The Story of Lake Fever Sessions
Dear Friends, Welcome to Lake Fever Sessions. The formula behind what we're doing is really rather simple:
- Invite some of our favorite artists into the studio for the better part of an afternoon and have them perform a few numbers.
- Document their performance with HD video and multitrack audio.
- Edit. Mix. Master. Upload.
- Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
Right. Simple enough. So who is this "we?"
Obvious by that URL up at the top of your browser, part of this team involves the Lake Fever crew: Jason Bullock, John Baldwin, and yours truly. In short, Lake Fever is a recording studio on Music Row. Despite being surrounded by the corporate country music machine, we choose to spend our time working with forward-thinking artists who we believe just may hold a stake in the future of music. This is how we've played it going on six years now. We're no mavericks, mind you... just stubborn and easily bored by bad music.
For the past couple years, we've been slowly growing this idea of producing a long-term audio/visual series. There were a few attempts to realize this vision all on our own, but our efforts were fruitless. Just because the technology is available to dabble in new creative mediums, we learned that such is best left to the professionals. It became obvious that the only way for such an endeavor to work is for Lake Fever to focus on what we do best - making records - and to find a counterpart of like mindset and skill to man the visuals.
Enter Tugboat Productions, an underdog video production company with the brain of a musician. Dedicated to playing, consuming, and creatively documenting live music, Andy Snyder & Josh Lagersen were the perfect match for Lake Fever. Much like our own chosen route, Tugboat established a solid reputation by working with many Nashville-based bands on a myriad of projects. 2008 proved to be a break-out year for the company as their list of credits grew to add several artists that have reached that much-coveted level of critical acclaim and widespread recognition... eerily similar to the banner year of '08 we experienced in the studio. It almost seems our paths were destined to cross. And couldn't have come at a better time.
And, then, of course, somebody has to make it all work on the interwebs, and make it clean and shiny for all the world to see. That would be Mr. Eades of yewknee.com, the one who speaks in ones and zeroes. But he also speaks in kick-ass web design and making the whole thing run smoothly and generally sealing it all up nice and tight. He's a self-described "man with his hand in many pies," including acting as "curator" for We Own This Town. He's a smart guy who agreed to make us look legit, and we're mighty glad he's on our side.
And one other thing: not one of us is making a dime doing this.
"Well then, why?" you ask.
Let's start with this city and its loud creative hum. Sure, there's a really loud part-- the machine part of it, the hit-making formula part, the part that has earned Nashville a certain musical reputation as a city. But just under that, there's a lot of independent, free-wheelin' genius flying around, mad skillz if you will, people doing incredible things that no one has ever done before, or reinterpreting what you know in a way that blows your mind. But it seemed fragmented to us, every bright idea plowing ahead in its own direction, making its way around one scene or another and back again. We dreamed up this project as a way to join forces-- that's musicians, sound engineers, video producers and internet masterminds-- to clear an even bigger path towards creating something meaningful, for ourselves and for our beloved music scene.
And what's more powerful than listening to awesome rock n' roll made by brilliant people? Seeing and hearing it. Connecting with it twice. Knowing where it comes from and how it gets to you. No disposable pop chart-toppers here, folks. We're here to get intimate.
Thanks for coming to Lake Fever Sessions. You're going to like what we've done, and there's more where that came from.
Hold onto your hats,
Joe Baine Colvert
