good experience with the process of recording, and the analytical vivisection of the recording itself. “Wow, that FELT great! But man, I suck!” is a hard dichotomy to sustain, yet somehow I always seem to manage.

We’ll be doing it again tonight. I work ’til six, grab some drive-thru, and get to TB’s by six. On Friday I am SO SLEEPING IN.