We are currently in the process of publishing a plethora of new songs so please stop back soon. In the meantime, here are some ditties with special significance done a long time ago.
For a variety of reasons, we unfortunately needed to convert all but the first two songs from cassettes to a digital format instead of using the original masters.
“Letters” © was written, sung and produced in the mid 90s by Dash Randell and Joy Dazey for the 50th wedding anniversary of Dash’s mother and father and in the wake of the passing of Joy’s grandmother.
This was Dash’s first attempt at recording “digital” audio using the first computer he had ever built. The SCSI 4.3 GHz hard drive cost him $1,750.00 alone. This song we now call “I’m Blind” © was a completely improvisational warm up jam that had never been played before with Mark D on electronic drums, Joy on keyboard bass and Dash on guitar. No signal processing was used except for reverb and some EQ, and there were no overdubs. The extended ending with stops was a practice we had of Dash using the head stock of his guitar like a composer’s baton to orchestrate on the fly.
“Swimming” © is a song Dash wrote about falling on hard financial times. It was his first attempt at writing and programming many of the instrument parts on a Korg M1 keyboard workstation including drums. The recorded parts on this keyboard were later transferred to a Tascam 388 Studio 8 (a reel-to-reel eight-track analogue recording & mixing console) to record Dash’s vocals, guitar and live maraca. Joy sang background vocals.
“Peace in Your Love” © is a song that Dash and Joy wrote way back when and recorded simply on that trusty eight track, using a premixer for drum mics, along with an outboard reverb. Mark D on drums and percussion, Joy on keyboards along with lead and background vocals, while Dash produced, played bass, rhythm and lead guitars along with lead and background vocals.
Dash produced the following original and copy songs in a 16-track analogue recording studio with his band which was a power trio. Dash also played bass on all songs along with background vocals and some percussion.
This is an original song called “Got to have your Love” ©.
This is a copy song “In this Place” © by Robin Trower.
This is an original song called “VIP” (Virgin Island Paradise) ©.
This is a copy song called “Fire” © by Jimi Hendrix.
This is an original song called “Red Tights” ©.
This was a novelty song Dash recorded when the Houston Oilers were getting into the playoffs and fans were going crazy. Some lyrics popped into Dash’s head one morning along with an old Muddy Waters riff and “We Love those Houston Oilers” © was born.
Dash produced the next three songs on the island of St. Croix in the U.S.V.I. with minimal equipment, very small windows of time and in just a few takes because of modest client budgets.
Dash recorded the next two songs, “Rasta Rubadub” © and “Africa” ©, by a makeshift Rastafarian band who borrowed all of our instruments. Dash used a premixer to handle the large number of tracks recorded live with drums and percussion and he used no signal processing except the Tascam 388 EQ and an outboard reverb unit. Dash added a keyboard effect on the second song as an overdub during mixdown.
Also, these two songs were recorded in a 1600 square foot room that had cathedral ceilings. The room was featured on the cover of House and Garden Magazine and we were blessed to live in the home for a year. One of Ray Charles’ engineers came over while Dash was mixing the songs down and commented that he could not believe he was able to get that level of sound quality with such inexpensive and minimal equipment.
Who could forget “Cactus Jack” from Texas who asked Dash to record and mix a few quick songs of him on St. Croix in our Christiansted studio. This song was recorded live with two mics. One for his guitar and one for his vocals. There were no overdubs and just our modest recording system with little to no signal processing (EQ and reverb). Here is one of the songs called “Solamente Una Vez” ©.
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