Full Steam Ahead!

I'm so glad I decided to delay the album and revisit All Along the Western Side. Working with my production assistant on a 1x1 call last week was incredibly valuable and we knocked it out over Zoom in like 2 hours! We discussed the old mix, and why it sounded the way it did, and what we wanted to revise in a new mix. I've updated the pre-release on this website too

Early on in this process, I interviewed about a half dozen producers to do some mix editing for the album. All Along the Western Side was the sample song I got everyone to mix as part of that process. I was trying to gauge how they would interpret my mix/song and what the process of working with them would looked like. John Caviness' sample-mix stood out to me because he took initiative and added elements that showed he understood the flow/energy of the song, and was willing to engage with it in way that was constructive, intelligent, empathetic, and creative. (what more could you want from a producer?) Once the rest of the album had taken shape, it became clear that the overall balance of All Along the Western Side was simply very different. A number of the more 'pop' elements that we added felt a bit out of place in the context of the album as a whole, and the way certain elements were mixed was different from the way similar elements were mixed in other songs later. Those additional 'pop' elements that showed so much promise early-on, simply didn't materialize on the other songs- and honestly I think that's for the best. Over the course of the project, we learned to work together much more efficiently and effectively, and we established a workflow in which new elements were added in a way that was more honest to the characteristics of my recording and mixing process. I learned a lot from doing that first mix. That was my first real experience letting someone else meddle in my mixes, and I definitely made some naive mistakes in the exporting and production process. After that mix, I learned that I should address certain things *before* I send him the stems, rather than making him guess. I had also made things a difficult for him by deciding to add elements of my own, revise/re-record parts, and tweak this and that, and ask him to remove this whole track and replace it with this other idea... and yikes... I got a lot more disciplined with my editing and stem preparation after that. As we went on, I developed a much better idea what to expect from his end, and what I should try to tweak from my end.

Overall I'm very happy with the new mix, and I think it restores my confidence in the album as a whole, cohesive, thing. I definitely would have regretted it if I let the old mix be the official release... Again- there was nothing *wrong* with the old mix- it just didn't sound right based on the way everything else came together.

Just waiting on masters now! 👀 The album should be ready sometime in mid- August! ❤️