Sundays at 8 is the newly minted name of the music group that accompanies the liturgy at 8 PM on Sunday at Blessed Sacrament Parish in Ottawa. I'm one of the guitar players, and the group's leader, Dave, is the other. You can read a more formal description of the group over at the Sundays at 8 website.
The CD project is exciting for us because we get to translate our unique sound into something permanent.
The group took part in Blessed Sacrament's parish Christmas CD back in 2005. That project was a lot of fun, but the overall sound of the record most closely resembled the music from the 9:30 Mass, which makes sense, since Chris, who produced that record and put down most of the backing tracks, is the piano player at 9:30 AM. Every year for Holy Thursday, Chris combines all of the parish music groups and makes a supergroup out of all of us. I guess that's what the Christmas CD sounds most like in fact - the once a year supergroup.
Anybody who has seen us knows that we don't normally sound like that though. Here are some of the differences:
- We're guitar focused. Although we have instruments in the group other than guitar (accordion, mandolin, and piano sometimes), our songs are usually led in and filled out by guitar playing.
- We don't usually have a soloist as far as singers go. Our thing is to get people in the pews singing (which according to the post-conciliar documents re music after Vatican II is what we're supposed to do.) And we find it easier to get people in the pews singing if we're all singing. And, well, Dave really likes hearing harmonies all around us. Group singing makes us happy.
- The approach is a little more intimate: our sound includes lots of earthy styles such as bluegrass, blues, and folk.
So it was that on a cold Sunday in January, 2008 a parishioner named Magdalena approached us after Mass and said we should make a CD, and capture that sound. A week later, two other parishioners - Phil and Shirley - told us the same thing.
We started working on it, and now a year later we're close to finished. The sound is a little more fleshed out on some songs than it is at Mass, but it is certainly true to us. There are rich harmonies and lots of warmly recorded acoustic guitars.
We'll have more to write about that in the coming days. Stay tuned!
Amen to that Richard. And kudos to Richard B. for getting our website and Blog up.
ReplyDeleteWhen that woman came up about the CD I'm sure I commented that probably 15 years ago or so I thought of doing that with our group then. But alas, it was a thought without action.
And that might have been the case this time, if not for the efficiency of Richard B. in booking the recording, getting Fr. Joe's blessing, and laying down countless of hours with our tracks.
I'm sure it's been fun for other members of the group to get the recording studio experience, it was for me.
We're almost done, and I'm working on our artwork this week for the CD cover. I love the name that Richard came up with too. It's like those television commercials: "Hilarious laughs echo inside Blessed Sacrament Parish! Catch the next episode....Sundays at 8!" -- said in a booming voice of course.
Sundays at 8. Of all the names kicked around this one jumped off the page for me. It makes me laugh. It has the cadence of something like "Breakfast at Tiffanys". Or as was pointed out more accurately, it tells parishioners what time we sing (as long as they get it's .pm and not .am). And the word "Sunday" explains the Christian music we sing.
So it's a winning name all round. We just have a few more singers to go, and I have to play guitar, and then I think we're almost done. Though I'm sure I'll be sitting with Richard and Chad (sound aficionado) to agree on our final sound.
I can't wait, and it's for a good cause.
Dave :)