As of this writing we’re at the last day of month one in 2022. The proverbial “it went really fast” comes to mind, as well as any number of other statements being made about what 2022 will be. We’re still hearing hourly (if we choose to listen that often) about all the COVID news, market fluctuations, weather/climate and escalating world tensions. And then we find we have to come back to what each of us are going to do in light of (or in spite of) everything around us. Business and personal decisions continue and we’re each a day older with every one that passes.

One of the “events” my wife and I took part in during this winter was to attend the memorial service of a fellow audio engineer. We were within months of each other in age when his life ended suddenly. As I listened to the stories of people who knew him and had worked on projects in his studio I found myself wondering what people would be saying should I be the one who was the topic of the day. Would there be a recounting of fun times, the joy of completed work, the comradery of the process, years of relationship developed and maintained over time, being along side when life brought its tougher moments – or what? I guess it’s all called our legacy, but it’s really forged day by day over years of time.

These events (and other reflective moments) I think should cause us to take an inventory of our earthly and forever destiny, but also to maximize the journey. I, like most of us, often say when asked about something that consumes a lot of my time, “Well it’s not really my priority, I just seem to spend a lot of time on it.” I believe to be truly honest we should recognize that what we spend our time on is in fact our priority. Yes, we’ll always have seasons where what becomes front and center must shift – even if temporarily before we can come back to our longer term focuses, but when does “short term” become “long term”. Year after year finally becomes a lifetime and before we know it that was our life – even if we said all along we wanted to be something different or our life lived another way. And so comes to mind some decisions and plan of action I need to undertake shortly here at Tesco Productions with studio upgrades and some updating of the control room and studio spaces. One of the ironies of being in business for over 35 years and hopefully having done a decent job serving clients all that time, is that you develop a pretty large list of people wanting you to work with them and providing referrals. That’s a great problem to have for which I’m certainly grateful, but I’m also needing to figure out how to carve out the necessary time to get these updates done that will provide much greater efficiency, more enjoyable sessions and better products. I haven’t solved how to do this yet, but it does need to get done very soon. Any suggestions? Maybe I should just do more of this – after all I can reflect and make plans on the ice, right?

Carmelita de la Guardia Performed this past Friday evening in the Sicula Italia Foundation “A Night In Sicily” event at the Villa Aletta in Omaha. The evening’s events were part of an awareness and fund raising effort surrounding the Sister Friendship City relationship established this year between Omaha, NE and Carlentini, Sicily. Many of the Italian immigrants that arrived in Omaha came from Carlentini, and there’s many efforts being made to formalize and strengthen that heritage and relationship.

Carmelita’s piano piece The Sicilian Heart was performed as a video and she also gave live vocal performances accompanied by her 4-piece band. Although wintery weather showed up during the course of the evening it didn’t dampen the showing of support by the attendees. My wife and I were honored to be invited and after using a plastic grocery bag as a makeshift windshield snow scraper (I wasn’t ready for winter yet) we safely made our way home.

Two days before Thanksgiving I sent the final files to Stephen Tefft upon his completion of 16 songs. Yes, it does barely fit on one CD – over 79 minutes, but it sounds like it will be released as two discs. I’m very sure I’ve never in the 35-year history of Tesco Productions recorded that quantity of songs in a single project before. His wife had gifted him some recording time a while back, but life and family responsibilities had pushed the doing part down the road (there’s even a song about a long slow road – although not about the project). The recording began the day after Independence Day and we spent a good part of that week laying down all the basic tracks. This included multiple acoustic guitars (up to 4 on a couple of songs), bass and electric guitar, and most of the vocal parts. We generally met one evening a week for the next few months as we continued to add an eclectic collection of instruments from standard and bass harmonicas, banjo, jews harp, penny whistle, melodica (to name some of them), and a wide assortment of percussion. Stephen recorded some of these parts at his home and they usually lined up OK when we dropped them in the original recording sessions. We had tried to coordinate this process so it was as seamless as possible. The final few weeks were mostly focused on initial and revised mixes – with the first full mix runoff providing focused listening on their family vacation trip. With mixes completed I then mastered all the songs and there was only one oversight I missed which was easily remedied.

You can likely tell just from the instrumentation these tunes are not always your “normal” fare of lyric, arrangement and presentation. In your lyrical journey you’ll travel down paths of heart longings, relationships (both with God and each other), memories of childhood, and hope for tomorrow. There’s about as many styles as there are instruments, and yet it’s still a cohesive listening experience as you progress through. The songs aren’t out yet, but will be showing up soon on many internet streaming sites as well as their family website https://www.abitaskew.com/.