Heidi Raye

Making of the Debut Album: Heidi Raye

Hey Everyone!

     First off, I just want to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! All the best to everyone in 2009

     As most of you know, this December I spent 2 weeks in Nashville recording my debut album. This has been a dream of mine since as far back as I can remember, and to finally start living the dream is a great feeling! Before I begin the day-by-day of my recording/Nashville adventure, I want to say a HUGE thanks to my family, friends, and fans! I really, honestly, and truly wouldn’t be what I’m doing today if it weren’t for all of you and your support. So….THANKS!

Friday, December 5:

     I went to bed early this morning, around 4 am, no snow on the ground, just a bit of ice. Woke up in the morning to about 20 inches of snow. This was the day that my roommate, Ashton, and I were to drive to Vancouver…bad timing to get a bunch of fresh snow. We had to shovel our way to our cars, and shovel out our cars just to open the doors, it was pretty crazy. We packed up the car, drove to the University to write our last final; Mental Health exam.

    We started the road trip off with some screaming and a bit of crying as we nearly died several times. The highways were absolutely atrocious and it took us over 2.5 hours just to get from Prince George to Quesnel. We only made it was far as 100 Mile where we got a really cheap, run down, over heated hotel room. Didn’t sleep this night either…yet another day I went without sleep. I laid in my bed trying to fall asleep, but seeings how I knew it wouldn’t happen, I just listened to my play list of the 10 songs I would soon be recording over and over and over again…all night.

Saturday, December 6:

    Ashton and I woke up early and hit the road, which had cleared up. We made good time and pulled into Ashton’s house in White Rock, BC, a few hours later. We spent the afternoon hanging out with her family and just relaxing before the craziness would begin. Her family dropped me off at the airport that night; man I was excited. Me, my pink, over sized suitcase, and my guitar, off to Nashville.

Sunday, December 7:

    Didn’t sleep a wink on the flights, so…day three I believe of no sleep (I hate taking the red eye…). Got into Nashville at 9:45am, and it was really cold there! A bit different from the 110 F weather I had experienced in June. I was staying with a family who was originally from Ontario who had now moved to Hendersonville, (just out of Nashville) as they have a daughter who is pursuing music as well.

    I just kind of hung around the house, tried having a nap, and waited for Arlo Gilliam, my producer (bass player for Emerson Drive) to call me. He called me from the Emerson Drive tour bus; they were driving home from a concert in Florida and we made a plan to meet that night for supper.

    We went to my favorite restaurant; Logan’s Roadhouse…you get a bucket of peanuts on your table and you throw the shells on the floor…doesn’t get much cooler than that, right? We had a good visit; got to catch up on stuff that happened over the last few months, and then we talked business. In the morning we’d be starting a busy week and we were talking things through to make sure it went as smooth as possible. 

    I got back to Hendersonville and had every intention of getting at least a few hours of sleep…but when all you can think about is the fact that in the morning you’ll be working with some of the best musician’s in the industry while recording your first CD, sleep is no longer a priority. So this is now day 4 with no sleep?

Monday, December 8:

    Woke up real early, had to be to the studio by 9 and had to beat the traffic. Got to the studio, met all the musicians and engineer; talk about talented people! We had Kellie Pickler’s drummer, Terri Clark’s fiddler, Blake Shelton’s guitarist, Emerson Drive’s bass player, a steel guitarist who played for Brooks and Dunn for 13 years, and the guy who played strings, organ, and keys, has played for Billy Curington and John Michael
Montgomery…. it was crazy!

    Being surrounded by all these professionals was really cool, I literally just got to step back and watch them work their magic. After everything was set up, we decided we’d start laying down the first track. We’d all gather in the engineer’s room, briefly listen to the demo song, which consisted of me very badly strumming my guitar over a $20 mic set that I recorded in Prince George. The players kinda of listened, more so talked and joked, and I kept thinking to myself, “Uh oh…what have I got myself into?? They’re not even paying attention! How in the world are they going to play this? They don’t know the song or anything…” . So I was a weeeeee bit nervous. So they listened to the song once….

    We then all went to our little stations/booths, put on our head sets, played with the levels, and Gregg the drummer counted in…and away they went. They played the whole song through like it was a song they’ve played a thousand times; no mistakes. I had perma-goosebumps and a perma-smile…it was incredible! These guys were so amazing at what they did, it was crazy. So we’d run about 3 takes, and then do some fill in’s and what not and then go to the next song. We ended up tracking 7 songs this day; so we were all pretty happy about the progress we had made.

Tuesday, December 9:

    Again, woke up early to get to the studio for another long….exciting day! We got the other 3 songs tracked and then most of the musicians were done. Then we got to play around a bit and add the fiddle and steel guitar, the real fun stuff and make it sound super cool. It was actually another long day, and my lack of sleep started catching up on me, and the hard part (on my end) hadn’t even started yet as we were only tracking the instrumentals and scratch vocals; this meant I could sing whatever I wanted and mess up as many times as I wanted…which I did. But as long as the instruments came out good, that’s all that mattered!

