Moving Forward With RoxX

Spent two days in studio this week with Tommy recording new vocals for new songs, including a totally different collaboration Tommy brought me in on.  We finished vocals on "Life Is Good" yesterday and all that's lacking on that tune is the guitar solo.  Today we re-visited one of our most recent unreleased tunes "Eleven Or Bust" and totally re-worked the vocals.  I sing this song in a gravelly voice and it's almost a call and answer song.  We removed the gravelly voices from the "call" portion and replaced them with sweeter sounding smooth voices and it's totally changed the entire sound of the song.

Tommy mapped out the background vocals and recorded them himself, today he broke them down to individual voices and had me re-record them in my voice.  Yeah, I was totally unaware of the structure of background vocals before today and I have a great new respect for everything he's done to teach me as we go along.  We're going to stick to this new method of recording vocals, meaning we will have to revisit most tunes after lead vocals are recorded to re-record backing vocals as needed.  And yeah, I'm jacked.  Hearing MY voice doubled in 3 voices in a 4 part harmony kind of made me sit up and wonder what IS possible in the future.

Tommy has already sent me two more new tunes to write lyrics for and he's shown me two more he's got in works today.  He's off of work next week too, hoping I can finish one of the two songs I have now so we can get ahead of the game before his work schedule picks up again.  He'll work "regular" from January-March with the madness hitting prior to the spring furniture market.  Yeah, Tommy's a studio photographer in the furniture industry by trade.

We're still having fun and using RoxX as therapy and a getaway from everyday stress and we're both quite humbled at the fact that we are in a position where we are writing and recording music much in the vein of our own favorite bands and artists.  As a matter of fact, the new song "Life Is Good" is another very Rush-sounding tune, yes it was intentional on my part, and Tommy challenged me to open up on the final verse.  His instructions were "Go full Geddy!"  I didn't think I could pull it off but surprisingly did it.  We took a break and began on the backing vocals.  Went even higher on them, unreal hearing myself singing those notes!

"Realize you must have the dream to begin to make it come true in your life my friend
The Golden Rule was so outdated just yesterday it seems
Be the light of day - Fight the dark of night - 'Cause life is good!"

"Life Is Good" - RoxX (unreleased)