I just left a meeting this afternoon with an old friend, producer/engineer Aaron Gandia, in which Aaron and I committed to working together to finish the new Traveler’s Dawn record. We hope to be beginning our production schedule in the next couple of weeks and will tentatively aim for a release date in the Summer of ’12, hopefully early summer, but we’ll see how it all plays out.

Aaron is a remarkable talent who I’ve known since 2004, but who I’ve never worked with directly until now. He is currently the chief engineer at Phat Planet Recording Studios in Orlando. I recently realized that he and I have been living in the same city for the past several years and hadn’t run into one another until I stumbled across his name reading about the goings-on over at Phat Planet. We’ve been in touch over the past few months and began to finalize plans today to work together on this project.

Aaron is one of those engineers you meet who really loves sound. He loves music too, of course, but he appreciates the science of sound in a way that brings out my inner sound geek whenever we get together to talk. He’s been known to mic a drum kit with literally every microphone their studio owns, just to sit in the control room and appreciate the subtle differences between them. That’s the sort of thing he calls “fun.” He has some of the best ears of anyone I’ve ever met, and he recently told me that in his search for the perfect near field mixing monitors he couldn’t find exactly what he wanted so he decided to build his own. No, I’m not kidding. With the help of some of his associates over at Phat Planet, he has already built and tuned a set of custom studio mains in the control room of their “A” room over there, and they sound really good. I can’t wait to hear what he comes up with for these new monitors he’s working on, and I’m really excited to work with him on what will be a very different, and hopefully much-enjoyed, new Traveler’s Dawn album.

You can follow our progress here on TravelersDawn.com. I hope everyone is well, and thanks for your interest in Traveler’s Dawn music.

Until next time,

Dave Heibl

***Update – Began work with Aaron yesterday, March 1st*** (See new pic: top left of the post)

    I wanted to share a quick update as summer rolls into fall. I will be discontinuing the sale of the Traveler’s Dawn self-titled record through iTunes as of the beginning of October. If having the album up on iTunes were generating new sales to people who were finding the record in the iTunes Music Store and would not have otherwise been exposed to it, this decision would be different. However, that’s not the case. I can track sales of the album back to people I’ve met face to face purchasing it after our meetings: friends who have had conversations with me about the music, people who have heard me play acoustic and then sought out the record, etc. That being the case, and sales being a modest and manageable number on a monthly basis, it will make more sense moving forward to simply make the Traveler’s Dawn catalog available through this website in the future – both the old stuff and the new – at least for now. Payments will likely utilize PayPal and delivery will be digital, unless the customer specifically needs or wants a CD copy. More updates to come.

Recording Update

    Speaking of the new record, it is suffering from the same delays that have plagued projects since the first record I ever made: I think I like it, and therefore I’ve suddenly gotten more careful about its production and wanting to do it right. In think about how to finish it, and the unfortunate reality is that until today I hadn’t so much as touched it for several weeks. This, of course, is exactly the sort of delay I was hoping to avoid in my original approach to this record, but it seems I’m battling it anyway. I’ve had discussions with a couple of different mix engineers, and I’ve rough mixed many of the tracks myself trying to decide which direction to take it. I’ve also written two more songs since my last update, and those may well be included in the final track list when all is said and done. I’m still not talking about even a hypothetical release date since I’m disinclined to make any promises on this one that I can’t later keep. This record will happen though, and I’m grateful for the patience of the people who care and anxious to spring something new upon the rest of the unsuspecting world.

Until next time,

Dave Heibl

I know that during the past several years there have been several announcements through various channels that I was on the verge of releasing new Traveler’s Dawn material, a new record, and that each of those times the news has never culminated in an actual release. Well, I’m pleased to be able to announce that there finally now exists a new Traveler’s Dawn record that actually will be released as soon as it is finished and ready for the light of day. I promise and swear upon my Les Paul Standard that I am not jerking you around this time and it is safe to become mildly excited if this news interests you. It is a full record that currently sits at 13 tracks, with the hope that one or two more will be added before release. The new record is untitled as of yet, but I’ve been calling it the Allston Lane Sessions for awhile now behind closed doors simply because its the first meaningful TD recording to come out of the humble project studio I built four years ago at that address. So far, what I have to tell you is this: It’s basically a “live-in-studio” record and it has been an absolute ton of fun to make.

