Too Much Information

It’s Friday night and I actually called in sick to all of my places of employment today and to Shabbat tonight. Well, Shabbat happens with or without me. And while I miss the people, food and Torah study with our usual Friday night group, I feel like crap. I just needed a whole day at home to recover (just a bad cold, but when the throat goes, I can’t work). So here I am, Friday night at home, blogging.

So now it’s the next morning. I don’t mean that it was midnight just a moment ago. I mean that I guess I felt more like crap than I thought. I went into the bedroom to rest a little before finishing this and couldn’t get myself back out to the computer. It’s 7AM and I woke up a half an hour ago coughing, not for the first time. So I took some Robitussin (the gel-caps) and I took a shower. I’m planning to go back to bed after this, but I wanted to let my hair dry and this seemed like a good forum in which to do that. I may also be delirious.

OK, this is supposed to be about the recording and I’ve gone too entirely way off on a tangent, even for me. I may have shared too much personal information in the above paragraph, but now I’m about to share too much information about the business of recording. Or more specifically, about the business of my recording.

As I mentioned in an earlier blog (Light at the End of the Tunnel) I have an Executive Producer, Doug Furth, who is putting up all of the money for this project. He didn’t just show up one day and hand me money (although that’s what I wished someone would do for the last eight years). Doug is a Temple member and we’ve been acquainted for the last two or three years as I was the substitute song leader for the Shabbaton program. This year I took on a more permanent position (as song leader and fourth grade teacher) and had more opportunities for conversation. I didn’t know what he did for a living, but it had come to my attention that he had produced a movie. I struck up a conversation with him about the movie and, half jokingly, asked if he wanted to produce a Jewish CD. To my astonishment, he said yes without hesitation. OK, now I’m in “this how the script for the Noah Budin bio-pic goes” mode. He actually said it was a possibility and that I should call him so we could meet. I’ll spare you the details of the meeting here, but after talking and playing him some of the songs, he asked me to do some research, find a studio and write up a budget. I didn’t realize he was actually saying, “Yes. Tell me how much you want and we’ll begin.” I took it to mean he wanted a proposal. So I wrote one. It’s more of a prospectus . And it included a proposed budget. I tried to keep it low, but realistic.

This prospectus, however, is a good document to have. It put, and keeps, the project in focus. And this is where I’m going with this whole blog. You can find the prospectus at this link. I’ll have to revise the budget soon, but it should give you some (more) insight into the kind of detail, organization, time and energy that goes into a project like this. A lot of research and leg-work, especially when it came to the studio choice, went into this. Hope you find it useful or interesting or both.

My hair is dry now. I’m going back to bed.