|
|
|
VOLUME 1
All words, music, vocals, and instruments by Dolph Chaney.
Produced (ha!) and engineered (ha!ha!) by Dolph Chaney.
|
VOLUME 1 was written in Atlanta and was originally intended to become the 1-CD studio followup to NEW BIRD RISE. I had initial conversations with a local Christian studio and had been offered generous funding.
Just as all seemed to be humming along, I began to feel that it was time for me to leave Atlanta. In short order, I resigned my job and made plans to move up to Champaign, IL (where Rebecca, my then-fiancee, lived). This was the culmination of a year's worth of restlessness and forward motion, and it came at the cost of some important relationships. Hey, I gotta be me. At the next studio meeting, it also became clear that there were some disagreements among the team about some of the material. The songs were more extreme than on NEW BIRD RISE -- the prayers were even more naked, the metaphors more mixed, the anger more twisted, and the arrangements wilder (more Gene Wilder than Matthew Wilder). The studio players were simply disturbed by the darker parts, but these differences were crucial to reflecting my emotional and spiritual state of growth and turmoil. So, to be true to the material and to myself, I tabled the full-studio version of the project. By the time I was again in any position to consider a studio version of the record, I had written the core of LOUDNESS 2. Over time, the assemblage of home recordings of the 13 songs has come to feel like the album proper. The section between "The Oui Hours" and "Here Comes God" probably would have benefitted most from deeper examination and editing, but as a portrait of me in 1999, VOLUME 1 is accurately blemished and beautiful. |