How It's Usually Done In Music City, USA

I guess, if I'm going to talk about the difference between the record I'm working on right now and the ones I recorded in the past, I should describe the Nashville studio process. 

Nashville session musicians go to work just like people go to the office in the morning. Their work day is divided into 3 hour blocks, and sometimes they can go into up to three studios a day to work on different projects. A day in the studio begins with sound engineers setting up their equipment with the help of interns, cartage people bringing in a drum set or heavy key boards, and sometimes a quick piano tuning done before a master session. Then in come musicians, drinking their coffee, having a conversation about the families (some of them get to work together multiple times a week, so they are all old friends), and unpacking their instruments. After the set ups are complete, everyone congregates in the control room for a listen to the first song of the day. Sometimes chord charts are written right on the spot, or (like in our case) charts are read and arrangement points are discussed. Charts are written in what is dubbed "The Nashville system" -- a numeric system slightly different from the classical way of assigning numbers to the tones in a given key. I've never mastered it, so I have my session leader Billy Panda write them for everyone in a separate meeting. Then we play. First focusing of the main track -- drums, bass, acoustic guitar, and whatever other instruments provide the "bones" of the song. Then come individual "fixes" ("hey, man, let me grab that line!") and finer points of arrangement, or additional tracks get layered on top of the existing music. My work as a producer on the three albums I've done this way, was mostly steering this well oiled machine into the general direction I wanted it to go and then letting the musicians shine. When something wasn't working, I would stop everything and try to convey the ideas to my group of players, and in some cases I would hum the notes of bang on something to demonstrate where the melody or rhythm was going off track. Mostly though it was a process of setting things up and then getting out of the way. Lots of amazed encouragement. 

It goes without saying, that this town has the densest concentration of talent and skill when it comes to making music, and I believe that while working on Cheap Escape I have found the ideal combination of players to help me express my ideas. 

Allison Prestwood, Tommy Harden, Mike Rojas, Bob Britt and Billy Panda (pictured here from left to right) are some of the most soulful players I've ever met (and believe me, I've shared the stage with amazing musicians my entire life, being from Bering Strait, so I'm quite spoiled)! Of course, I asked them to join me again on Out Of My Hands, and on my more stripped down and acoustic album Balancing Act, along with Panda, who is a human orchestra and a total joy to work with, I employed the help of my fabulous ex-bandmate Alex Arzamastsev and Byron House who just got done recording with Robert Plant at the time. Here's a picture of Billy and Byron during the first day of making Balancing Act:

Why am I saying all this? Because this time around I am doing it all myself. It started off as a joke. We had a banjo and a mandolin someone lended my husband John Caldwell, and I told everyone that I was going to play those instruments that I DON'T PLAY on a little demo we were going to record in our tiny bedroom studio that week. It was like, yeah, I'm off to learn to play banjo and mandolin. Right, I'm ready. That little demo we cut became the first song we recorded for this project. Now we have seven. More about it later.