Hello
so, yes... It's been a while.
After the release of
The Living Road, I toured with my band for two years. Then I needed a break. Then I started writing songs, and slowly realized that I would need to record with a new band. I love the band I worked with on
The Living Road tour, just these songs needed something different... So I started to look around, backwards as usual, started by looking far and then ended up looking near, in my own neighborhood, and found the perfect musicians for these songs as if by magic (with much help from my good genie, Sarah Pagé, who plays harp on the album and brought me to the musicians who were right in front of my nose). Along the way I realized I wanted to produce the album myself and record in Montréal. All of that took time...
The album was recorded at Hotel 2 Tango between December 2007 and November 2008. The engineer was Thierry Amar and sometimes Howard Bilerman. It was recorded and mixed to tape, mostly live. That means that, about 80% of the time on this album, what you hear is a group of people in a studio playing together, listening to each other, reacting to each other. The rest of the time certain things were recorded or added later, to add layers of sound or correct a less - than - inspired vocal.
I loved working that way. It changes everything. Instead of getting lost in perfectionism, recording to tape forces you to hear the music as a whole, accept small flaws for the sake of the bigger picture, and play music, capture a performance. The attitude that Pro Tools and other miraculous computer recording programs have made very common is "oh, that's ok, we can fix it..." With tape, you can't fix it, or you can, but the process is so laborious that you're better off just playing it right. In a lot of digital recording, performing the music is only part of making an album. Editing and fixing become a big part of the creative process. In analog recording, the performance and the quality of the recording are almost the whole thing. There are advantages to both methods, but this is the kind of work that I'm excited about doing now. I'm learning a lot.
The songs are all in English. I found myself incapable of even thinking about writing in Spanish or French, and very excited about writing in English. English is my mother tongue, the language I think and count in, and it feels great to do a whole album in English. As someone who's spent most of my life living in my second or third language, there's something very sweet about coming back to my own language in music. A layer of effort falls away... Who knows what the future will bring. I feel very lucky to have these choices, as a singer and songwriter. It's like a painter with a blue period and a cubist period and an impressionist period. It helps to turn a page, to not repeat yourself.
So... Now the album is done, ready for its release in April, and we're planning the tour which will begin in late summer 2009. I'm very much looking forward to touring with this band. This band kicks ass.
See you out there
Lhasa
"Rising" from the new record for your listening pleasure