Released March 22 2020

Background

Jeanne Palin’s album Ave Maria came together in a similar way as the Carnival Life project. Following the closure of Southern Thumb Music in Richmond, MI, many of the teachers and students migrated to another locally run store called KO Music. I was a guitar teacher there for a time, and this is how Jeanne found out that I was equipped to record and produce music in my home studio. She expressed interest in doing an album of some of her favorite songs from church and otherwise and I was keen on trying something different than the usual type of music I work on, so I agreed to help her with her project.

This album ended up being a learning process for both Jeanne and I, as Jeanne had never done any recording prior to this and I hadn’t really worked on the style of music she wanted to do. It was an exciting challenge, because I recall doing some of the tracks fairly live, like an actual performance. Mike Lazowski came in to track some guitar parts, and for tracks like How Great Thou Art and I Have Loved You, I just set up the mics and hit record and let Jeanne and Mike perform the whole song through. It helped to capture the natural pace of the performance and was fun to be primarily in the producer’s seat instead of having to perform during every session.

That doesn’t mean I didn’t play on the album though. I played and recorded the drums in my studio for this album and might have added a few small guitar/bass parts here or there, but a bulk of the guitar parts were done by Mike. It was a fun learning experience and different sort of project for me overall since several other people were involved in the recording sessions. Given the right circumstances, I’d love to be able to tackle a project like this again sometime.