History of Whispered Words pt.2

... And here we are again,
with part 2 of the history of my "musical journey" (props to Larry Mullen Jr.) so far.  I gotta confess, I dropped an awful lot in part 1, so I am not going to be able to keep up the sheer volume of words I set as precedent!

I am with a new church family these days, and have been playing it cool a bit, as I had done a lot of "up-front" work at my last church, and felt a wee bit burnt out.  I also had a lot to examine about why I was doing the things I was doing; was I on stage because I just enjoyed being on stage in front of people singing, or was it for a higher purpose? The music I have written and am still writing has always been about Christ and my relationship with Him; my struggles, my hopes, my failures.  I also still have questions about why God keeps giving such a flawed guy like me music to write and songs to sing. After talking to an old acquaintance in the music program, I asked if they needed any voices to sing backup, and began!

Soon after, I met a singer/songwriter in the church who has been a bit of an inspiration to me, and who I have been able to work with in a couple of different capacities, namely: child-wrangling and music-playing. Her name is Julia Dawn. Check out her page! It has been fun watching a young and confident musician and singer with a STELLAR voice make her way, and it sort of rekindled a hopeful little fire that I had always had about making a real album of my material. Really soon after I met her, I got to see her open for one of my all-time favorite musicians, Derek Webb. That's right, I got to meet one of my all-time musical heroes and I did NOT blow it (for those of you who don't know me, I have a favourite saying: "Never meet your heroes. Only one of two things can happen: Either they disappoint you in some way, or you blow it."). I repeat, I did NOT blow it.

Around this time, I had an old friend named Colin come back into my life as well, and he and I got along amazingly right off the bat!  He stopped by my work to talk business, and the subject of his current work came to the forefront- he runs a studio here in my beautiful hometown, and actually had just finished working on Julia Dawn's album!! We got to talking, and I told him about my music and what I had (and hadn't) done with it up 'til now.

A brief aside: Colin Richet is the owner and proprietor of Revelation Studios, and does sound engineering, mixing, producing, multi-instrument session work, composing, and mastering- all in-house. He specializes in taking a simple melody and turning it into a fully-orchestrated experience, as big as you want it! If you have some music in you that you need to get out there, Colin is just the amazing person to help you make it happen. I highly recommend that anyone who is interested check out the site and get in touch with him to talk.

When Colin left me that day, apparently the wheels started turning, and he got in touch with me the next day, and we started talking plans to record. Problem: I had no budget for it! His solution: let's just see what happens. This was around the end of November 2012. He said he was going to see when in the new year we could sit down and plan something out.

In the meantime, I was getting a bit more involved in the church programs, and was asked to sing for the Silverspring Spirit of Christmas event that the church hosts for the surrounding community each year. I asked my good friend "L" to play guitar for me, while I sang a song of mine called "Carol for A Child", and the response I received after was very affirming!

Fast forward to March: We started recording.  It seems almost criminal to have this much fun while working. A couple times, Colin has hit PLAY, we listen through the most recent version of a song that has been with me for 15 years, and I have to hide the fact that I am tearing up at how amazing it sounds.  That brings me to now! I have taken a band name- Whispered Words. I haven't named the album yet- I figure that will come after it is formed. I have started a Facebook band page under the name Whispered Words as well, and already have some fine people supporting me there!

I am going to be trying my hand at crowd-funding the project, as I do not have the resources available to come out of this with a finished product. I will be launching an Indiegogo project with perks for anyone who donates to a finished album, and I hope that this will help us get over the finish line! I will be starting the Indiegogo push soon, and will keep all well-informed via blog, Facebook, Twitter, carrier pigeon, etc.

I went and created a Youtube channel this week just so I could upload this: the first real sample of what the finished product will sound like!! The song is called "In Your Presence".  If you like what you hear, please consider joining the others who will be donating to the finished CD! Enjoy!