Hey friends, Mandi here, just wanted to update the blog ... :)
Since February is a full schedule for us, we knew we would have no time to be creative and write so this past weekend Greg, Craig and I went north to finish a couple song ideas that we've been tossing around for our debut album. We went to a very secluded cabin in Amish country that sits back in the woods about a half mile. No power or toilet. :) We arrived at the cabin around 3pm Friday afternoon to figure out that the snow covered trail back to the cabin was deeper than we thought. My truck was stuck immediately and the boys were unable to push it out (look, i helped too, I was behind the wheel giving it gas as they pushed their asses off). We decided it wasn't going anywhere so we loaded up our gear and hiked back to the cabin through 3-4ft drifts. We fired up the wood burner and unpacked with a feeling of relief. I got to tell ya, there is nothing better than isloation from the real world. We drank a few and after settling in for a couple hours we began working on one of Greg's fantastic song ideas. We ended up finishing it and felt very accomplished, at that point if that is all we accomplished for the whole weekend, we would've been stoked. Saturday morning, well afternoon by the time we crawled out of our bunks, we ate brunch and Greg grabbed the guitar and started playing around. He ended up coming up with a really cool chord progression. He continued to play it and before we knew it we had a whole new song idea. We wrote the song in just a few hours. It was amazing. I don't want to give away too many details because we will be tweaking them as we go but this is a fantastic mid-tempo song that will definitely find a home on the album. We got a little antsy by the evening but we ended up hammering out the lyrics to another song idea Greg and I worked on back at the end of summer. Greg is currently working on the musical structure behind the song but hey, we got the lyrics done and the melody. It's going to be awesome. This one has a very Blues feel to it.
So, now it's Saturday night and we got so much done, it was just amazing. We were so thrilled and felt so accomplished. So the three of us hung out the rest of the evening and enjoyed some good laughs, good conversation, great whiskey, and just the plain 'ol good company of three best friends who get to share our love of music together. Sunday morning we packed up and headed out. Oh by the way, some relatives of Craig was kind enough to push the truck out. It only took 6 guys! yikes, that sucker was buried. LOL! It always makes a trip more memorable when something stupid like that happens. So we reluctantly drove back home to our crazy lives. Now today, Greg is in the studio finishing mixing the last three songs we recorded. Tomorrow we'll revisit the vocals, lay down some harmonies and hopefully move on to the new one's that we wrote this past weekend. We're in the studio every week working on getting our album done. We'll keep you posted on our progress! Thanks so much to everyone for being so supportive of our music. Take care, Mandi Layne
Since February is a full schedule for us, we knew we would have no time to be creative and write so this past weekend Greg, Craig and I went north to finish a couple song ideas that we've been tossing around for our debut album. We went to a very secluded cabin in Amish country that sits back in the woods about a half mile. No power or toilet. :) We arrived at the cabin around 3pm Friday afternoon to figure out that the snow covered trail back to the cabin was deeper than we thought. My truck was stuck immediately and the boys were unable to push it out (look, i helped too, I was behind the wheel giving it gas as they pushed their asses off). We decided it wasn't going anywhere so we loaded up our gear and hiked back to the cabin through 3-4ft drifts. We fired up the wood burner and unpacked with a feeling of relief. I got to tell ya, there is nothing better than isloation from the real world. We drank a few and after settling in for a couple hours we began working on one of Greg's fantastic song ideas. We ended up finishing it and felt very accomplished, at that point if that is all we accomplished for the whole weekend, we would've been stoked. Saturday morning, well afternoon by the time we crawled out of our bunks, we ate brunch and Greg grabbed the guitar and started playing around. He ended up coming up with a really cool chord progression. He continued to play it and before we knew it we had a whole new song idea. We wrote the song in just a few hours. It was amazing. I don't want to give away too many details because we will be tweaking them as we go but this is a fantastic mid-tempo song that will definitely find a home on the album. We got a little antsy by the evening but we ended up hammering out the lyrics to another song idea Greg and I worked on back at the end of summer. Greg is currently working on the musical structure behind the song but hey, we got the lyrics done and the melody. It's going to be awesome. This one has a very Blues feel to it.
So, now it's Saturday night and we got so much done, it was just amazing. We were so thrilled and felt so accomplished. So the three of us hung out the rest of the evening and enjoyed some good laughs, good conversation, great whiskey, and just the plain 'ol good company of three best friends who get to share our love of music together. Sunday morning we packed up and headed out. Oh by the way, some relatives of Craig was kind enough to push the truck out. It only took 6 guys! yikes, that sucker was buried. LOL! It always makes a trip more memorable when something stupid like that happens. So we reluctantly drove back home to our crazy lives. Now today, Greg is in the studio finishing mixing the last three songs we recorded. Tomorrow we'll revisit the vocals, lay down some harmonies and hopefully move on to the new one's that we wrote this past weekend. We're in the studio every week working on getting our album done. We'll keep you posted on our progress! Thanks so much to everyone for being so supportive of our music. Take care, Mandi Layne