Anya Hinkle waiting to go on stage during the Colorado leg of Dehlia Low's spring tour
Here’s the final installment of the “Making of Tellico” series from Dehlia Low’s Anya Hinkle. In this last article, Anya takes us through the final mix, a day at the mastering studio, getting the artwork and graphic design work for “Tellico’s” packaging. She also discusses what to do once you’ve got product in hand.
Well it’s been awhile since my late-night heartfelt musings about finishing recording…almost three months later I’m ready to report on the rest. To be very honest, the past several months have been unexpectedly stressful, but I will cautiously divulge that I’m beginning to feel some satisfaction as a result of our hard work and financial investment and am hopeful for some successes as a result of our efforts. In a cosmic sense, of course, the greatest reward comes from our devoted fans, who have somehow incorporated our music into the soundtrack of their lives. So many stories have come our way of how the music has been influential to people, and it has been wonderful to provide amusement, therapy, diversion, or background music to the day-to-day existence of friends and strangers alike. But…we’d also like to make our money back one day, play more above-decent paying gigs, and have opportunities come from this that will allow us to continue to write songs, develop our sound, improve and grow both as a recording and performing ensemble. So there is a lot on the line.
The Final Mix
John Stickley and Russell Anders work on the final mixes for Dehlia Low's "Tellico."
After we finished the recording, our engineer Russell Anders and producer Jon Stickley began to mix the songs one by one. They spent a few weeks mixing levels, adding and cutting fills, choosing the breaks to be inserted, and other technical details that I don’t even understand. That was a good use of time, since each band member has a slightly different idea of how each song should sound. Jon and Russell were able to get everything very close to being finished, and we got a 3-week break from the music. We distributed their mix among the band members and then sent our comments around by email (i.e. there’s a weird buzz at 0:23 of Climbing Devils Pass, etc.). When there were differences of opinion (mostly regarding backup), majority ruled, although I can’t live with something trumped the majority. This was surprisingly efficient at achieving a group consensus without much consternation.
For me, the mixing stage was difficult for two reasons. First, the mix sounded different on every sound system, and listening that closely to the music, I practically went crazy trying to discern whether or not certain details needed attention. What sounded great on playback in the studio sounded completely different in my car or on my home stereo or computer speakers. Secondly, the mix sounded very different than a mastered CD that you might otherwise pop into your stereo, and not knowing ahead of time exactly how the mastering process would change the mix, it was really difficult to figure out which details should change within the mix and which things mastering would address. And with no time or money available for going BACK to the mix after visiting the mastering studio, it just felt incredibly overwhelming to finalize the mix.
Dehlia Low checks out the final design for the Tellico's Cover art.
Having great ears in our engineer and producer for the mixing process was key, but regardless, I discovered that I am somewhat obsessive and perfectionistic, making it really hard to give over control at times. I finally started to think that the more I continued to obsess about small details, changing this-and-that, the more that we would lose the feel of the music. We had all played and sung and done everything we could to make a good recording, and it was just simply hard to trust that it would all get assembled in the best-sounding way possible (whatever that might be!). Since figuring all of this out happens on the clock, at a certain point, money dictated when was a good time to stop! I was glad when we finally settled on the final mix and could swiftly deliver it to Dave Harris at Studio B Mastering in Charlotte, NC.
Mastering
The mastering studio felt a little like a control room set from some old James Bond film. Inside the soundproof mastering suite, Dave had stacks of stereo components, two enormous speaker towers, numerous keyboards, switches, and a bunch of computer screens that looked like they were modeling the Big Bang Theory, complete with quivering, brightly-colored lines that were the visual manifestation of our music. Stacy and I sat on a plush couch behind the control counter and read music industry rags while we stared at the back of Dave’s head as he panned instruments and vocals in various directions of audible space. I can’t say that I can verbalize exactly what mastering does with the mix, but suddenly the vocals stood out from the instruments, everything seemed to have a distinct region on the aural landscape, and overall, the sound had both a richness and clarity that felt like you had pulled Saran Wrap off of your sunglasses.
The mastering took most of the day. Dave ripped the CD, backed his hard drive up several times in various places across the US, and we drove back to Asheville with a copy of The Master…really just a digital copy of our music files that we would send to A to Z media to make thousands of copies from. From a personal standpoint, driving down I-40 with this jewel, this offspring, this very tiny product of our enormous effort, was exhilarating. I pushed all my uncertainty away to focus on this accomplishment, that as individual musicians and great friends, we had created this work, something unique, and a moment that we would never experience again in quite the same way.
