A Word From Denison
The recording approach to this project was simple. We wanted to capture my songs in the way that most people are familiar with me in a live setting: Solo acoustic guitar and vocal.
In early September of this year (2006), my friend Michel Musser and I borrowed our friend Jim Patton’s one room-recording studio. There, located in a small wooded area just outside of Lancaster, PA, we set up a single microphone and recorded about 50 songs over the course of 3 days. I performed each song once or twice and we moved on to the next. We then listened back to all of the tracks and selected our favorite 30 from the collection. The 30 selected tracks are what you will find here.
During the song Are You A Dreamer?, an airplane flew overhead and it was so loud that it destroyed the take. We thought that particular take was nice enough to keep, so we made a digital edit. Starting at the point just before the airplane entered, I recorded the rest of the song and then we spliced the two takes together. Other than that, all of the songs remain unedited. Due to this recording style, you will likely hear a few guitar mistakes, a few flat vocal notes, and a few background noises throughout the tracks. Despite or because of that, I hope you enjoy the songs.
You will find a few suggested play lists and an alphabetized list of the songs below. In my opinion, thirty acoustic songs can be bit much for anyone’s ears in one dose. My suggestion is to make your own play list or download whatever amount you wish and listen to the songs on shuffle.
I will also be making some podcasts of stories from my touring experiences and posting them here ASAP. If you have ever been to one of my shows, you are well aware that I like to tell stories from touring between my songs. My original idea behind this project was to give you the songs and stories so that you could arrange them together in whatever order you wish — creating “your own Denison Witmer concert” so to speak.
I’m in the middle a European tour right now. It has been a bit difficult to finalize all of this from random Internet cafés over the last month. For that reason, I am considering the first month of this page to be a BETA HappyBirthdayDenison.com. Please feel free to make suggestions on the forum page on how I can make things a bit more user friendly and improve upon the site in the future.
It’s my party. I can sing if I want to.
Peace and all the best,
Denison Witmer
October 29, 2006 — Dublin, Ireland
Never Heard Denison Witmer?
Try starting with these suggested track lists: