The following is the 5th in a series of posts leading up to the Pre-Order date of our new Christmas album!

(5/7) 𝑻𝒓𝒖𝒔𝒕 👯‍♀️🎹🦆💜

Hey, it’s me again! 👋🏼 Can you believe I’m keeping up with this? Can you believe you’re still voluntarily reading it? 😂 No worries, after this, only 2 more to go!

While we were in the thick of it in Nashville, and especially once we were done, the word 𝑻𝒓𝒖𝒔𝒕 really hit home. Throughout the past 10 months i have witnessed and experienced it time and time again.

Frances and I have needed to trust each other musically, financially, artistically…she even trusted me to drive her car!! If that isn’t trust, I don’t know what is (I’m typically not the preferred driver). She’s even trusting me to make these posts! 🤣

The recording days in the studio, though…trust was tantamount. We arrived at Wildwood Recording Studio before our 6-hour session and met Phillip our arranger/producer and Kent Hooper our sound engineer. Nerves, nerves, nerves 😬 After I finally recognized Phillip (I’m so awkward) we took about an hour to set up, warm up, and get all of the equipment in place. After that is was 6 hours of recording. But trust! In this process you need to trust your producer to hear the mistakes that you don’t, you need to trust the sound engineer is also hearing this and KNOWING how to get the best sound out of your instrument, you need to trust your equipment will work!! Oboe reeds are not known for being predictable. Neither are oboes! On the second day I was so desperate to get the recurring water out of my octave keys that I asked for canned air…I certainly didn’t think to pack that! Luckily Kent had some with his computer equipment 🤣 I knew this kind of thing could be an issue and even packed a student’s oboe and English horn but decided that even though they were the same models, the sound would be too different.

Frances also needed to trust that her piano worked…it didn’t occur to me until later that everywhere she goes to play she has to play on and adjust to a different instrument every time! This Yamaha C7 Grand Piano at Wildwood is a beauty, though! Wow. She made it sing, no doubt about that. Incredible.

Anyway, it comes down to this…reeds and oboes are not trustworthy 🙄 But fortunately the people we worked with ARE. I can’t sing the praises of Kent Hooper enough. His ears and his skills are INCREDIBLE.

When we left to go home, this overwhelming feeling of vulnerability hit. We had just wrapped up and had done the best we could and even though we felt really good about it…was it? Was it good enough? What now? We laid it all out and had to trust that Kent knew what he was doing. Ha! Well, did he ever. It wasn’t until a week or so later that we would hear the music again.

I trust you’re still reading this…😅