Laurie and I have the luck of sharing a birthday – May 8. Now that date has a new and even deeper meaning as the day that we released our first CD, Jamison Road, in 2012. Writing, arranging, recording, mixing, mastering, printing, and distributing that CD has meant many long days and sleepless nights for all of us, but rarely is someone fortunate enough to have the opportunity to do something that satisfying. We have received so many words of encouragement and enthusiasm from fans, friends, and family, and we can live life knowing that we took a chance and did something that we had only dreamed about in the years prior to this one.
Between November 2011 and May 2012, outside of our day jobs, our time was almost entirely consumed with creating the CD. As you can imagine, this was a mixture of hard work and pure joy. This was especially true for Brent. I have to give this man credit where credit is due. Not only did he come up with great chords and guitar riffs to go along with our lyrical ideas, but he spent days and days in the studio in Cincinnati arranging and recording the demo tracks that we took to Nashville; working with the musicians and recording engineers in the studio who played with us on the album to make sure the final result sounded like we intended; listening to the final tracks over and over to make fine adjustments; driving to and from Nashville with Laurie in a single day to be there for the CD mastering session; and giving everything he could to this project.
Many people don’t know this, but Brent also has awesome talent in graphic design. Since he already had so much of himself invested in this CD, he wanted to take care of the complete package. After all the recording was done, he spent many days designing the layout and artwork for the CD.
Brent was also smart enough to warn us that May 8 was too soon after our studio time to try to release the CD, but Laurie and I insisted. (“We can do this!” we said. Sorry about that, Brent… I guess we meant to say “YOU can do it!”) He did everything possible to get that CD printed and distributed online by our birthday on May 8. When the UPS lady finally pulled up with eight giant boxes of CDs the night before our CD release party, we were so excited that we ran to meet her in the driveway and did everything but get into the truck ourselves. (I think the UPS lady was a little scared because seriously six people came running with excitement.)
Brent is listed as co-producer on the CD, and let me just tell you, he earned it. This would have never, ever been possible without him. Brent, you are the best.
Love,
Jennifer
