Excelsior!

Tito, DJ and Alisa

We've finished tracking vocals, instruments and assorted percussion.  Excelsior!  That's apparently a catch phrase Al Gore uses for a missions accomplished and quite apropos as our engineer, Willie Samuels, informed us he recorded Mr. Gore a few days prior for an audiobook.  Sweet.  The Hipwaders are using the same engineer as Al Gore - an inconvenient truth for some.

I had more fun with this final session more than any other as I had less stuff to do than the Nick and DJ who still had some back up harmonies and vocals to perform.  Actually, the first thing we did was record (ala Al Gore) a spoken word performance by Nick's better half, Alisa Cromer.  OK, it was only 5 words but it'll be the first vocal heard on the album.

DJ & Tito desecrating George Winston's piano

The next task was to record some mouth "pops".  I remember as a kid seeing an actor named Fritz Feld who was in lots of movies, commercials and t.v. shows like "Gilligan's Island" and "Lost In Space".  His shtick was slapping his hand up against his mouth to make a "pop".  Of course, being a kid I had to learn this trick and perfect it.  Now, as an adult I give it a prominent role on our new album.  Actually, the most prominent "pop" was done by DJ.  But he did it the yucky way by putting his finger in his mouth - don't tell his mom.

Nick and DJ carried on with a few harmonies and backing vocals and I did some hand percussion bits (shaker, tambourine and afuche cabasa).  We all gathered 'round the mic and did some clapping bits that were quite fun and then... we were done.  Woo hoo!

The Hipwaders:  clap yo' hands...

Next up:  mixing.