the Wimby

I forgot that children have such small bladders. I was standing in the dirty bathroom of our old baptist church building and the four seconds it took the kid to relieve his pressure reminded me how much older I am than I remember being before. The world is a lot smaller and bigger, and my eyes grew enough to notice it. My wife is the only constant, both in her affirming love, and in her small stature. Age means a little closer to death, and so far, I haven’t heard many stores of death being a very nice person, but I’m hoping that when I finally meet him, we’ll at least be some sort of friendly acquaintances or something. I’m still not too old yet, but old enough that I was in that bathroom about two minutes longer than the kid. 

You would be crazy not to admit that the Internet has completely changed the world in almost every way. What used to take time and effort to accomplish or transfer now only takes a matter of seconds and a few mouse clicks! One of the most drastic transformations that has taken place is in the music industry. You can go on YouTube, Spotify, or Grooveshark, and hear just about any song you could ever want to listen to for free. If there’s an album you’ve been dying to have, but it’s too expensive, you can easily download a torrent program and get the album in a few seconds. Everything is easily accessible and can be free if you want it to be…legal or not.

 I truly believe that music has more emotional and inner power than almost anything in our known world. It can change your mood in a few seconds, and can say things that words never could. Victor Hugo was right when he said, “Music expresses that which cannot be said, and on which it is impossible to be silent.” We want everyone to have that kind of experience as often and as deeply as they can, whether they have money or not.

 That’s why we present our music as “pay what you can.”  If you experience something powerful, you have the freedom to support and invest what you feel like it’s worth you. Those who don’t have money or don’t see much value in the music will probably find a way to hear the album for free anyway, so we just want to give you the option to do things the way that you want. We invite people to pay what they can (or want), sell our other merchandise as cheaply as possible, and try to play several free shows every year because we truly want the Collection to encompass not just a band, but a community of people – musicians or not – that are all investing in each other and sharing the load.

 At the moment, we are beginning work on writing and learning a new album. Soon, we’ll start recording, which is a huge process that involves a lot of people and a lot of money. We are also trying to buy a van, so that we can start touring more (and reach cities like yours!). We don’t mind doing things for free, as we think it’s part of that sharing the load process, but we’ve definitely realized that with giving music away and doing what we can for free, even the donations and money people do give us for our albums and merchandise isn’t enough to accomplish things like the van and the album – without other folks helping us.

 We’re not going to plead for money, or try to guilt you into helping. Honestly, the fact that you’d listen to our music at all still blows our minds, and that’s enough for us to love you (even if you HATED our music, we’d still love you!). However, we wanted to take this opportunity to say that if our music has touched you in some way, or if you believe in what we do, we could use financial support in our efforts. When it gets closer to getting the album out, we’ll have a Kickstarter set up, but there are a couple of ways that you can help out until then as well.

 We love the idea of patronage. In old days, some of the wealthier folks would sponsor artists, to help them live and continue creating beautiful art. Because of patronage, we have the Mona Lisa and the Sistine Chapel! 
If you’re interested in sponsoring us financially for a six-month or one-year period (or longer), we’d love to talk more with you about it. Feel free to send us an email at davidwimbishandthecollection@gmail.com. We’d love to talk with you about our Board of Directors, and what your money would be going towards on a monthly basis.

 If you’d like to give a one-time donation, there are two ways you can do it. First, you can go to http://thecollection.bandcamp.com and download our album, and enter in any amount you’d like to pay.  Your other option is to go to our website at http://thecollectionfamilyband.com/support and click on the “Donate” button at the bottom. It goes through PayPal, and is very secure.

 If you don’t want to donate, we love you and support that decision, and hope you’ll keep listening and downloading and sharing our music. 

We seriously are so crazily grateful for all of you. I honestly feel like we have some of the most kindhearted, beautiful, and loyal fans that I’ve ever met. Thanks for taking a fraction of your time to read this and to care.

 Love from David and the Collection “family band”

THE BOATER

The Boater

He was very experienced at convincing others that he wasn’t very experienced. This was why he decided that he would take her on the boat. She would think that he only knew a little of what he was doing, and he could somehow manage to save the day, even in some small, meaningless way. 

He poured a couple of drinks, slipped on his old, worn out sperry’s and walked toward her. She was wearing a one piece swimsuit, but it somehow  seemed to stir more arousal in him than any of the skimpy swimwear that the other girls wore along the beach. She kept her gaze forward, and he wondered if she was actually making an effort to not look at him, or if she really was more enamored by her surroundings than most children were the first time they opened their eyes. 

As he got closer, she turned and smiled at him, pulling him closer with her beautiful lips and wonderfully white teeth. He wondered, if he had not been forcibly pulling himself backwards, if he would have fallen directly onto her lips. He quickly put his drink to his mouth, mostly to keep his lips from touching hers without an open invitation. 

