Tuesday, Mar 29, 2011 @ 10:03 PM
When I was a child I grew up watching people play music.
What I didn't know was that a lot of the people I was exposed to as a kid were going to turn out to be some of my hero’s later. I was raised in country music and in some cases blessed to be sitting around country music royalty. As a kid though I didn't really know or understand, as most don't. But I knew enough…..
The other day I had a full circle moment. For my entire life one of my best friends has been Kashi Lee. We met in the line at kindergarten, and have been friends ever since. It just so happened that his Dad was a producer and mine a songwriter. So between our two houses it was pretty constant. One of the studios we would go to after school was called Emerald studio. It was a huge green building smack dab in the middle of music row. His Dad was producing Alabama. It was so cool to be a fly on the wall and watch some of those records being recorded. I remember thinking Emerald was so badass because of its Candy Cabinet. They had filled cabinets to the top with candy, and also because it had a pool table (we weren't supposed to play on) on the third floor. Anyways it was an amazing studio and that would be the end of the story, but it's not.
Fast forward 20 years and the other night I go to record at a studio called benchmark. I arrived right on time, after a mad dash sprint on the interstate that would have made JR. Sweat; only to realize the building I was pulling up to was the old Emerald studio building. It had been closed down for so many years due to the nature of the music industries financial straights, but had reopened under this new name and ownership “Benchmark studios”. I had so many memories rush back from being here as a child. I had not connected the dots until then, I was going to be the artist recording in the very studio that I had watched so many great artists record in as a child. There it was Full Circle, Unbelievable.
I opened the door to my car, and headed inside.
That’s my story for now. I will fill another blog with more later, but for now that’s all I’ll bore you with☺