College made me a musician. Why do you ask? Because all of my bandmates, for the exception of Key, I met in college. One of my professors Dr. Pearson once said during a lecture (and I hope I get most of her quote right) to "take advantage of the ability to freely exchange ideas in college, because it is one of the last opportunities you will be able to gather in one space to do so without restraint." And this is what happens with musicians in college. No managers, no contracts, no politics; you just decide to put yourself in room with other talented and willing folks and let the magic naturally emerge, as it should be. I've had many a moment like this at both Marymount College and LMU. Working with Ohemaah was one of them.
As a matter of fact, I had no idea she even a singer/songwriter until almost 2 years into our friendship, when she approached me in Spring 2010 to her help make a demo for a song she wrote. She had build up the nerve to perform at LMU's weekly Open Mic @ The Living Room and needed a beat. So we met in one of LMU's small piano practice rooms in the Music department on a Saturday morning and put together a demo instrumental of the song. She layed the piano cords on one of LMU's old rickety grand pianos and used my Korg X-50 to lay down the strings. I programmed the drums and other musical arrangements. That next Monday, she performed the song to a very receptive crowd. Which I still have the footage of her performing that night to this day. We talked about actually recording the song in full soon after, but schedule's never lined up, and it never happened.
Cut to about 3 weeks ago when I received a call from 'Heeme (a nickname I still call her which was given to her by my then girlfriend), telling me she had just finished recording her debut EP and was asking me advice on the best way to release it. At the end of the conversation, we both promised we would send each other autographed copies of our albums. A week ago, she received her autographed copy of
V.I.S.I.O.N.S. signed by me and fellas. Just today, I received my autographed copy of her EP entitled
Symphony.
To my delight, when I opened up the booklet to read the liners, I saw she had included
The Road Less Traveled, the song we recorded that day on the EP. But to my surprise, she gave me a production credit on it: "Beat originally mixed by Charles Nunley IV (Honor Flow Productions)." EVEN MORE surprising, when I popped in the CD to listen to the track, as it turns out, although now it's much more mixed down with some additional instrumentation, she used THE EXACT SAME DEMO we recorded that one Saturday morning at LMU!!! I can still here the cricks of that old piano, lol!!!
I couldn't be more happier that my first official production credit outside of an H.F.P. record would come from a beautifully written record such as this. Sonically, it's pretty different then you're use to hearing from me. Furthermore, I'm glad 'Heeme is really make a run for it (no pun intended) in terms of pursuing her passion of music. She has a message in her songwriting that needs to be heard. And I'm blessed that I was given a chance to contribute to her journey; the road less traveled.
