Finishing the Record

After the radio guy had left, I was able to finish laying down all the vocal tracks that night. The recording unmixed sounded great. We left all the gear exactly where it was, because we had rented the studio for two consecutive days. We all went home that night feeling very good about ourselves, and the next night we were right back in the studio again, this time to record the "B" side. Because everything was still "dialed in" from the day before, we were able to get right into the playing, but due to the complexity of the song, we spent a few hours more than we had on the previous night before we had a final take we were happy with. The vocals also took longer, due to the three part harmonies (Charles wasn't used to singing), but by 3:00AM we had the entire recording process finished. We packed up the gear, and I made arrangements with Peter to be back again the next day, to begin the mixing process. Once we actually started the mixing, I realized we had far more control of the sound than in the old studio, and I made the decision to take as long as we needed to get the mix "right" on this record. Three days and 24 studio hours later we had our final mixes, and the next phase was mastering, which we could now do on-site. A couple of days later, I met with the owner of the studio to do that, and once we finished..I ordered the pressing of the first two thousand stereo copies. I owed the studio a lot of money, and gave them a big chunk of it on the spot, but there was still a big balance due... but they were so confident in the band, and the record... that they just told me to make regular payments to them. Once again, I was getting a lot of help from places I never expected to get it. People I had only recently met, doing whatever they could... to help us succeed. It felt great. All that was left now, was to wait the four weeks or so it would take for the records to arrive, which gave me time to talk to record stores, and to go back to all the radio stations to set up the release and airplay of the new single...and the concert with The Pat Travers Band was only about a week away...