I was honored to go with Kaisie to Rich Parkinson’s recording studio to start the production of Hold Out For Amazing. She cowrote this song with the talented (and very cool) Randy Moser, and presented it at the Soundcheck Series event where she was encouraged to send it in to a specific show.
Thanks to Mary Beth Maziarz for encouraging her to take this step, which came years before Kaisie ever imagined it would come.
This was our first time doing anything like this, and I was delighted to be able to go and watch and learn and enjoy the process.
When we all got there it took a while to get all the cords and instruments set up. Then Randy spent at least an hour in the recording booth playing guitar. It is awesome to watch an expert in his realm, and this was no exception.
Here’s Randy, in his element. This is a really cranial exercise, and I could tell Kaisie, Randy and Richard did a lot of thinking during the entire process. (guess how much the green microphone cost?)
While Randy was playing, Kaisie sang the song. I think she sang it no less than 30 times. She was most comfortable standing while she sang. The mic she held was usually piped over the speakers in the room, as well as into Randy’s headphones. She sounded really good, and had a blast.
Rich sat at his desk the entire time, where he could control the equipment, levels, and the keyboard.
It was really cool to see Rich plunk on the keyboard spontaneously. He listened to Kaisie sing, and Randy play, and just played around with some ideas for background piano/keyboard. Towards the end of the morning he had horn sounds on the keyboard and was playing around with background horn ideas. It was AMAZING to watch this creative process and the talent Rich has.
The whole process took about 2 or 3 hours. It was the first step… one of the next steps is to get three horns into the studio to record. How’s that for cool?
Hopefully in a few weeks we’ll have the final product, and see where it goes from there. Hopefully Mary Beth was right, and there is a specific show that will be interested in this song, and Kaisie’s voice!
… yet another step in the songwriting journey!