Studio Update: Jewish is More than a Bagel

We love our studio engineer, and we are delighted that he returns the love. For just over ten years now (ten years!!) my a cappella vocal band has been tweeking our evening schedules so we can spend a night or two a month in the recording studio. At first, it was an awesome and terrifying experience. We'd all had dreams, all our lives, of singing in a recording studio, and now, here we were. And we were working on our first album! Nevermind that it was self-produced. Nevermind that we'd be lucky to sell even 1000 copies, counting family and friends. We were Recording Artists now!

And here we are ten years and a few months later. Band members have come and gone. We're finishing up our sixth CD. We write our own original music now, and it's damn good. Finally, but finally, we are now Old Hat at the studio. Our jitters have been replaced by casual comfy feelings. And since we are all older and arguably wiser, we no longer refer to ourselves as Recording Artists. At least, not out loud.

Our old-hattedness is apparent in our most recent project. Wait for it. People are now paying us to come into the recording studio and record their stuff. Well, at least one person is. The project of the moment is a song book of tunes that were written for and sung by the campers and staff of Camp Achva, a day camp program put on by the Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia. I'm a little hazy on the details, but I think the idea is that the camp is having a big reunion this summer, and the song book and CD are part of that. Our much-loved studio engineer is the one responsible for steering us and this project toward one another. We all collided in musical cacaphony three nights last week, and have two more sessions scheduled for next week.

The woman who wrote the songs is in her eighties. She was in the studio with us the other night. She's still got it goin' on in a major musical way. She had all kinds of helpful comments for us, from vocal stylings to the proper pronunciation of "oz-na-yim". She kept referring to our bass as "Old Man River". My favorite song of the collection (of fourteen which, unrealistically, we are trying to finish up in five studio sessions!) is titled "Jewish is More than a Bagel". It goes on to describe what Jewish in fact is: "a people, a nation, a law and a land and a civilization. And that beats a bagel every time."

We have enjoyed brushing up on our Hewbrew, and getting to sing in various theatrical styles that we normally shy away from. Most importantly, we're enjoying the chance of all being in the same room of the studio at the same time, singing the same songs. Normally we do each part as an individual track, which can get a bit tedious and lonely. And it feels so free to be singing someone else's songs.

I encourage anyone who loves music to find a good studio engineer and book yourself some studio time right quick. Life is short, and this is an experience you shouldn't miss out on!
And!...Long live camp Achva!