Christmas Wish List

Right after Nathanael was born, I had a horrible night with no sleep, cried all day the next day, and can't remember a worse day in my entire life. That night, Tim was scheduled to perform at an open mic night. Normally, when I'm a wreck, open mic nights can be skipped, but Tim felt strongly he should go to that one.

So off he went, me in tears with five kids, including a newborn.

He came back later and said only 3 people were there in the audience: the lady who organized the event, the guy who was going to sing next, and a guy who was new to Vegas and just checking out the music scene.  This guy liked Tim's music a lot.

And he happened to be a honest-to-goodness big time recording engineer and producer, just relocating his studios from Boston to Vegas.

He and Tim got to be friends. They met a couple times just to hang out after that. He gave Tim some advice that completely changed the direction of Tim's music career--in a good way.

And then we moved.

A year later, I emailed the man to thank him for his advice, and sent him a few of Tim's new tracks to listen to.  He loved them and said he would like to work with Tim.

Tim wasn't ready for that yet, though, even though I thought he was. His ideas for his music were developed, but they were still maturing (of course, I didn't know that).

So now, a year later, Tim's music has matured, his recording knowledge had grown immensely, and he is ready to put his music out there.

So I thought for Christmas I'd get him some time with his producer friend down in Vegas to record an honest-to-goodness demo that we could possibly use to move Tim out of the regional market and into a national market for his music.

I contacted his friend with questions--how far out do we have to schedule? How much time does it take per song, given that Tim has to record vocals for the leads and possible backgrounds, percussions, etc, all himself? I sent him a couple of Tim's new tracks as a sample, so he'd know what I was talking about.

He loved the songs. He really likes Tim's work. (It's always nice to hear that!--we're so close to it and have heard everything so many times that we sometimes lose track of where we're at).

So now I'm searching out ways to save the money, now that I know how much I need.

Given that we still need to get a big van (or get my parent's van registered and find seats for it), pay mortgage and bills, etc., I'm not sure I can save the money by Christmas. I'm guessing this is going to be on the "someday Christmas Wish List" instead of the "Surprise, honey!" list. But I hope some day isn't so far out!