Now That It's Done The Work Begins

With the record finished, the real work begins. I'm talking about song order. I know in this day and age the format of a complete record meant to be listened to from start to finish is an archaic concept. Fuck that. Every record I've made, I've put an intense amount of consideration into the song order. I'm sure this is a product of being born in the mix tape age. There's a great scene in the book "High Fidelity" where the protagonist has a lengthy soliloquy on how to properly and effectively construct a mix tape, so I won't try and recreate that here.

However, the point remains that for us in Summer Darling song order matters a ton. One of my favorite memories of being in this band was way back in 2004. We were on our way to play a show in Chico, CA at a little coffee shop called Moxie's. For the entire car ride Dan, Heather and I played different song orders for each other, argued our cases good-spiritedly, and after much deliberation came to a consensus.

This time it's a bit more crowded in the car. Not only do we have a fourth member in our band now, we also have a producer and a label weighing in. (*Author's note: We also had a producer for our first record who had two very strong ideas about song order and selection, which I ignored. To this day I regret that I did, because I think his ideas would have made the album better.) I already have my order picked out, but I wonder how much I'm going to have to fight to get it on the record that way? Or will someone come up with an idea that works perfectly that I never would have thought? We shall see. The battle begins tomorrow when I show Neil Schield from Origami Vinyl the mixes for the first time. . .