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/.