Hi guys!

So you may have noticed that it’s been a looooong time since I’ve talked about anything music or Thornfield related. In fact, probably a good number of you are like Thornwhaaaat??

Well, to catch some of you up, Thornfield is the band I’m in with my friends Eric and Carrie. Here are Eric and Carrie, 2 of my most favorite people in Chi-town.

Our style is folksy/singer-songwriter, a little jazzy, a little bluesy, a little showsy . . . well, I guess it’s a bit of a mish-mash. But a mish-mash that I absolutely LOVE. And who needs labels anyway? We make music that comes from our hearts. End of story.

Anyway, the last time we played a gig was in December at Kevin and Katina’s wedding.

It was lots of fun . . . which reminds me that I never shared the rest of the pics from Kevin and Katina’s wedding! Whoops.

Then Christmas and New Years happened, and, well . . . I guess we’ve been taking it easy and recovering from our musically busy fall and holiday season. But behind the scenes, we’ve been getting ready for our first recording experience.

With certain life changes happening at the end of the summer, we wanted to lay down some tracks and get our music recorded for posterity. Then, we’ll count on this album to keep the memory of Thornfield alive until we can come back together again and make (and record) more music.

So just to be clear–Thornfield is in no way, shape or form dissolving–it’s just a hitting a rather large pause button come this fall. At least let me believe that.

And I do. I do believe.

Anyway, our first mission was to decide if we were going to wing the recording experience with random equipment and the help of friends, or actually pay for studio time. We decided on the latter option after much thought. The next leg involved finding a studio. After nixing the expensive options, we found a little place called Handwritten Recording. And what do you know–it’s right here on Belmont Avenue, and I pass it every single day on my way to work. And the crazy thing? I’ve never noticed it. I wonder how I would have felt if, 2 1/2 years ago when I started my job, someone had said “Hey, look at that little recording studio at Belmont and Southport, kind of hidden behind that one tree. Well in a couple years you’ll actually be in a band, you’ll have written a bunch of songs, and you guys will be recording your first album.”

I think my mind would have been blown.

We met with the owner of the studio (also the engineer), Rick. We loved his enthusiasm and openness. We also loved his price. We asked a crapload of questions. And then we signed ourselves up! Our first session in the studio will be this Saturday from 1-6pm. In that nice little 5 hour chunk we hope to lay down a ton of basic tracks.

Of course, this should go pretty quickly since we don’t plan on making any mistakes.

Yup.

(snork snork)

Our friends Petras, Jon, and Graham will be joining us to lay down tracks for drums, bass, cello and harmonica (Graham is a genius harmonica player–wait til’ you hear him go!). We’re so excited, and we couldn’t do this album without their generous help. Especially without drums, it would just be a puny mess (no offense meant to our own wonderful music, in which I have full confidence–we just need that rhythm, baby).

Of course, when our album makes it big and sells 1 million copies, we’ll make sure to give each of these guys a nice sized check to properly thank them for their contributions. Uh-huh. I’m counting on you, people! In fact, let’s make it 2 million in sales while we’re at it.

These pictures are from our big rehearsal the other weekend, which Petras recorded for the benefit of the different participating musicians. It was a blast. It was extremely hard work. It was uber fun. It was exhausting and draining and we needed tons of Brie and crackers and clementines and such to keep ourselves going.

I’ll make sure to take pictures and tell you the full story of our album-recording experience–and please send some prayers upwards on behalf of our little group if it happens to strike you between 1 and 6 this Saturday! We’ll use all the divine intervention we can get.