The CD Artwork
The original image used on the cover of "Tellico."
trt
In the meantime, we had to start from scratch with our CD design. We had initially planned to go with an artistic rendering of a historic photo from western North Carolina that I had found in some digital archives and used with permission from Western Carolina University. But the artistic rendering wasn’t what we wanted so we switched designers at the last minute decided to use the raw photo. The grainy image somehow communicates something implicit about this collection of tunes, a photo from 1909 of the Little Tennessee Valley near the Smokies, with what I call a Virginia rail fence (my bias, being from Virginia!), not-yet cut-over mountains, a farm…obviously of a time and place and yet timeless somehow. Phil Barker, the designer and mandolin player from the outstanding Asheville-based Town Mountain, incorporated this image in to our CD artwork, keeping it very simple, and we were actually pretty thrilled with the result, which was a good thing since the timing was pretty much down to the wire.
What to do with it
The poster for Dehlia Low's CD Release party.
Which brings us to time constraints. Well, theoretically there is no rush to get this thing out, I suppose. Idealistically, one might think that you would want to just get it out there when its done. One approach for us might have been a bit closer to our original plan, to record 3 or 4 songs in their entirety, have our manager shop them around to record labels, and have Rounder or Red House Records sign us and pay us to record the rest of the album(!). But realistically we just couldn’t risk not having a full-length, professional record to sell and promote before the summer festival season. Essentially, we couldn’t afford to rely on that 8-song EP recorded in a basement studio shortly after forming as a band for very much longer. That was one thing. The other was the CD-release…you really DO need your new CD for your cd release party! And if you want a killer CD release party, you need to plan ahead to get a good venue and opener. Bingo. Deadline. So our deadline was April 30. The Grey Eagle, Asheville, NC with Rebel recording artists Spring Creek Bluegrass Band out of Lyons, Colorado. Suddenly our release date was May 5th (by the way, did you know that CDs are always released on a Tuesday?). And in between the mastering and the release, we had a solid month of touring through Colorado, Georgia, South Carolina and Tennessee, all great opportunities to start making a little money back on the disk.
Photo Courtesy of Dehlia Low.
To make a long story short (OK maybe a little too late now) we got the disks, thousands of them, just before our trip out to Colorado for the Durango Meltdown and other fun gigs (and a not-fun blizzard). People would come up to me at the end of a show and say I’d like to buy four of Tellico and I’d try not to look in shock as I handed them over. When we got home, I’d get in the car, turn on the radio,and hear myself singing my own song back at me on the venerable North Carolina radio station WNCW. Yesterday we received our first review from Taproot Radio, which reported that we were the perfect ambassadors of the Blue Ridge mountains (I’m still bracing for a scathing review, but I breathed an enormous sigh of relief that the first one was so positive!). Its been interesting to see what songs people like on the album, what works for radio, what bluegrass listeners like, what Folk/Americana listeners like. And some have said they like the whole album, beginning to end. They listen to it over and over and know all the words to all the songs (and not just our moms!). The sound hangs together (people tell us it is immediately recognizable), but with four vocalists and five songwriters, there is diversity as well, which seems to appeal to a diversity of listeners.
What’s Next ?
Dehlia Low's Merchandise Table at the Durago Meltdown in Colorado.
Now what? Well, still lots of work that has nothing to do with making music. We’ve sent disks to syndicated radio, bluegrass radio, and publications that review music. We’ll be sending the disk to some well-chosen record labels to see if they are soliciting new recording artists. Planning for IBMA and AMA conferences. And playing tons of festivals, theaters, and nightspots this summer from Swannanoa, NC to Portland, OR. But most importantly, we have been writing some new songs, working them out on warm spring evenings on my front porch. We’ve been playing jazz, blues, going to the jam. Just heading in new directions and continuing to grow. We still like doing this. We’re learning and moving ahead. It is an incredible moment of transition. I haven’t felt this way about my life since graduating from college in the sense of feeling on the threshold of something, that the world is wide open. We have no idea what to expect from this album, but are just incredibly thankful for the opportunity to share it with the world. Thanks for being a part of this journey with us and we hope to see you down the road!