Last night after I blogged, Steven, JoLynn, Aimee and I walked down to The View and had a couple of cocktails. The View’s a (gay) bar and not a club, so we sat on couches and watched music videos and were nearly able to talk. (Until the drag queen puppet bingo started, then we decided to leave.)

You can’t smoke and drink at the same time here, you have to go outside to smoke. One point for Iowa: you can still smoke in the bars. (Score: New York 120, Iowa 1.) (Hah.)

Then we came back to the apartment and crashed out.

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Eight hours later, the alarm went off and we were off and running again.

We hit the corner Starbucks for lattes and muffins, then took a cab over to Live Wire (Cyndi Lauper’s studio, I gather) and recorded four songs in ten hours.

I don’t really love studio work. It’s intellectual, picky, detail-oriented, and if you’ve never done it, it’s hard work. Especially in a choir; we were working three or four people on a mic in a live-in-the-studio scenario, so if one person or section fucked up, we’d have to re-do the whole section. No punch-ins.

You’ll be happy to hear that I nailed my solo in one take. It took three hours for the group to record the chart, but fewer than five minutes – including mic setup time – for me to record my solo. One take! You may enjoy a moment of silence in worship of me. (Snort!)

We broke around 7:30 for dinner. Steven and I ate at Taco Bell across the street from Live Wire; every one else ate at Brick Oven Pizza up the street. Then we went back and did one more chart. Punch-ins were nearly impossible because we were tired and dropping in pitch so badly we couldn’t cut and paste from one take to another.

The engineer, Chris Agosto, was wonderful. Patient and professional and friendly, and he laughed at all my jokes (including the time when I mumbled, “Damn vocalists… we’re all so stupid and chatty.”). I really thought he was amazing.

Finally we re-recorded the entire chart and were in the booth listening to playback. Amazingly, the end section of the keeper take, which was bad and needed to be fixed, was able to be replaced by the end of the final take – they were in the same key. We’d dropped exactly the same amount in two takes recorded over an hour apart! Believe me when I tell you this is damn near impossible.

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On the subway ride home, we sang the end of Sweet True Love. New Yorkers are so fabulous, they absolutely did not give a fucking shit. I was wailing my solo, six other singers were singing the comp, the train car was full, and no one Gave. A. Shit.

I love this city.

We all kissed and hugged when Lindsey got off to connect with the A train, and then again when Steven and Aimee and I got off at our stop, and now I may never see some of those people again.

Now I’m sitting at the kitchen table, people are chatting around me, and I’m done typing today’s entry on JoLynn’s laptop. I believe I’ll go have a wine cooler. Ciao, babies!
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