Drake Oranwood

Master Arden of Icombe just got in his car, and the final cleanup of all the instrumental tracks for Hidden Gold is complete. Now it is all down to me.

My friendship with Paul Butler began 30 years ago, when he and I met at performing arts camp. It was a fun, quirky connection, and though we didn’t actually stay in touch after the summer, we did have one collaboration at the time that stayed with me: he ran an RPG of his own design, and I rolled up a character to play through a dungeon full of brain puzzles. I decided to create an avatar, my fantasy counterpart. The name? “Drake Orinwood”, which became my character name ever since. (The last name was changed slightly to pass the submission heralds when I registered it in the early 90’s.)

I bumped into Paul online three years ago when I started checking out the bardic scene and launched the Facebook group. If I hadn’t had that years-old, long-dormant connection, I don’t know if I ever would have had the guts to ask him for his help on this project. But having earned a Laurel in period music, and having studied (and learned to play, and indeed make) a stunning variety of period instruments, Arden of Icombe was the ideal partner (along with Dave Lambert) to bring my vision for a bardic album to life.

Thanks again, Paul, for two years of fun and hard work, and for teaching me what is possible if I just have the courage to ask.

I just dropped Dave off at the train, and all the guitar work for Hidden Gold is complete. While there are still two more recording sessions to do with other people (one more instrumental day with Arden, and one more female vocalist for “Lady of the Rose”), this marks a major milestone for the project. Dave was the first person I asked to collaborate on this with me, and when he said yes, it gave me the courage to ask others. He has been my co-producer and my mentor. Most of what I know about how to record music I learned from him. I know Dave is excited to reach the goal line too (though not as much as his wife Kathleen–thank you, Kathleen! I could never have done this without your kindness and patience).

And now, back to life for today. There will be lots of mixing and editing to do this week, but not today.

So I don’t want to give the impression that I’m more “done” than I am, because there’s still a lot of cleanup left. But for two years, I’ve planned an album with 12 tracks on it. And today, for the first time, I’m looking at the listing on my iPhone. And it says “12 songs, 50 min”. (Of course the last one’s a poem, but the iPhone doesn’t know that.)

So Dave is here, for what should be our last full guitar session. He spent 6 hours this week recording “Can She Excuse My Wrongs” on his own (recording John Dowland’s exact lute part was, I know, exacting and exhausting, and Oh my lord were the results worth it!). Today we’re recording “Hidden Gold”, re-doing “Bastard’s Tale” (applying what we’ve learned over two years recording together), and hopefully adding a little ornamentation to Don Levey’s work on “Lady of the Rose”.

UPDATE: Close. Didn’t get to “Lady of the Rose”, and didn’t get all the “Bastard’s Tale” tracks done. But I now have the main instrument for every song on this album recorded.

In two weeks, Arden will be here to record/rework those songs as well. Depending on whether we can get that done in one or two sessions, that should close out his work on the album as well.

(Had a minor panic this morning that my MacBook Air wasn’t recognizing the Saffire Pro interface, but I figured out I just needed to update my software since we’d upgraded the OS. Ever the drama, but we’re managing it so far.)

More on album progress in a later post.