Time Capsule: A Song Comes to Life

Susan Farris sat next to her family piano as a child, sometime around 1975, listening to her mom sing and play a song called “Remembering”.

Her mother is now suffering from dementia and hasn't been able to sing that or any song for many years. She was a small-town piano teacher and was proficient enough to write the music and lyrics, creating sheet music for her masterpiece. Those two pages sat, hidden away, in a box somewhere with other trinkets and memories from the past. Susan’s husband, Charles, got an email about our new online recording studio called studioautomatic.com and immediately thought of his wife’s stories of hearing her mom sing. He emailed us to ask a simple question: “your site says to upload a rough version of your tune and we will send you back a fully formed pro recording within a few days…can you work from sheet music?”

I didn’t know all the details so asked Charles to call me and pass along more info. Is the sheet music for real? Does the song exist in an arrangement that makes sense as a modern song? I then asked him to send me a pdf of the music. I must admit to tearing up a little as I sat in an airport looking at my iPhone and reading the words to this song from the past.

I started with Tim, one of the most talented piano players in Nashville. He sat and played the first version of “Remembering” complete with backing piano and him plunking out the melody of the vocal.

My team then added drums, bass, guitars and ultimately we snagged Jenna, an aspiring singer here in Music City to cut the vocals. Everyone who worked on the song had the same response, which was this surreal feeling of bringing a song to life that quite literally didn’t exist in any audio form for around 40 years.

I love being part of this website that allows people to hear their songs recorded, mixed and mastered by the same people who work on major label projects. This song was even more special. The Farris family loved the finished project and made comments about never imagining they'd ever hear that song again. 

One passage from the song “lonely days that follow, all these memories linger on.” Now these words, these lyrics, these emotions can, in fact, linger on.

We loved doing this song and bring on the sheet music!

Van and Trailor vs. the Internet

Okay, here I go sounding like the old guy talking “back in my day” again. The truth is technology is changing so fast, that guy could have actually been born when grunge was the thing (google Seattle music or Soundgarden). And while lots of folks complain about what the cursed internet has done to music, and while I could easily call Pandora the devil’s work, a whole lot of things have changed for the better.

Van #1-Brownie. Okay, this was actually a mini-van. When I made the decision to give this music thing a chance I sold my Jeep Renegade and bought a Ford Astro van from a lady who had been using it to move her paintings. It was sans chairs of any kind and covered wall to wall in carpet. Not cool Dazed and Confused carpet. Just plain, office grade stuff. We all met at my house in Norman, Ok, packed our gear and hit the road for our first out of town gig in Stillwater, Ok roughly 70 minutes away. But damn it we told everyone of our friends we were on tour.

Van #2-The Banana. Yeah, cause it was yellow (too easy?). This was a big step up from Brownie. Full sized, customized and we finally had that sweet 70’s shag this time. Here’s how we bought The Banana. My dad worked for the Dept. of Transportation and was put in charge of finding a band for their annual Christmas party, or yearly retreat or something. Now, the only place worse than a corporate event for a band who was in full on refuse-to-turn-down-or-play-covers mode to play, is an event for state employees. Listen, I was a state employ once (different story for a different time centering around me holding a “stop/slow” sign on the side of the highway) and I’ve met cool state employees. But a room full of them drinking punch out of paper cups at noon…

Why’d we do it? We’d just seen an ad for a perfect van upgrade, cost, 3500. Pay for the gig, 3500. By now we’d graduated to the seven state area. The Banana’s last trip was even farther… to NYC to play a label showcase at CBGB’s, which incidentally was not the last time we were passed on by a label.

Van#3-No Name, but a badass shiny new 15 passenger van pulling a very solid trailer full of gear. No stories about this one. Not even the bullet in the side story (crazy girls). It’s time to address the future.

The Future.
That’s where we are now and holy hell things look so much easier. We could've graduated vans way quicker if I could’ve sent blasts to our fans tweeting or snapping away. We could've saved tons of gas skipping that one show we just had to play in Brownsville, TX for 15 people (btw that’s pretty much as far south as you can go). Would’ve had a contest where fans put up a youtube video of their favorite Nixons song and pick the one from south Texas. And services like TuneCore: this is basically an online handbook for people trying to do exactly what we were trying to do. I didn’t even know what publishing was. On sites like this you can learn every intricate detail on this and almost any other music business related topic. It’s like the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy for bands (don’t panic).

Listen, did I enjoy spray painting our band name on dumpsters all over the Oklahoma City metro area banking on people thinking we suddenly had such rabid fans we were worthy of a little petty vandalism? Okay, I actually did enjoy that and would do that one all over again.

I’m a songwriter now and fought every sibling-in-law I had telling me how great American Idol was. See, I did it the real way. Came up the right way. Until I got a cut on an Idol’s album, then I liked it better. Oh okay, not so bad. It was a platform. A way in. Today there are so many more of them. In my heart, I’m proud of the way we did it. I learned a lot and know a lot things to warn my sons about. We played around 300 days a year for nearly a decade and hell yeah could’ve used an assist from TuneCore to shave off a hundred miles or so.

