I MADE AN A CAPELLA THING. I’M GONNA MAKE MORE. WANNA PICK MY NEXT SONG?
Oh my god, you guys – my singer nerd is showing here BIG time. It’s all my friend Zip’s fault. One of the incentives I offered on the PledgeMusic campaign for my new album 3 AM was “I’ll record a cover song just for you. Go ahead – make me learn something weird.” Unable to resist this challenge, Zip sent the following directive along with a generous pledge (thanks, Zip!): “Time Warp. WITH the dance moves.” (Bite me, Zip!) I cussed him out for three weeks. (Sorry, Zip!) I’d envisioned a Kira-tastic Rhodes/vox version of whatever somebody threw at me. But “Time Warp” with dance moves didn’t exactly translate. Then I remembered I’d seen some acapella things my friend Jason Eskridge (also a bona fide singer nerd and one of the WORKINGEST singers in Nashville) had posted using an app called Acapella. Six or seven Jasons in Brady Bunch-looking squares, all singing different parts. My nerd bell commenced to clanging and off I went.
I spent the better part of a day working out the arrangement, figuring out how the app worked, learning the fecking dance moves (*shakes fists @ Zip*), and recording the thing 146 times because there’s no cut and paste so every time I screwed up a square I had to start it over. I started over a lot. But FINALLY I got it done. Or so I thought. I sat down to bask in my ridiculous glory only to find there were some significant sync issues happening between the audio and video. Hurmph. I contacted the app developers and long story short, ended up beta testing a few new updates to trouble shoot the issue. (My husband thought that was kinda hot and kept calling me his “little beta tester.” #nerdsinlove) The original video was unfixable, but once the lovely folks at Mixcord worked out the necessary kinks (thanks, Mixcord!), I re-did the whole thing. It’s kinda awesome in its ridiculousness, if I do say so myself.
Now I’ve got the bug and I want to do more. That’s where you guys come in. I’m going to put a new acapella video out once a month just for the sake of pure nerdtasticness, and I’m opening myself up to song suggestions. That might be a terrible idea. Or it might be brilliant. Let’s see what happens. Wanna hear your favorite song? Wanna see if you can make me cuss you for 3 weeks and then, voila: magic video? Two words: Bring. It.
PS - shout out to my girl Megan Palmer, whose t-shirt I'm rocking here. Singer-songwriter, in-demand fiddle player, nurse, and now cancer survivor. She's kinda the baddest of the badasses.