It All Began With Thirty Hours of Studio Time

We started "the project" in June of 1999 at Moon Productions and Recording Studio in Arroyo Grande, CA. with a 30-hour block of time. A friend of mine did his whole 15 song project in 30 hours so I figured we'd be in the same boat with eleven songs.

We recorded the basic tracks (drums, bass, a "scratch" vocal, and acoustic guitar) first. We used Russ Sechler as our main drummer (using Randy Turner's Roland V drums for the kick and toms but used a real snare and cymbals for a more realistic sound). We also used the V drums for the timpani on Great Are You Lord. Since we did not want to have all the songs sound the same, we used four bass players and another drummer. Local boy Chris Bengs played bass on a few songs and Kevin Elling played on one. We then called in Grant Nordwall and Mark Koch ("Cook") from nearby churches to fill out the roster. We had Steve Goetz play real acoustic drums on five songs to keep the sounds interesting.

After recording the basic tracks, we did Kevin's lead vocals on all the songs and his acoustic guitar on a few songs, then ran out of studio time!

So, this time, a little short on funds, we traded in a Roland digital piano for more studio time, added a couple hundred dollars to the kitty and we were rolling again with another 30-hour block. We brought in God's Women of Treasure (who were AWESOME) in July and they sang BGVs on five songs, did electric guitars with Chris Kohler and Darren Clarke (of the Vineyard's Burn Service releases) and even finagled Scott Underwood (also of Vineyard fame) to sing on two songs!

Well, we got lots more done, but still didn't finish. So, we traded in some more equipment and put some more money down for yet another 30-hour block of time. We got a local session musician, Terry Lawless, to fill in the gaps with a real Hammond B-3 and some horns and then added our own background vocalists and percussion. We then did the touch ups and got the mixes for automation by laying out track sheets.

Only God and Tom Gingell (the studio owner) know for sure how many hours this project took but it was for sure more than 90 before we were ready to mix down and master it. So, we put some more money down and by December (yes, December!) we were ready to mix it down. After re-mixing several times, we mastered and re-mastered and then we were done…except for the artwork, which is another story!

The Santa Maria riverbed (the artwork):

The Santa Maria riverbed is completely waterless for most of every year. In fact, from the mid 1980s through 1990, there was no water in it all year round! One day, during a prayer meeting in late 1990, a man from our church prayed that God would fill the dry riverbed again as a sign of His love and power, and of His promise to pour out His Spirit in our city. Early that following year, it began to rain ... and rain, and rain, and rain ... as a result the riverbed almost overflowed! (Some say that the song Rain written in early 1991 had something to do with the flooding, but that is mere speculation).

For the CD cover, we had originally planned on shooting a photo of the whole band in the dry riverbed with one worshipper in the foreground and the rest in the background worshipping. The plan was to then digitally "set them on fire" with computer graphics to make the Zechariah 12:6 passage come to life.

Well, not being able to schedule all the band members for photographs on the same day prevented plan A from working, so plan B was to take photos of the dry riverbed and digitally "paste" people in to the photo. So, Carson Bell (our photographer and church's youth pastor) took several photos of the dry riverbed. Since Kevin was not a big fan of digital editing, he said, "Carson, let's go get some photos of a few real people in the dry riverbed, that way if the digital thing doesn't work, at least we'll have a few real people in the picture." So, off a few of us trudged to the photo site only to find it now under several feet of river water! (God had sent rain to the city and surrounding foothills!)

So, plan C was to paste a single worshipper in the dry, barren riverbed worshipping and have the back of the CD reflect the result of worship ... God sending His water to the thirsty land, filling the dry places! So Kevin was photographed on a white background and digitally pasted in the dry riverbed. The rest of the photography is untouched. The amazing thing is that the Santa Maria riverbed is always a gross brown color, so the blue color of the river that day must have been God too!

The CD cover portrays a dry riverbed and the CD back shows the same riverbed a few weeks later now full of water. What a perfect representation of what God does when we worship Him! Since He inhabits the praises of His people, when we worship Him, He comes and fills the dry places in our hearts with His life-giving water, renewing and refreshing us!

For more interesting studio stories (if you have some time to burn) look at the individual song stories.