They made small talk, and sometimes no-talk, and he set the boat loose from the dock. The salty air was always refreshing and left a funny taste on the edge of his glass, a taste he neither loved nor hated. He half focused on the boat, and put the other half of his focus on her lovely body, the way it waxed and waned like the waves behind him. Her voice sounded like singing, and her perfume cut through the scent of the salt water. He was a man of self-control, but any man has a breaking point, and, though he wasn’t near his, he could see it in the distance, a horizon that said, “It’s alright to give up.” 

As the afternoon passed, she laid down on the front of the ship, letting the sun kiss her body gently, an action he was simultaneously holding onto and letting go of. She was beginning to fall asleep and his drink was looking emptier and emptier by the second, so he decided to get up and find where his bottle had run off to. After an easy search-and-rescue, he replenished his liquid and his physical spirits and made his way back to the front of the boat. As he bent over to began sitting down, his foot hit a sad puddle that a wave left, either as a gift or a trap, and his feet slipped from under him. His bottle flew over the edge, and he was holding on tightly enough that he, too, flew over the railing without hesitation. The waves greeted him with a gentle hug and he took a few minutes to reorient his body into the proper position. She had woken by this time and was looking over the edge, calling his name and laughing, and he wondered which of the two reactions came to her first. He swam around to the back of the boat and climbed back on. He shivered more than he would have expected, especially considering the warm temperature. She brought a towel and put it around him, giggling at the mishap and sitting him down on the seat.

She told him that she had dreamt of a gull that could swim underwater and that she woke up when the gull finally jumped out of the water. She told him that when she saw him flapping around in the water, he looked like the gull from her dream. She also told him that she thought he was an experienced boater, but this incident seemed to prove otherwise. She said all this in a laughing tone, and he was not offended. He realized that he was only experienced in not knowing much at all, and that was perfectly ok.

The sun started falling asleep, and he decided to take the boat back to it’s home. She leaned in and kissed him, a kiss that told him that he was nothing and everything at the same time, and the sun winked at him on it’s way to bed. 

I wanted to do a top 10 album list, but honestly, most of the albums this year were huge disappointments. So here’s my top 5 albums of 2011:

1. Typhoon- A New Kind of House

2. Son Lux- We Are Rising

3. Tom Waits- Bad As Me

4. Lisa Hannigan- Passenger

5. Fleet Foxes- Helplessness blues

Alright, here’s my “Biggest disappointments” album list:

1. Manchester Orchestra- Simple Math

2. Bright Eyes- The People’s Key

3. The Low Anthem- Smart Flesh

4. Coldplay- Mylo Xyloto

5. Beirut- The Rip Tide

Nothing is a hard rule in recording. That’s something I’ve been learning really fast. Today I started working on preliminary string recordings for a worship song I’m tracking with Chase Salmons (the songs is amazing!). I set everything up the way I normally do for cello, same mics, same position, and it just sounded wrong. I know that I’m in a new room, and the placement in the room can make the smallest difference, but I was astonished that the way I’ve been recording cello for the last year didn’t sound good. It was thin, high pitched and screechy. There was no body! I tried changing the position, changing my vintage eq and changing levels and I just could not get it to sound the way I wanted it.

I had an interesting conversation with my studio-sharing bud Edd the other day. We were talking about a lot of records nowadays that sound stellar. Something I’d noticed was that every instrument sounds clear and impactful, but not HUGE in the mix (something that I think is a lesser known result of the loudness wars- making every instrument sound stupidly huge). Edd said he thought maybe they were using a lot more dynamic mics than we do, and that hit me in the face! That’s gotta be it; they have the right amount of punch without taking over everything.

So back to the cello: I pulled two of the three mics I was using, switched one out for a small-diaphram condenser and then put an SM57 on the lower half. It sounded amazing! Great punch, enough to come out and sound thick in the mix without it sounding huge.

Now, as a hard rule, I would not tell someone to use a 57 on a cello. BUT, something I’ve been learning is that there are no hard rules in recording. Something works for some things sometimes, other times it doesn’t.

SO experiment. Don’t put a mic on something and say “i’ll fix it in post”. Get it right going in and you’ll be way happier with your recordings. This is another reason that I think people should go to studios and have their songs recorded by others as much as possible. It’s hard when you’re recording your own record to move around, switch up mics, get the perfect sound, and eq stuff right when you’re ALSO playing. The engineer is there to be a great listener! 

Anyway, just something I’ve been thinking about.

I’ve also been thinking about a new computer and apogee lately. Coming soon, hopefully!

http://vimeo.com/31973229

thanks for filming this for us, luke!