Van and Trailer Vs. The Internet? We’ll call it a draw.

Studio Automatic: Genesis Of A Song

I write songs. Some weeks I write one song each day. I woke up one morning and (after drinking a large cup of coffee) thought to myself: Why not give every songwriter the accessibility that I have to create great-sounding music? I realized I could create a digital platform offering the same quality and service that I provide every day for my in-studio clients to every aspiring songwriter out there. By the time I finished my second cup of coffee, Studio Automatic was born.

The first question you may have for me is: How do you know so many great studio musicians? I’m so glad you asked. Since signing my first record deal to MCA Records in 1995, I have built relationships with some of the most accomplished musicians, engineers, and mixers on the planet. These professionals make up the team at Studio Automatic. They’ve played on albums for GRAMMY award-winning artists and have worked on projects for major labels, including Warner Brothers, Universal, Atlantic, Capitol, Big Machine and many more.

The next question a lot of clients have for me is: What happens to my song after I upload it to StudioAutomatic.com? Excellent question, indeed! The process will vary client-to-client depending on package choices, but the Studio Automatic team begins and ends with our project coordinators. These are highly trained engineers/producers who can play an instrument (or multiple instruments) proficiently. One of these project coordinators will send a client’s scratch audio to a Studio Automatic drummer who will track the drums (possibly in his or her pajamas) and send the wav files back. From there, the project coordinator will add guitars and bass before sending the track to one of our demo singers. He or she will cut vocals and return her work to the project coordinator. The coordinator then cleans the track up before sending to one of Studio Automatic’s mixers. Mixers do just what it sounds like they do: They mix all the instruments and vocals together. They play with volumes, create fades, make sure the vocals are finely tuned, and so on. Once they’ve mixed the track to perfection, they send the song over to the coordinator once more, who then uploads the finished product to the client’s account on Studio Automatic.

By the time a client receives their finished product, their track could have passed through 4 or more accomplished studio musicians because, well, it takes a village, folks!

Now that you’ve heard my story, I want to hear yours! I’d like to hear your questions about recording and songwriting. Leave a comment on this post with the things that are tripping you up in the studio and I’ll see what I can do to help!

Bluebird Rocks!

I was lucky enough to perform on some iconic stages at some amazing venues over my time as an artist. My band opened for Kiss at Madison Square Garden and in a subsequent video released by the make-up wearing hall of famers, there is a panning shot of the crowd that clearly shows my mom and dad (who flew out for the show), arms raised, in Nixons t-shirts, rocking right along with the Kiss Army. We got to play Red Rocks, the picturesque amphitheater that is cut right out of the Rocky Mountains just outside of Denver. In fact, we played there enough times (5) to be presented with a little trophy made out of a sliver of the actual red rock that surrounds the outdoor venue. Played Cain’s Ballroom, which for an Okie is something any band coming up in the Sooner State aspires to do. I can also say we played the room before the renovations that included A.C. Once upon an August night somewhere in the mid 90’s, we happily sweat our way through a rock show and mosh pit somewhere in the low 100’s.

As a songwriter, an ultimate honor is to play another iconic room, the Bluebird Cafe. I had heard of the place even before moving to Nashville. I think I was first made aware from the 1993 River Phoenix film The Thing Called Love. Like most people my age, anything Phoenix was associated with was just…cool. I don’t think I understood what it was really all about, but started hearing stories beginning with one about an iconic Garth Brooks song. As the story goes, Garth was in attendance in the tiny little cafe that sits unassumingly between a dry cleaners and some random retail shop, when Tony Arata performed “The Dance.” Brooks apparently told the writer he would someday cut the song when he got a record deal. The rest is history. 

I’ve now played there a few times, most recently to a packed house alongside three other writers including J.T. Harding who played some of his hits. J.T. has a singing style all his own and it was so amazingly cool to hear him bust out his version of “Smile” by Uncle Kracker while the 90 plus in attendance sang along. The first time I played there was with Craig Wiseman. There is something equally inspiring and daunting about following his version of “Live Like You Were Dying” with one of my own songs.

When we were putting together and speaking to people about the Oklahoma Songwriters Festival, we used the Bluebird Cafe as a touchstone. As in, the songwriter showcase will be set up as if we are bringing the Bluebird to Oklahoma for an evening. In Nashville, in large part because of the TV show with the same name, people line up and clamor to get into the writer showcase room. In OKC, we’ve been spreading the word and hope people line up to come see myself, Marcus Hummon (“Bless the Broken Road”), Jim Beavers (“Watching Airplanes”), Marti Frederickson (“Undo it”) and J.D. McPherson sing the songs we’ve written for ourselves and others. 

The Bluebird Cafe has no lighting trusses or catwalks like an arena in Manhattan, no sweeping views of mountains in Colorado. But the history and the energy in this little room is like nothing else I’ve ever felt. If you are in the audience and you chit chat, you’ll get shushed. It’s quiet, yes. But truth is the Bluebird rocks as hard as any wall of Marshall cabs ever will.