Recording Music Is Life was our first time stepping into a real studio as a full band. Not a home setup, not a garage. A real professional environment with isolation booths, ribbon mics worth more than our cars, and engineers who know how to shape sound. We locked in two marathon sessions at L.G. Hamilton’s studio, The Music Group, in Edmond: twelve hours on July 9 and ten more on July 24, 2024. It was tight, it was hectic, and it forced us to grow up fast as a band.

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Jazz isn’t something you build piece by piece like hip hop or rock. You record it live. That means no hiding, no stacking takes until it’s perfect, and no safety net. Every musician has to show up locked in, ready to play full takes with very few punch-ins. When something isn’t perfect, you make a call: redo the whole thing or live with the human moment. Even Miles left cracked notes on legendary records. That’s part of jazz. That’s part of truth.

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We had two engineers on deck: L.G. Hamilton and Chris McKinley. Jeron and Butter tracked horns in one booth, Alex held down bass in his own booth, drums and the grand piano filled the live room, and Calliope spent the entire day in the control room singing scratch vocals to guide the band. After hours of that, she stepped into the booth and recorded every final vocal you hear on the album in one stretch. That alone is a professional-level feat.

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A couple nights before recording the title track, Butter wrote the fanfare that opens the song. Cold start: Calliope, then trumpet, then sax, each carrying the motif. On the second run-through in the studio, the band found the pocket — the stop-hits inspired by James Brown, the controlled chaos at the end, the kind of energy you only catch once. Butter walked out of the booth and said, “If that’s not a hit, I don’t know what a hit sounds like.” Then Chris walked in and told us we had to redo it.

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Why? A very obvious miss on the James Brown-style hits. Time was tight. Energy was fading. And everyone knew that solo wasn’t going to happen the same way again. But the pros did their job — they surgically fixed the slip without ruining the take and preserved the moment. Same for a small overstep from another instrument. Jazz is live art, but engineering is surgery.

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The guitar textures on Music Is Life came from Aaron Squirrel, who added rhythm, lead, and a “Shaft”-style scritch track that cuts through the arrangement. It’s a dense recording but mixed with intention so every voice — every horn line, every bass phrase, every cymbal wash — has room to breathe.

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What we accomplished in two sessions is rare. Most seasoned jazz groups take far longer, with far more resources. We walked in as rookies and walked out with an album that sounds nothing like a first attempt. We’re proud of what we made together and proud of how it represents who we are as a band right now: hungry, honest, and all-in.

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This is Music Is Life.