The Elihu Project

Thank You!

Obadiah Parker — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 04:18:15 +0000

Thank you so much to all of you guys that have been a part and supported this project! As a thank you I told you guys in the last post that I wanted to post a song for you guys. The votes were pretty split so I decided to post both of the most popular requests. Please let me know what you think. I hope you enjoy them!

Waiting

Obadiah Parker — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 06:13:14 +0000

It has been a crazy two weeks since we left Nashville. We’re finally in CA and I’m beginning to settle into our new home and a new job. Right now we’re waiting for the record to get mastered which should be done in the next couple weeks. I’m also starting on album artwork. It might be a couple months before we have the CDs in hand. After four weeks in Nashville about 95% of the album was finished and now it’s going to take another two months to get everything else done. A lot of waiting.

When I get the mastered tracks I want to post one of them for you guys to thank you for all the support you have been. I’ll leave it up to you guys to decide which song you’d like to hear. Post a comment and cast your vote!

Red Handed (Red Hand Romance)
Legend
Trampoline
Change It All (Change)
If I Sing It (Tonight)
Salvador
Baia da Santa
The District
Not that Easy
Garden in Bloom (Garden in Spring)
Lullaby for Grace

Day 20

Obadiah Parker — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 04:03:56 +0000

Yesterday was our last day at Sputnik. In the morning Mitch worked on burning CDs and backing up files and doing paperwork and stuff. I spent the morning making Mitch a mix. Very seventh grade of me, I know.

At lunch I was talking to Mitch about how I really didn’t know what I was going to do with this record and how bad I was at promotion and marketing strategy and that kind of thing. He called some friends of his that do managing and set up some meetings for us that afternoon. It was pretty crazy because we weren’t expecting to do anything like that. The meetings were really interesting. It was kind of a job interview but I couldn’t tell who was hiring who. I think they went well though. We gave them the songs to listen to so it’ll be interesting to see what they think. It was really nice of Mitch to set up those meetings though.

It was sad to say goodbye. Sputnik is a really awesome place to be. We’ve really loved being here and we will miss all the people that we’ve met a lot.. It makes this record even more special to me to know that everyone who played and worked on it are really awesome people and not just musicians and engineers. We definitely have a sense that we will be back here or that we will stay in contact with people.

We’ve grown especially close to Mitch and Josh. They are both really fun to be around and incredibly generous guys. For that reason alone I would strongly recommend anyone to record with these guys. Not to mention that the studio has amazing gear and Mitch is ridiculously good at what he does!

Days 17-19: Mixing

Obadiah Parker — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 06:05:28 +0000

We did it. We finished mixing the record today and it sounds pretty awesome. We actually made one or two changes in arrangement like cutting out the drums at a certain point or adding a vocal layer. There were a couple things that Mitch and I disagreed on like how loud a trumpet was or how exactly we should change an arrangement but for the most part it went really smoothly. We were able to find compromises and especially as the process went on we were on the same page a lot. The process went really fast so we had time to really listen closely and be really picky about small things so we’re both really confidant that the mixes are the best that we can get them.

I’ve learned so much making this record. From songwriting to recording techniques to the business side of music to being a better guitar player this has been an education for sure. And as good as I feel about this record I feel like the next time that I do this it’s going to be a lot better because of what I know now.

Day 16: Mixing

Obadiah Parker — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 20:29:48 +0000

So my voice has just been getting worse and worse everyday. We’ve decided to use most of the scratch tracks but there are a couple spots and one whole song that I’ve really been hoping that I can do over. Last week we decided that I would rest over the weekend and see if I could sing anything on Monday morning before we started mixing. On Sunday I started to lose my speaking voice it was so bad and I didn’t have much hope of singing this week. But yesterday I woke up and it was the first day in a couple weeks that my throat didn’t hurt! Sure enough my voice held up just fine through all of the vocals that we wanted to record yesterday and they came out well!

After we recorded vocals we started to mix. Mitch wanted to me to give him some songs that he could use as references as to what kind of sound we are looking for. I gave him a few songs off of Ray LaMontagne’s Til the Sun Turns Black which we have been listening to a lot since we’ve been in Nashville and also some songs off of Amos Lee’s first two records. There’s a great vibe on those records and a lot of space.

Yesterday Mitch got through the fast songs: Red Hand Romance, Legend, and Trampoline. I think that they have been pretty easy to mix maybe because they just got some really great sounds when they tracked drums and so he doesn’t have to do a ton of manipulating at this point. I’m not really sure why, to be honest. But it seems like he’s able to get really good mixes pretty quickly. He burned us a CD of the three songs and we took it home and listened to come back the next day and make any changes or tweaks that we thought of.

I think that mixing is going to be a lot like pre-production in that there’s going to be a lot of important decisions as far as what parts we end up keeping. It takes a lot of emotional energy to do that kind of thing so it’s probably going to be a long week. But there is a lot of down time while Mitch does a lot of minutia magic in the control room so that’s good.

Dodged a Bullet

Obadiah Parker — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 04:30:44 +0000

In my blog for day 6 I told you guys that Mitch and I had spent a lot of time trying to decide between two options for a line in one of the songs. On Friday Lindsey, Mitch’s administrative assistant, asked us what we ended up doing for that song. I told her that we had changed it back to the original line which was “Johnny was a legend”. She said that was good because she thought that that other line was really familiar but she couldn’t think of where she had heard it before. But then she realized that it was from a Madonna song called Secret. We looked the song up on iTunes and at the end of the chorus she sings “my baby’s got a secret”. The line that Mtich came up with that we cut was “Johnny’s got a secret” and they had the exact same melody. It was uncanny how much the lines where exactly the same.

We showed it to Mitch and he said, “Wow, I’ve never heard that before. I should be writing songs for Madonna.” I’m just glad we decided not to use that line!