Wednesday, December 10:

    Today we switched studios from EMI on Music Row to The Insanery in a suburb out of town. This studio is where my job came in; doing vocals, and trying to do them well. Casey Wood owns the studio and he was our engineer for this part. He actually does a lot of work on Randy Travis’ songs, so that was awesome! Our goal was to get 6 - 7 songs done today, but we’d play it by ear.

    It was so cool; I love that feeling of having the head set on, and hearing the music start and away ya go. We got to use Cheryl Crow’s Mic for the vocals, it was a really, really, nice mic. I’m really glad that Arlo is the producer he is; he wouldn’t let me get away with much. If something was slightly left of being right, then without a doubt I knew I’d be hearing his voice over the head set…”uhmm let’s do that last part again, Heidi”.
After the 5th song, my voice started getting weak and tired, so we called it a night. After you sing each song at least 10 times through…by 50 songs, your voice begins to power out; needless to say I was scared I wouldn’t be able to talk the next day and I’d be in a bit of a bind.

    I moved places and started staying down town Nashville for convenience. I got back to my place and was to exhausted and paranoid for what tomorrow would be, so I went straight to bed, and FINALLY got some sleep. yay!

Thursday, December 11:

    Arlo picked me up in the morning, we got to the studio, and started another long day. After I finished the first song, we went out for lunch and met Danick Dupelle from Emerson Drive (lead guitarist and back ground vocals). We had a bite to eat in this little Cafe and saw tons of celebs…people from the Grand Ole Opry, George Straits band mates…it was pretty cool.
    

    We got back to the studio and it was time for Danick to help out a bit…I don’t want to say too much, so you’ll have to wait til the CD is released and find out.

    We finished the other 4 remaining songs by late that night, while it snowed outside. Everyone was freaking out cause there was like half an inch of snow and they were thinking it was the end of the world…I laughed, they need to come see a Dawson Creek winter.

    After my part was done and I was satisfied with what went on, Janee the fiddler showed up to do back ground vocals on a couple songs. She’s awesome and did the songs so quickly and she sounds great too
After we called it a night, Arlo and I drove out of town a bit to where a lot of the singers keep their tour buses. Emerson Drive had to leave early the next morning for a show, so we had to drop off his guitar at the bus. We drove up to this big gated lot and drove in to see a bunch of buses; Brad Paisley’s, Kenny Rogers’, Rascal Flatt’s, Blake Shelton’s, Craig Morgan’s, and lots of others. I got to go on the E.D. bus…pretty fancy! I could see myself living on one of those buses, they’re so huge and beautiful!

Friday, December 12:

     Today I got to sleep in a bit, and not have to worry about monitoring my talking and keeping a scarf on and all that stuff cause I was done singing!! (Huge relief). I walked around a bit, went and started picking out some designs for the album cover and what not. I then got a text message from Aaron Jake Goodvin, (he’s a country singer from Alberta) and he was in town. He was actually recording on Music Row too, not far from where I was so I went to meet up with him. I went and sat in on a bit of his recording session and got to hear some of his new tracks. They sound amazing! You’ll have to keep your eyes and ears open for his songs to be released, he’s a real talented guy.

    So I hung out with him and his producer, Daryl Burgess (he wrote “Big Wheel” and “New Frontier” for Aaron Prichett…wicked songs!!!) and their engineer for a bit while they finished up the last song. Then we all went out for supper and had a great time.

Saturday, December 13:

     Today was a pretty sleepy day for me. Again, I got to relax and do things as I wanted with no schedule. So I wandered around Nashville like a tourist, what a great town, I love it there. That night I went to a Predators game; my first NHL game. I had so much fun! I went with this guy from Ireland, Chris, loved his accent haha. We had so much fun; laughing at the drunk Dallas Stars fans sitting in front of us, and by then end of it we had all the little cheers down just like pros. It was so funny too, everytime we’d score, Tim McGraw would come on the big screen wearing a Preds jersey singing “I like it, I love it”…pretty funny.

    After the game, we followed the crowd down Broadway, (literally like inches away from the arena) and went into some good ol’ Nashville bars to hear some of the best live music around.

Sunday, December 14:

    I walked down town and got caught in the rain, but it was too far to go back to my place so I just walked in the rain for a while. Walked all around down town, to the river front, the big bridge where “Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy” and “Moments” were taped, and walked up and down the streets where “Before He Cheats” was taped. There’s so much to see and do there, and I did a lot of that this day.

Monday, December 15:

    Andie, Arlo’s wife, and their two little boys picked me up and we went out to the Grand Ole Opry area of town and went shopping in the big Opry Mills Mall. Half way through the day, Arlo phoned and said I had a photo shoot that night. So we madly tried calling salons so I could get my hair done, but couldn’t find anything. We kept walking around the mall and found a salon that would take me, so that was a relief.
We drove back into town, picked up Arlo, my clothes and stuff I needed for the shoot, ripped back to Opry Mills to get my hair done. After that we drove back into town to the photographer’s studio; Deana Tackett (her husband is Beau, and he was the guitarist on my album).

    We spent a good hour shooting in her studio, and then got the idea to get a little more fun and show some attitude (to resemble the feeling of the CD) and move the shoot to down town, Broadway: big lights, all the classic bars, old Nashville area where all the night life and live bands play.

