song selection, G2 (help my unbelief) update

well, it's been awhile since we posted here. A good question came up in the last post, which is "how do you select songs for these records?" a great question. and for anyone interested, here's sort of the way we go about it here at red mountain.

we have these gadsby hymnals and we can't stop reading through them. I keep one by my piano, and I'll sit down to play and flip through it and either a song happens or it doesn't. It always starts with text that we like, and then we'll start applying music to it, and, well for me and clint at least, a song either comes together in about 5 minutes or it doesn't come together at all. So the result is a lot of songs, almost a hundred between the 5 or 6 main people who contribute songs for these projects. So we record just about all of them and live with them and wait to see which ones we like the most.

For this record we initially started tracking over 20 songs, and then that has been whittled down, added to, subtracted from, and now we are right at 15 songs. it's been a long process for us, but ultimately, we choose songs based on the poignancy of the text and on the quality of the music we've applied to it. There have been great texts that haven't made the cut because we weren't able to deliver music we are satisfied with, and in the same way we have had to let go of some incredible musical moments because for one reason or another, the song wasn't working out.

It's kind of an involved process, and I feel like I'm doing a bad job of answering the question.

For anyone interested, the songs that look like they will be on this next gadsby cd are: 93, 238, 245, 278, 281, 386, 389, 524, 528, 550, 705, 1091, and 1117.

But, things are moving along well, and we look good to have a final cd in hand by mid-may, which means it could be available to the public by very early summer. Thanks for hanging in there with us, we really think the wait is proving worthwhile...

Brian T. Murphy

Record Pro(de)gress

Well, the good news is that we are about 95% done recording. We've selected the best songs, started the process of artwork, and gotten the record into some hands to be mixed. the bad news is that the mixing process this time is going to take a little longer. So what we have is a near completed record that we're sort of just sitting on. It's weird for us. We're used to putting out 3 records in this time...but we're more excited about this one, I think, than any previous project.

Stay patient. These songs are really beautiful and have given us a lot to hope for. We'l keep you posted.

Clint Wells