photo shoot

So we had our band photo shoot last night. I must say, I absolutely loathe any picture taking that requires me to take myself seriously. Perhaps this is why most pictures of me feature either a big toothy grin, or a goofy smile, because I’m much too self-conscious to actually pose. So doing the whole serious “I’m a serious musician/rocker” staredown with the camera was awkward on many levels for me. However, going back through the prints, I did notice one Angelina Jolie-ish picture of myself—not to say that I look anything like Angelina—but I was definitely doing some weird puckering up, lip protrusion thing…

Don’t know how that happened.

Anyway, our awesome photographer Alicia from Orlando CityBeat met us at the photo location. The location was at the back of this abandoned produce store, painted a bold, vibrant green. A couple of discarded couches completed the trendy yet tortured indie-ish look. There was also some sort of crumpled marsupial skeleton from the Cenozoic Era, I’m sure…anyway, I actually had a great time hanging out in that abandoned parking lot with my fellow Oaks, just posing and trying to look natural.

I mean, who doesn’t hang out in abandoned grocery store parking lots with instruments on a Tuesday afternoon, right? What could be more natural than that?

Seriously though, Alicia got some great shots, and I am excited for when we decide on the photos so we can start sending them out and uploading them to our sites. The guys are plugging away at the recording. Since I’ll just be doing bgvs, I probably will be the last one to record on any track. I remember when I recorded Intricate with Syd… doing the background vox were actually my most favorite part. I feel like I have more control over and confidence in my voice in a recording setting, where everything is so exposed. It was even more fun than the lead vocals in a way, because whereas the lead vocals were kind of set in stone in my head (with a few exceptions) as far as what I wanted to do, recording the background vocals was much more of a creative, improvisatory experience.

I think maybe I haven’t enjoyed recording keys as much may be because I’ve never recorded keyboard tracks on an instrument that I actually liked to play. Maybe when I get my Roland SX700 digital piano that will all begin to change... mwuhaha…