Stone Unturned

After 18 months, hundreds of joyful hours of writing, rehearsing, recording and producing, Mileage 51's debut album "Stone Unturned" is set to launch.

I know I have reported on this periodically over the course of the last year and a half, and before that the stereotypes album, so allow me to prevail on your patience yet again. But this has been a labour of love from start to finish.

I won't retrace my steps too far back to eliminate some duplication but suffice it to say that for the first 14 months we formed the band (Roy Bolwede, Solle Svan, Doug Bernie and I) with a goal to create an independant release of original music. The goal was to write songs that harkened back to our younger days to bring back to life (ideally) retro music with a new twist.

"Stone Unturned" is the outcome. It's a 10-track CD that features rock and blues tunes. We had 13 original songs but weeded out a few that either weren't ready or needed to be reworked.

When I last left off we were in studio recording. It was a lot of fun and I was thrilled again to have my daughter Bianca sing on the album. She has a special voice and delivers a standout performance on "Hate to Say It". We also brought in a talented harmonica player Tomlin Leckie who absolutely kills it on "Boxcar".  

After recording, Roy had to arrange each track...a painstaking process that involves optimizing each input (vocal/instrumental) and arranging them in a fashion that reflects the desired sound. Further it reflects a distinctive style/sound that ties the album together.

Once that was completed (after an enormous amount of effort from Roy) we entered one of our songs in a mixing competition on an online community called Crowd Audio, where over 220 sound engineers/mixers (some amateur, some professional) took a crack at mixing one of our songs "Lawman". Now trust me when I tell you, if there was ever a way to test how much you like a song you've co-written it's listening to it over 250 times in a short space of time!
We shortlisted to three audio engineers and conducted a second round with the winner being David Vignola, who is credited with mixing the entire CD. That took altogether about 2 months.

Following that we sent it out for mastering (sound engineering process to ensure consistency and quality across the entire album) to Ian Sheppard.

In parallel we were actively finalizing the artwork (thanks go out to the very talented Rich McCausland who is a good friend based in Geneva, Switzerland), getting quotes and selecting suppliers for CD production (while CDs are increasingly going out of style they are required to have your CD reviewed and deemed official by distributors) and secure a marketing/PR firm. Additionally we had to secure an ISRC code (that bar code that sits on the back of CDs) to register the tracks and enable sales. We also had to set up distribution (Kunaki.com was secured for CD distribution globally and Universal Music Operations for digital deployment...the latter is just being finalised by our defacto label 'Matchbox'). This was all done after we had locked up web url, facebook, twitter, YouTube and googleplus accounts for our band. To this latter point, that is the key reason it is so important to choose a band name that is unique...so you can lock up these assets and cement your brand presence.

Now, we are preparing for the launch. Last Thursday I did my first music-based radio interview with LondonFM, which will be packaged up along with our lead track "Retroman" and pushed out to over 25 radio stations largely in Europe. I must admit, it was really cool to be answering questions about the band and our music. Will share the recording once we get it. We have also dropped CDs with local radio stations and will be sending the tracks out to hometown radio/media outlets...in our case in Sweden, northern Ontario and Alberta. Finally we will be pushing out content and promotion in our social media streams.

And we are back jamming to prepare to do some gigs in Dubai with a mix of covers and originals. To that end, given our album has a more expansive sound than a four-piece can create, we have added in two musicians for gigs (another guitarist and a drummer, Roy will move to keys/third guitar/effects).

So what have I learned from this? First, you are never too old to chase a dream. Second, song-writing and performing is incredibly fun and rewarding. Third, the business of music is as much work as the making of it. Fourth, while you have to stay grounded and manage your expectations in an ultra-competitive industry, you owe it to yourself to do what you can to market what you've got.

In any case, I invite you to check out our website www.mileage51.com  Please sample the tracks...hopefully you will like them enough to buy the CD (the cost is pretty reasonable). And if you don't, no worries...we aren't doing it for the money, we're doing it because we love it.

Until next time, thanks for reading!
cheers,
Lorne