Sara Lewis

Today a woman at the cafe that I work at yelled across the room, “WHERE’S THE ELEVATAH” straight-up like a new yorker. Loud, rich old lady. Literally the entire building of 40 or so tables turned around and looked at her. These are the trials and tribulations of food service. Mainly they involve crazy people.

Hey amazing friends! 

Over a month has passed, and more people keep asking, which makes me realize that it’s time to update everyone about the album! Shame on me, forgetting about keeping in touch with you, my adoring fans and friends. 

Well, here’s the story. Over the past 2 months (since mid-August), I’ve recorded for a total of  15 DAYS up in Woodstock. (not bad considering my regular full-time life as a piano teacher and barista here in the city). We’ve laid down the drums, piano, vocals, bass and guitar, and many harmony vocals and extra “icing-on-top” special things like synthesizer sounds, shakers, whistling, special guest singers, etc. Sigh, it’s been so, so great. I wish I could be up there all the time. 

So what’s next is finishing up all the “extras” — recording more harmony vocals and hopefully bringing a special guest cello player into the studio for a few tracks. And then Julie (my engineer) is going to help me with the mixing process, which is the next big step. It’s the part that comes after all the recording of the instruments is done, and involves sitting down for 3-4 hours per song, and tweaking to the extreme. Making the drums louder here, bringing out that word there, fading out on the shakers here, adding more reverb to the vocals here, etc. etc. There are a gazillion different ways you can change and alter a single track to make it sound the way it’s supposed to. It takes a while, but it’s absolutely essential. 

Then after that the music will be off to a mastering company to make it shine even more — they enhance it in this special way, to make the whole album sound seamless as a whole. So that one song isn’t louder than the next, so that the CD sounds the same through your ipod earbuds as it does through your car speakers…things like that. It gets the super royal treatment, like Dorothy and her friends when they visited Oz for the first time. But it’s also a super important part of the process. Hopefully all of the music portion of the album will be done by Christmas. 

Also I’ve been meeting with a new artist friend Jenna to figure out the album artwork. We’re going to work with images of birds and hearts and color to suit the nature of the songs and my style. It’s going to be so, super great. I’m hoping with the highest of hopes that all the physical stuff (artwork, pressing and packaging everything) will be done by end of January or thereabouts. Like I said before, it’s my goal to have everything done by Valentine’s Day! We shall see!  

I have officially dwindled down completely on my Kickstarter money through all these trips to the studio, paying my musicians and the engineer. So if any of you didn’t get a chance to send some monetary love my way during the fundraising campaign, any and all donations are still welcome! I could totally use as much help as I can get in the coming few months, because all the money from here on out will be out of pocket. Just say the word and I will send you an email with my mailing address.  

Thank you thank you for listening and staying interested in this project. As always, definitely send an email to say hello if you feel so inclined. I’d love to know how all of you are doing!!

Love, 

Sara 

Heyyyyy everybody!

So everyone keeps asking me about the album, so I have deduced that it is time to unveil some of the mystery by delivering some 411. Yes?

Here’s the long and short of it.

I have spent approximately 70% of the Kickstarter money already!!  I have gone up to Woodstock to do sessions 3 different weekends so far – once to lay down the drums, once for vocals, and once for bass and guitar. The first weekend that me and Jesse were there we got to take part in a legit drum circle in the center of town. Ha! And in between some of those weekends, I headed to Brooklyn to lay down the piano tracks (because Julie doesn’t have a real piano upstate). I used a new friend Bennett Pastor (http://www.bennettpaster.com/) to do that second part, and he was great — totally knows his stuff.

It has been so fun so far. Like, SO fun. It’s crazy to have all these people I have hand-picked to help me record this project all paying so much careful attention to doing it right. Julie’s a TANK – she could work for 12 hours straight and seem like she hardly feels it. Just stare at the computer screen and be super into it. And my musicians are such hard workers too and such great, fun guys. I have some funny videos that I have posted on my Kickstarter page of Will (guitar) and Mike (bass) being really silly in between takes that you all should check out. tee hee  –> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/557032187/sara-lewis-first-full-length-album/posts/117707

One little downside right now is that Woodstock got crazy flooded from the hurricane and many residents, including Julie, lost power for over a week!! Thank goodness Julie’s place was alright (otherwise who knows would’ve happened to all my files!!!) — but apparently some of the people she knows in town had a lot of things totally wash away. It’s insane. So because Julie had a bunch of sessions scheduled and is very busy catching up with all her work, my next sessions have gotten pushed back a bit — till mid-October or so. We still have to record a few more guitar tracks and some harmony vocals and cello. There’s no saying when it will all be done, but hopefully soon. My ultimate goal is by my birthday (Feb 15th) – right next to Valentine’s Day.

This experience really is all a big, giant, glittery, swirly dream. It’s been tiring, no doubt, to drive up to Woodstock and back many weekends in a row, to sleep on blow-up mattresses and sofa beds that sink in the middle. But it’s magical to be in Woodstock where so many insanely famous and really good musicians have lived and brought so much history to the town.  It’s just….so ridiculously cool.

Thank you for this gift, for those of you who helped me get here. And for the rest of you, I appreciate your support from afar. Please feel free to drop a line to say hello anytime and ask me about the project. I’d be happy to give you more of the inside scoop!

Love,

Sara

www.myspace.com/saralewismusic
http://saralewis.bandcamp.com

Here’s what I can say about this recording experience so far:

1. Darla and Priscilla are excellent names for GPS’s.
2. I didn’t know until today that Julie Last (my engineer) has a PLATINUM RECORD for assistant-recording on John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s album “Double Fantasy”! Whaaaaaa???
3. There are like 7 overtone harmonies that come out of drum heads. It’s so nuts.
4. We went and saw a tribute event for Happy & Artie Traum in the middle of town today, and all these famous folks played. Happy Traum, John Sebastian (from The Lovin Spoonful),  Levon Helm (from The Band), etc. Amazing amazing. Delicious experience of Woodstock history.
5. Everything is making me emotional. All this inspired music-watching, the recording of all these songs about my past loves, and the fact that this will be my first full-length album of all time is making me well up with tears. It’s a little cheese-tastic.

Oh, world. Life is so good.

Hope you guys are as swell as I am right now.

Sara

Hey dearest dears, My Kickstarter MADE IT!!! I’m so excited! We actually made OVER my goal amount somehow — to $5,730 to be exact! I’m beyond pumped. Check it out!! –> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/557032187/sara-lewis-first-full-length-album

So here I am at the end of the project, relieved and emotional, but ready to enter into Phase 2 — the recording! My drummer, Jesse and I are headed up to Woodstock next weekend to lay down all the drum tracks, then that will be followed in subsequent weekends by the vocals, piano, bass, guitar and cello! It’s gonna be absolutely sick. I plan to keep y’all updated on here and on my Kickstarter page so stay tuned!

Love, Sara