Being The Flying Tenor isn’t all it’s cracked up to be….
Sure, I’m living my dream of flying, but if you want to know the truth, sometimes I get a little scared up there all alone in a little 25 year old single engine French airplane. The upshot is that I’m never scared when things are going horribly wrong, just when they’re horribly right. Maybe it’s the fear of “what if,” but fortunately for me, when things started to go horribly wrong Wednesday afternoon on my way to Southern California for a coaching and recording session, I wasn’t scared or nervous. I just dealt with the problem.
Right around Modesto, CA I began making a climb from 5000 feet to 11,000 feet, but my engine didn’t want to cooperate. Running roughly at full power and seeing high exhaust temperatures on the number 5 cylinder, I decided to abort the climb and made a precautionary landing in Modesto. Within an hour of landing, I had dropped off my airplane with a mechanic, rented a car, and decided to continue my trip to SoCal. I don’t think I even had time to be nervous.
Clearly my 5pm coaching that day with Bill Vendice would have to be scrubbed – as we would be going out to dinner – but he had room for me at 11am on Thursday, which was also the day of our recording session. The downside of that, of course, is that singing for an hour before a recording session really thrashes the voice. I was afraid I wouldn’t have much left for the session. I drove as far as I could Wednesday night – about 6 hours of driving – and got my rear end into a hotel for some much needed rest. After a shower and breakfast, I left Valencia and made the 35 minute drive to Bill’s home in Los Angeles, where we plowed through the four pieces we were to record later that day.
After our session I reviewed what we had done, and started thinking about how I was going to get back to Chico. Southwest could get me as far as Sacramento, but that’s still over 100 miles from home, so, I got my wife to agree to pick me up. With my travel arrangements complete, I figured I would get a few last minute details done, like eat lunch, get some gas, return the rental car, and get to my recording session.
Bill picked me up at the airport rental car return area at Burbank Airport, and we drove to Theta Studios, also in Burbank. Funny thing about this home-based recording set-up: It’s in an area of Burbank where people keep horses in their backyards, and ride through the neighborhood to an area that has 56 miles of horse trails! Los Angeles never ceases to amaze me. Once inside Theta Studios, I met the owner, Randy Tobin. Randy has owned this studio for 33 years, and his knowledge of all things recorded, both audio and video, is pretty remarkable. He also has the kind of studio that contains literally decades of recording equipment, much of it analogue, which led me to believe that we might be using tape for this session. As it turns out, he keeps that old equipment to work things which were recorded on tape previously. We were recording digitally today.
He placed me in front of an older looking tube mic, which was “new” vintage, i.e. 1980s technology. Bill sat in front of a Yamaha C-5, which was mic’d internally, and away we went. Ah! Levetoi soleil from Gounod’s Romeo and Juliette was first up, and let me tell you, my French is, shall we say, less than adequate. Fortunately, within a couple of takes I got a keeper. Bill has been very good about focusing in on the true travesties of my French and kept me moving. The downside was that the flying, driving, hotel-ing, and 11am singing had taken it’s toll, and I was already vocally exhausted. Still, we pressed on, and soon we were firmly entrenched in Puccini’s Tosca. Two “takes” and we were done, followed by Rigoletto, and finally Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. Two hours later, we had recorded several takes of each piece. Bill took leave and I spent another hour and a half with Randy to master, choose the order of the pieces, and burn a few discs, and I was outa’ there. ‘Not for nothin’ but… I was also out nearly $800 in studio and pianist fees, and, if you must know, not mentioning the trip down, a hotel, a return flight to Sacramento, and two rental cars! This stuff isn’t cheap, which is why I suppose it’s time to get serious with the gigs, and with recording an album which you can buy to help defray some of my costs. 
I was physically exhausted, which is not surprising, but, I finally was able to return home.
I arrived at the airport to learn that my 9:05pm Southwest flight was delayed by 30 minutes. I would now be coming into Sacramento closer to 11pm, so my wife rescinded her previous offer to pick me up. Keep in mind, that Chico is almost two hours from Sacramento, so she’d be spending 4 hours in the car, and Ziggy, my 7 year old, needed to be in school the next morning. Solution: Rent a car, and drive myself. Brilliant… just brilliant.
I finally arrived home at 1am on Friday and couldn’t fall asleep until 2:30 or so. I woke up early, took the kid to school, and taught my opera class at his school (6th-8th graders only). We mostly just watched Amadeus, although I did sing them a few snippets from the recording session.
Stay tuned for how I am building up a simple, affordable, but highly affective remote recording set-up which will allow me to record classical piano and voice wherever I want to, thereby saving me hours and many dollars, and possibly record in Chico. “Necessity breeds invention”
vc
The Flying Tenor
P.S. Click the player to listen to: Froh, wie seine sonnen fliegen from Beethoven’s 9th Symphony
