After a somber day of hanging around the house, I figured that this should be the Sunday’s Child for Single of the Day today. I wasn’t really experiencing heartache. But I wasn’t in a typical cheery mood. I get that way when in the final stages of finishing a record. Only this time, it’s like the triple wham. This is a 3 CD set.
In case you don’t know much about what I’m up to, I’ll bring you up to speed. I came up with an idea two Christmas holiday’s ago. I decided that since no one had ever done a box set called Christmas Past, Present and Future, well then it would be me that should do it. I tried to get it out last year but ran into some snags in getting it done. So I put it aside for a while and came back to it earlier this year. I got full bore into doing the recording this summer. Over the past month and a half I’ve been recording the final vocals when time permitted. As of Friday, those vocals for me are all done.
What’s left? Well, I have a female vocalist, Dannielle Gaha, coming in this coming week to do a bunch of backgrounds to add some more depth to what I’ve already done. She’s amazing, but then she’s done lots of Christmas stuff in the past, so she knows how a lot of the backgrounds should go. I love working with people that know their stuff. Plus I’ve got some special guests (Devin Bronson – Avril Lavigne’s guitarist, and Henrik Linde – who’s played with me, plus Chris Hellstrom – who has also played with me and is doing the engineering for my vocals) coming in to play some guitar solos on the songs. They’ll be stopping by this coming week as well. I still have a couple of little noises to add here and there, but it will all be done this week. Then I hand it over to Chris to mix, after that it’s off to the mastering man and after that – iTunes.
So, to recap, it’s taken almost two years from concept to finished state. It’s 30 songs on three CD’s, or all on iTunes as a set. It’s all Christmas music. Christmas Past is all songs over 100 years old. Christmas Present is all songs in the past 100 years, and Christmas Future is all original songs written mostly by me and a few by some friends – it’s Christmas music you probably haven’t heard yet.
I’m covering a lot of ground with it. There’s acoustic stuff, rock stuff, swing-ish stuff, crooner stuff, bluesy stuff, modern stuff, instrumental stuff, ballady stuff, massive harmony stuff, orchestrated stuff, guitar and vocal stuff, standard stuff, and wacky stuff. That’s not all, but I’m probably boring you by now. The reason that I was down a bit yesterday is that I’m essentially Christmas’d out already and Christmas isn’t even here yet. It shouldn’t be here for at least another two months. Yet, I have a sneaky feeling that in two weeks the “Christmas” shopping season will already be underway before Halloween is even here. To me that is sick. Sick, sick, sick. That stores and companies care so little about other holidays that they’ll just push us over with Christmas.
Oddly enough some of my original Christmas songs really attempt to harken back to the idea that Christmas is not a shopping spree, but a time to reflect. Eh, yeah right, do you care?
So, as you can read, this is what is causing me separation anxiety already. It’s probably akin to giving birth, but thank God I never have to experience the physical pain involved with that. I only get the mental anguish of it. Thus, the song. While the title of Denise’s song sounds jaded, I’m really not. Separating is hard to go through when you put any time and effort into something. As you know I’m not a country specialist, but hey, I’m learning to expand my horizons. Denise has a sweet voice for country (I hope they’ll lay off the autotune in the future recordings) and the music is well done. Plus how can you go wrong with the step up to raise the chorus at the end of the song? Despite the musical irony, and the sad subject it’s a good song. I like it.
So enjoy the song, but don’t get too attached to it yet because its not on iTunes and I’m not quite sure it’s even available for sale yet. Maybe Denise or someone from her band will pop by and explain how you can get it, or… let us know when it’s on iTunes.