This new record started out as me just messing around in the studio making home videos of some unreleased TD songs that were to be destined for YouTube. I had gotten ambitious, gone back, and dug out all the old half finished songs that had been set aside unfinished as making the second TD record got pushed farther and farther onto the back burner by other priorities in my life, and I went on a week-and-a-half-long writing binge finishing as many of them as I could using ideas that had been building up in my head for ages. I knew that life wasn’t going to give me large uninterrupted blocks of time like I used to have in the old days to work on this project and I knew that if I let my inner musical perfectionist have free reign over the creative process I’d never get anything accomplished in the limited time I had to dedicate to it all. I knew this because it’s been the pattern that has been repeating itself each time I’ve tried to get new material recorded now for 5 years. Making the recordings, therefore, involved an entirely new approach for me compared with the way we made the first TD album. Rather than being carefully constructed a track and a piece at a time, at the heart of each of these new recordings is an acoustic and vocal performance of the song done straight through, usually in a single take, just vox and acoustic guitar. Rather than trying to play through each of the parts mistake free and correct anything that went wrong in another take, I focused instead on capturing energetic and natural live recordings of the songs even if that meant leaving obvious mistakes on tape. There was no click track, no headphone mix, etc., just me and my guitar with two mics in the booth.

My expectations weren’t real high going into making these recordings and in the end that kind of took the pressure off and made all the difference in the world, in my opinion. When I went back and listened to the first few, I was shocked to discover that I was really excited about how they sounded. Though I always wanted Traveler’s Dawn to be a moderately hard rock, electric guitar driven project; many of you know that my roots as a musician are as more of a folk music, Americana, acoustic singer-songwriter-type. I pushed my material towards the style and genre that I wanted my project to be, and I’m glad I did because I love to rock out as much as anybody; but, there have been cases where the material I’ve written and that harder rock style didn’t always fit like a glove. These new recording sessions gave me a chance to really hear some of my songs produced in a style that is more like the style in which they were originally written: me and my acoustic guitar. Adding bass and some keys, etc., to that foundation in overdubs gave the songs some very nice sonic depth and intrigue but keeping it comparatively chill also allowed some of the details and nuance of these songs to shine through where in a more rocked out format those kind of subtleties are kind of lost in the wash of sounds. There are still rockers on this record, for sure, but they are just presented to the listener differently because of the simplicity of how they’ve been recorded. It’s been a refreshing change for me, and it’s been a lot of fun.

Another tremendously fun part about this process has been being able to revisit some old Traveler’s Dawn tunes with the perspective of having played these songs hundreds of times in the past six years and yet being able to hear them in a new way now and record them as I’ve added to them and come to play them through repetition, rather than how they were originally recorded. More than half of the record will be brand new, never-before-heard stuff; but while most new listeners will probably be hearing TD for the first time, I think even old TD supporters won’t feel cheated by these revisited tunes appearing on the record because they are presented in very different ways than you’ve heard them before.

So, to wrap this up, there really is going to be a new Traveler’s Dawn record. It’s going to be kind of a “live-in-studio” acoustic vibe (maybe VH1 Storytellers-ish?) and I’m honestly really excited about it. It’s simple, it’s stripped down, it’s low budget, and at least for now the plan is to mix and master it myself; but, musically I feel like it is a big step forward for me and something that people are really going to get some genuine enjoyment out of.

Sincerely,

DH

Ever since my life went six shades of crazy back in 2006 and the second iteration of Traveler’s Dawn disbanded for good, I’ve been wanting to get together material for a second record. I wanted to learn from the lessons and abundant mistakes of my first time around, and allow myself to grow away from old influences some and into a new phase as a musician, as a songwriter, and as a person; and I wanted the music to grow with me. I had a lot of help the first time around, and the self-titled Traveler’s Dawn record never could have happened without that amazing summer I spent in Tulsa with PJ, Ben, Josh, Monty, JM, Dave, and everyone who supported me through the process. It’s not like that record is a masterpiece or anything, but for a first effort and not knowing what the hell I was doing half the time I’m still proud of it. The guys up in Wisconsin; Adam, Travis, and Ryan might have been able to help me reclaim that and move forward, but I didn’t let them. I’m not sure why except to say that I had my head stuck pretty far up my back door at that time, and the right combination of available time, money, and inspiration never came together again over the next few years. I didn’t know what to do; and, rather than fighting for it, I let it slide and I just moved on to other things.

This isn’t a sad story though, and I don’t want to tell it that way. Life has taken some wonderful twists and turns over the past few years and has never ceased to surprise me. I think sometimes about the different directions things might have gone if I’d have handled everything better, but when I look at where I am now it is hard to feel anything but grateful for what life has given me. Some mild embarrassment might be in order for my behavior at intervals in that past, but overall the memories are good ones and I hope I’m forgiven for the rest.

So, what I’ve come the long way around to write is that I think the time has come to share some new things, to bring to light some of the half-finished songs and new recordings that have marked my numerous attempts to motivate myself to resurrect this project over the past half decade. I hope, as always, that some of my tunes might find their way into the soundtrack of our lives.

DH