bentenlaughing

Janice: Do you begin recording with a basic guitar and vocals track?  Gina: The way Mark and I work is that he will create an instrumental backing track and I will write the vocal part to fit the track. Sometimes I already have a set of lyrics that I wrote independent of music and it will fit the track, usually with some rearranging/tweaking. Other times I will write the lyrics as I listen over and over to the instrumental.  Janice: Are you both in cohorts in developing the  ambience and layering of the backing track?  Gina: The ambience and layering I leave entirely to Mark. After I've added my vocals to the mix, he will further play around with the instrumentation and create the final song. Sometimes he will consult me about something he's done, whether or not I like it. Sometimes I will notice something in the mix that doesn't seem to enhance the song and I'll mention it. But basically, I trust his experience and judgement and I like to allow him the freedom to ex...

Janice: Gina, I'm listening to your new album, Wheels in an Elsewhere. Your winsome vocals and seamless marriage of lyric and music allow one to enter a spaciousness...where are you taking us? Gina:  Interesting that you mentioned spaciousness, as the album is largely about the spaciousness of being apart from worldly life, troubles, insanities and the treadmill… in the sense of being something more like pure spirit. Not trying to paint our lives as a bleak picture but it can certainly seem like that at times for many of us, I believe. And we’ve all at times thought “stop the planet I want to get off”! Now the phrase wheels in an elsewhere is taken from the fourth song on the album which was inspired by my randomly pondering what death might be like. In the song the elsewhere is the world you leave behind. And the wheels of course are just the material matters of life including cars, work business. problems and the ongoing nature of it all. It is quite a philosophical a...