our new baby

“Push. Push!” (that button) “Turn. Turn!” (that knob) Check the patients’ breathing… “We’re fine.” Jack and I say. “Tape!” yells the doctor. “I’ll get it” Jack barks back. Finally, after 10 hours of labor (and I mean HARD working labor!) we have ourselves a beautiful, bouncing, uh…made in America Rock and Roll record! This past Friday, Jack and I took our fingernail size USB chip over to Doctor Brent Lambert who did the Lord’s work and delivered the little devil. And what a beauty! I think we’ll call it “More Smooth Jazz and Sweet Sweet Jams”! Brent, in between his stories of clients ordering strippers, his kids wrapping Dean Smith in packing tape and catchers doing back flips, did the equivalent of parting the Red Sea. Not that what we brought him to master was that bad but more just how astounding it is for me to hear how much of a difference he really makes. He finds space where there is none, like when the B3 organ and Marshall stack guitars are fighting for supremacy. He makes drums that were once pushed around, bullied and trying to fit in feel like they belong and in their own happy place. And the thing he does so miraculously for Daddy T is he makes Terry’s voice less nasally. And that’s been my problem all along for this record. Ya see, that’s the technical problem I’ve had with it all this time. Because TECHNICALLY, I CAN’T SING! Over the past few months, Jack has been more than open to my unhappiness with my voice and has been more than willing to set the mics up and let me sing those songs until they weren’t fingernails on my blackboard. We COULD have gone the Chris Brown, P-Diddy route and autotuned the shit outta everything but how Rock and Roll is that? No, it was through the not-so-modern-day wonders of Organic Throat Coat Tea that I overachieved in singing the songs on this record, which I feel are some of my best ever. The difference in singing with the tea is like the difference in pruning your rose bushes WITH gloves as opposed to doing it without’m. I can push a LOT harder without sounding like the Hick-from-Hell that I usually sound like. It really is remarkable, I won’t sing again without it, live or on Memorex.
So in closing, I want to thank everybody involved who got us to this point, everyone, near and far, from the North, South, East and West, here and abroad. It took your ideas, your encouragement, your many gifts (the ukulele I wrote HALF the record on comes to mind, Victor!), your spare bedrooms and your caring and hard work to make this record what it is. And it’s that caring that keeps us, especially me, going.
You really don’t know how loved you are until you see people care that much about your music!