When it’s cold outside, I immediately miss the heat of summer. When it’s Pumpkin Spice season, I want lilacs. When it’s lilac season, I want crisp autumn nights and bonfires. And when it’s July, I’m usually thinking about Christmas. It’s what musicians do! We plan far ahead for the busy holiday season. (I also buy my yearly planner in September, okay? It’s a thing with me.)
I started planning for my first-ever holiday studio album in July, just a few weeks after the successful release of Six Feet From Stardom, our first album project, featuring 13 different singers. Now we’re knee deep in writing and recording eight tunes for Holly Days, and anticipating an early December release online!
This is a “first” for me and my studio, in a lot of ways: It’s our first studio holiday project. It’s our first project of 100% original tunes. It’s the first time I’ve copyrighted and published original work, too. It feels great to be able to be so creative now! The singers range in age from 13 to 82. Some of them have tried songwriting before, but most are brand-new to the whole experience. We are all scared and excited.
Who would have guessed that my students would release TWO albums by the end of 2020? Not me! It’s a happy ending to a very tumultuous year. But if we hadn’t had all this time at home, I’m not sure I would have learned how to write and arrange using Logic Pro X. I would have had no need to hire professional songwriters like Casey Cook, Halley Elwell, Keith Munslow and Mark Cutler to work with my students. I know I wouldn’t have had the time to storyboard and create original music videos to accompany these brand new songs.
It would have been easier for my student songwriters to beg off, too. They would have been auditioning for theaters and venues and choirs that were still functioning, and waiting for their turn at open mics inside. True, we’ve missed some of our favorite performance venues in the pandemic (here’s looking at you, Gamm and CTC and Pump House). But by adding writing, arranging and recording to our list of studio activities, we’ve gained far more than we’ve lost.
Are you sitting there thinking, “Yeah, that’s great Eden, but I could never do something like that.” Yeah, friend, I thought that nine months ago too. This is the era of the unexpected, so why not become a published singer-songwriter in addition to whatever mild-mannered career you currently have? ;)
Next album project begins January 2021. Contact me if you’d like to be part of it!
The “S” is for songwriter