Well we got into kind of a crunch over a few days and ended up with a couple of 12-14 hour days in there getting things mixed. I’m so grateful to Rich for taking time away from his family to get everything done for us.

The plan this whole time has been to get a “basics” or “pilot” album along with the outline (drums, bouzouki, single melody) to a lot of tracks to be released over the year.

Along day 5 or so we fell into old habits of making full CD projects and started to just focus on “The Ten” tracks definitely going on the pilot CD and overlay other instruments and new vocal harmonies and fun stuff. Somehow we just couldn’t keep it to the basics… so the CD we’re shooting for releasing on May 13 is going to be full length and beautifully mixed with a huge amount of other instruments and parts.

The plan now is to post basics and other mixes on this site. I don’t see what would keep us from doing custom mixes for y’all if anyone has a request  for something like: “this song without drums” or “this tune with just the bouzouki so I can play along on the whistle at home”. If it’s logistically possible then I think it’s a great idea. We could do karaoke tracks!  I can’t promise that’s going to happen but I’ll try!

Mixing was a bit like staring at the same picture for 3 hours at a time while someone made adjustments to how a certain color shone through a certain part. Like if you were looking at a picture of a landscape for 3 hours and someone was going over how green a certain tree was. Pretty soon you lose perspective. I’m dying to put up some mixes now and Frances and I are being each others support in not sending tracks to our mothers. We’re going to get real mixes of these 10 tracks and then put something here so you’ll be the first to hear it.

Today is the day after St Patricks Day and Frances and I were at the Duck in Houston. Rich was in Austin playing with Ed Miller.

At the Duck last night I was playing with Clandestine and then in the Piper Jones Band with Frances and our Houston drummer Dean Atkinson who just had his last day of classes. We had a brilliant time and got to play for our friends. Always a great thing!

So far the project has cost about $5000 and patrons like you have contributed $3200 toward it. THANK YOU SO MUCH!