    We started in the first bar, Legends, on Broadway. We walked in and ran into two of Randy Travis’ guys who remembered me from when I opened for them this past August. We got a picture, caught up a bit, and started the shoot. We called in some favors from people Arlo knows and we pretty much got to do whatever we wanted to get the pictures we needed. I stood on the bars, sang with the bands, went into their basements, just had fun! The best part of the night was when it started raining, it was about 11pm, and we got the idea to go out in the middle of the 6 lanes of traffic and get some good “I’m a rebel standing on the yellow line of the street down town on Broadway” shots. They turned out so good! It was so much fun…we’d wait for a red light, and then we’d all run out in the middle of the street, snap a few shots and poses, and then someone would yell “Cars!!!” and we’d run back to side walk and wait for the next light to change haha…it was funny.
After we did this for quite a while, went from bar to bar, street to street, sang a few songs, had too much fun, we decided to warm up a bit in the last bar before calling it a night. I ran into Dave Haywood from Lady Antebellum, super nice guy. Gary Alan was also there that night but I didn’t get to meet him.

Tuesday, December 16:

     Today I spent a lot of time on the phone, making contacts and what not, and contacted Leslie Mitchell; a fellow Canadian who has a publishing company in Nashville. We made plans to go to a big song writers night that night and hear some of the greatest country hits performed by the people who actually wrote the songs, it was really fun. As we walked in through the crowd looking for a table, I ran into Kenneth Duncan, another singer/songwriter who is being produced by Arlo Gilliam. I had met Kenneth briefley the previous week when he dropped by the studio one day to say “hi” but I hadn’t seen him since. We ended up sitting together and he was there with his publisher who is friends with Leslie so we all sat together and listened to some amazing music.

Wednesday, December 17:

    This morning I had a meeting with Leslie. She picked me up and we went for a coffee and talked some business for a while. She was going to take me to her studio’s Christmas party that night, so I was looking forward to that. I went to the party with her, her husband, and their daughter and met a bunch of people and got a good tour of the studio.

    Later that night, I decided I’d play “tour guide” to a bunch of Australian’s and Brits who were staying at the same place I was. We hit down town and had a great time, they were so much fun

Thursday, December 18:

     This morning I had a meeting with Ralph Murphy, incredible song writer and current President of ASCAP Nashville. He too, is from Canada so he always is very welcoming to me…we Canadians stick together! I love meeting with Ralph; he always gives me lots of advice and contacts and ideas, and I always leave our conversations feeling very inspired to go home and write a hundred songs.

    After I met with Ralph, I walked just a bit further down Music Row to, without a doubt, and I’m not just saying this, it’s a common fact, the nicest studio on Music Row…Grand and Gee Studios. I met with Gil Grand for quite some time that afternoon and got a lot of advice from him as well. Yet again, he’s Canadian…see I told you!

     After we talked for a bit and swapped some gross Nursing stories (he used to be a nurse, too!) he showed me around the place and I got a good look at their studio…SO NICE! I can’t wait to record there…next trip!
Later on in the evening Kenneth Duncan picked me up and we went to his publisher’s office for a good writing session. We wrote for a while, then we drove out of town to meet Arlo to get my rough mixed CD and the pictures from the photo shoot…that was an exciting night! We wrote for a couple hours longer once we got back to town, and got an excellent start on a song…a perfect way to wrap up my stay in Nashville.

Friday, December 19:

      I woke up ridiculously early this morning, and walked outside and felt like I hit a brick wall; it was soooo warm out. (crazy weather they have there!) I got my shuttle to the airport, stood in line to get my ticket for over and hour before I found out that due to the snow storms all over the place, my flight was cancelled. I was a bit angry, okay, a lot angry. I got back to town and tried figuring out a way home. I found a flight for later that night, so that was a bit better. Kenneth picked me up and we went out for lunch, again to Logans (seriously, if you’re ever in Nashville, you have to go there) and then I went back to get my luggage to head back to the airport…that’s when I found out that that flight as well was cancelled.

    So now I was starting to get scared cause they put me on a flight out Monday night at the earliest… and that was too close to Christmas for me! My mom and I spent hours on the phone and internet and finally found a flight out Saturday evening.

Saturday, December 20:

    I spent the day jumping aircraft’s and wandering aimlessly in several airports; but it was all worth it cause I eventually made it to Edmonton, where both my Brothers were waiting for me. It was an awesome welcome home! I then spent the next four days fixed on my Oldest brother’s couch holding his 5 week old little girl. I have to brag and say that my niece is easily the cutest baby ever…she is so special; our little miracle.

The End

     Hope you enjoyed reading up on the latest events in my life. Just to fore warn you: There will be the “Heidi Raye Debut Album: CD Release Party” coming up soon. It’s going to be held in my home town, Dawson Creek and I hope that you can make it!

     Again, thanks for your support, thoughts and prayers! I appreciate each and every one of you; and your kindness and friendship does not go unnoticed, so thanks!
All the best in 2009!

God Bless,

Heidi