I have been a member of the vocal group, The Harmony Brothers, for over eight years now.
All four of us (Alan, Dave, and Ron) met as members of the Spiritual Life Center (SLC) choir which, at that time, was under the wonderful direction of Richard Burdick.
After singing together in the SLC choir for a couple of years, we wound up jamming and singing together as a lark at a summertime hootenanny in the little churche’s courtyard. We had such a good time, we decided to keep singing together!
Over the last eight years or so, we have built quite a repertoire together and have done a marvelous job of co-creation through vocal arrangements, ringing harmonies, and some original tunes written by myself and Alan Klein. About five years ago, after we had been singing on Sunday mornings at SLC off and on for a couple of years and receiving positive appreciation from the congregation members, I decided it was time to take ourselves more seriously and start being compensated for our talent (i.e., getting paid for the gigs).
So, we requested financial compensation from SLC (which they gladly provided) and began booking ourselves at other New Thought churches in the greater Sacramento area and a bit beyond. So far, we have performed at the Center for Spiritual Awareness (West Sacramento), Unity of Stockton, Unity of Davis, and Unity of Vacaville. It’s been a slow go of it for us; the work of establishing our name and reputation in the New Thought circuit. Over time, we have lived and breathed enough musical material to play at least two full sets of live music. We even were the featured (and only) headliner at an SLC cabaret back in September 2006.
We kept being asked by folks if and when we would have a CD available for them to buy, so we began to seriously consider that idea. As a matter of fact, we did arrange for a friend of ours, Phil Mead, to record our September 2006 SLC cabaret performance, in the hopes that we could use that as a live CD to market and sell to our growing fanbase. After working with the live recording (supported generously and patiently in the process by Phil), it just wasn’t the recording we wanted to present to our current and future fans.
So finally, this year in early October, we went into the recording studio to begin our first studio project. I’ll give an update on this in my next posting. Stay tuned!