Day 15: Keys

Obadiah Parker — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 04:12:22 +0000

The venerable Ben Shive visited Sputnik yesterday. A lot of people around here who listen to what we have recorded ask who we else we’re going to have come play and when we tell them that Ben is coming to play keys they all say something like, “Oh yeah, Ben’s going to play the crap out of these songs.” So there was a bit of a build up. I was really excited to have him come in because B3 and Rhodes and Wurlitzer sounds are probably my favorites and whenever I hear a good keys sound on a record it’s always my favorite part.

Ben definitely did not disappoint. The first song that he played was Legend and he put down some ridiculous Wurly licks through the whole song. He also played Wurlitzer on Trampoline and then he played Rhodes on Baia, piano on If I Sing it and organ on Not that Easy and Red Hand Romance.

There was a little solo part on Trampoline that we wanted him to play and he played this really cool part for it. It was pretty fast and complicated. Then he said that he thought it would be cool if he doubled it an octave lower and he proceeded to play it perfectly. I had never seen someone do that to a part that complicated and it pretty much blew my mind.

But Red Hand Romance might have been my favorite. The B3 sound that he was using was perfect. We had him play a solo in the middle of the song and it just kept getting better and better every pass that he took. At one point he started a phrase and I said “oh my gosh” out loud before he had even finished. Now we just have to go through and decide which solo we want to use. It might be the toughest decision that we have to make when we’re mixing next week!

Day 14: BGVs

Obadiah Parker — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 20:09:23 +0000

Today we recorded background vocals. First, Elizabeth Foster came in and sang on a few songs. She is a singer/songwriter that has recorded with Mitch before and she’s also a painter that has actually painted a lot of stuff around the studio like the doors. She has a beautiful voice and she came up with really cool parts for the songs.

The first song we recorded was Baia da Santa. She did a mix of humming, harmonies and echos. I didn’t realize how much her voice would be symbolic until she sang this song. I looked at which songs we had her singing on and they were If I Sing It, Baia, The District, Not that Easy and Garden in Bloom. All of those songs are on the last half of the album and are about the second woman (if this is confusing, then I should say that the album is kind of about two women. The first is a metaphor for my struggle with sexual addiction and the second is my relationship with Lisa.) So Elizabeth’s voice really represents a dialogue between me and Lisa and there are some parts that almost made me cry. She added a totally new dimension to all the songs that she sang on.

After Elizabeth left my sister Jocelyn sang some parts on Red Hand Romance and Legend. Jocelyn has an amazing voice and I’m always totally blown away when I hear her sing. Several months ago I thought it would be cool to sing some songs together at some of my gigs and it was a lot fun. But by far the best thing that we did together was Red Hand Romance. Her voice is perfect for that song and I couldn’t imagine anyone else singing that song. So for Christmas we got her a plane ticket to fly out here and record on that song.

I was really nervous because recording here can be really intimidating and I wanted her to have a good experience. She was a little nervous but once we got her mix right and she got a little more comfortable she knocked it out of the park. She really sang out and didn’t hold back and it sounded awesome. I was really proud of her and it means a ton that she’s going to be on this record. And it’s not because she’s my sister but because she was the right person for the part.

California

Obadiah Parker — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 17:21:28 +0000

So we have some pretty big news. It looks like we’re probably going to be moving to LA as soon as we’re done here in Nashville. There’s a church there in Santa Clarita that has talked to me about coming on staff. We’ve been talking to them for six weeks or so but I didn’t want to say anything until we knew what was going on. I did a formal interview on the phone today and it looks like it’s pretty close to happening.

December was absolutely crazy trying to write songs and get ready to record this record and getting ready to take a month long trip AND doing Christmas AND keeping up with the project AND we were trying to figure out if we could make a huge move like this. There were days that were really stressful. We actually moved out of our apartment before we left because we were pretty sure that it was going to happen.

We’re really excited about moving and the opportunity to be a part of a really cool church and start a new chapter in our lives. It’ll also be really interesting being really close to LA and the music scene there. I’m not really sure what it will be like but I’m betting that it’ll be very different than Phoenix. I’m excited to see what kind of shows I can get there and see what fan base I can build. So if you live in southern California keep your eyes open in the next couple months or so for shows. It would be great to meet some people at our new home and we can really use all the help we can get to start spreading the word in LA!

Day 13: Horns & Electric

Obadiah Parker — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 17:00:26 +0000

Today we did horns and electric guitar. Charlie Lowell and Steve Mason from Jars of Clay came in and they both played sax on Legend and Trampoline. It was fun to come up with parts because we really didn’t have much of an idea of what we wanted. Neither one of them plays sax as their primary instrument so their parts aren’t complicated at all but I think that they will add a nice sound to those songs. They were also really nice and we had a lot of fun.

Later Steve recorded some electric parts for Red Hand Romance, Legend, Trampoline, Baia da Santa and Not that Easy. He’s a really talented guy and he got some great guitar sounds. There’s not a ton of electric on the songs and we tried to just have it where it would add a really nice texture. We had him play some arpeggio parts on Not that Easy and also a little lead through one of the verses and he really nailed it. It sounds so sweet. He also added some parts to the fast songs that have a little bit of distortion so it brings a little bit of grit to the sound. Steve was really awesome to work with. He was really humble and worked really hard to come up with parts that we were happy with. Jars of Clay was one of my favorite bands growing up so it was pretty cool to be able to work with him and have him play on my record.

We actually had a lot of people at the studio today. Jake (the drummer) came by and hung out for a while and it was cool to get to see him again. Also, my sister flew in today to hang out with us for a couple days. She’s going to record some background vocals tomorrow and I’m really excited for her to get a chance to record in a studio as cool as Sputnik.