We’re All Working Musicians Here
by Dee Adams
Recently, someone made a comment about being a working musician that stuck with me: “You don’t have too many gigs listed, so this must be a quiet time for you”. The perception that playing shows is all there is to it seemed odd to me, until I thought about it from someone else’s point of view. Unless you’re a musician yourself, you might not realize how much time and effort is involved in being a musician that is NOT spent on stage, and how many details are worked on behind the scenes. Robot Holiday is the perfect example, and a great way to share some insight with folks who might be curious about what goes in to being a musician. Here’s a look at it from our perspective.
It starts with the writing. I previously posted about getting your holiday songs written, a process that starts well before anyone is even thinking about whether or not they need a new winter coat this year. Unless you’re lucky in the moment of the muse, the songs don’t just appear to be plucked out of the air and finished – the writing takes days or even weeks before you feel it’s a piece you can share with the world. As for me, I tend to roll the lyrics and melody around in my head for several days, always wondering what can be added, removed, or changed. Then, it’s time to play through it a bunch of times so that I can really start to feel the song, so I can perform it convincingly, and so I can work out any syllabic quirks that aren’t flowing as smoothly as they should.
Once it feels complete and ready to be shared, it’s over to RH HQ with Jonathan Hughes to record the acoustic guitar and the vocal parts. Jonathan and I have the good fortune to work really well in-studio together. He knows just what mics and settings to use to bring out the best in my vocals and my guitar, so set up is a breeze. Once our levels are set, we record a scratch track of guitar and vocal together. Then we move to the tricky stuff – recording a clean acoustic guitar track that will be included on the final project. This is the hard part for me, as I don’t consider myself a great guitar player. I can get the job done, but it takes huge concentration and a good few tries to get a take we feel happy with. When the final acoustic track is done, we move on to recording the lead vocal, and then, in this case, on to the stacked harmony vocal guide tracks, so that the other Ladies of Robot Holiday have something to practice with. Since I hadn’t firmly picked out the harmony parts note-for-note, this process took a little more time (note to self….have this done before the session next time!), but we were able to come up with three parts that are going to sound ridiculously good with a chorus of doo-wop girls.
There you have the evolution of a Robot Holiday song.
But wait! There’s more!
While I was finishing writing my song, other Robot Holiday members were also finishing theirs. Once they went through the same process I did, the songs were sent around to all the players who would be asked to perform them, so that we could all spend some time with the songs and prepare for our upcoming sessions. So, in the time it took me to write and practice my song, I was also learning and practicing harmony parts for two of Cathy Carfagna‘s songs, and the lead vocals for two of David Mussen‘s songs. We were able to record all five songs in the same session. Phew!
But there’s more, still!
Now, Jonathan will take all of the songs he’s been working on with all the RH members, and fill in the bass, drums, and guitar tracks, add a multitude of unique sounds to them (maybe some robots?!), then call people in for last minute touch ups or fixes, then mix the songs, then get them mastered, then make sure all the credits are right for the album, then upload them to robotholiday.com, then organize 20 people to get them all re-rehearsed for a live show. As you can see, everything that goes into getting the 12-to-15 Robot Holiday songs done every year takes several months. All of this happens between our other commitments – for me, it’s gigs and rehearsals for other projects including my own band, solo acoustic gigs and all the coordination and communications that go along with it, planning and teaching voice lessons, practicing newly learned techniques or instruments, and booking a weekly showcase at Sportsmen’s. For every member of the group, there are different things that keep them working through music on a weekly or daily basis, on top of our regular daily lives with our families and our jobs.
While the applause of a live show does mean a whole lot to us, it’s actually only a portion of the reward for doing what we do. We do all of these things because immersing ourselves in music brings us a little closer to being whole, makes us feel connected to the world, to ourselves, and to each other. Those times when we don’t have that many gigs on the books are just as valuable, and keep us just as musically sustained. We hope that our hard work shows!