Lightning Strikes

No "From the Studio" update this week.

No clips or samples.

Southwestern Connecticut is prone to quickly forming, intense summer thunderstorms. They pop up out of nowhere in the late afternoon and wreak havoc on trees, powerlines and buildings. And computer sytems.

Last Wednesday afternoon, a small cell over Bridgeport did its damage. We're not really sure what happened, but it seems that either the building that houses our recording studio, or a nearby pole, was struck by lightning. Whatever happened, there were several quick flickers of power. Our studio engineer was working on some mixing at the time.

We've lost everything. The strike wiped out not only his computer, but the backup hard drive as well. But our entire recording project is gone. Wiped. Deleted. Fried, along with two 1.5 terabyte hard drives.

It wasn't just our stuff. Everything the studio was working on is apparently toast. Apple says the drives were beyond recovery, and have replaced them. The studio is working on replacing all the software that was lost.

This was obviously despressing and discouraging news for the team. Six months of hard work, gone in an instant. All that's left is a couple of rough audio recordings. Personally, I was in shock for two days. I went through all the stages of grief: anger, denial, bargaining, depression and finally, acceptance. We've thought about it, prayed about it, discussed it.

Time to start over. We are not - not - abandoning this project. Not by any stretch. The studio has committed to giving us whatever time we need to complete the record. The team has committed to doing it over. Not only that, but we've already identified areas where we can improve, both the process and the music itself. All those things we've said we'd do differently - now is the time.

We're on an accelerated schedule. We're committed to spending more time and longer sessions. We want to finish this by the end of the summer, at least the bulk of it, as schedules will become impossible once September rolls in.

Our pastor encouraged us from the pulpit this Sunday. He told us that he believes great things are coming out of this project, and perhaps this seeming disaster was allowed to happen to humble and focus us.

We've already accomplished so much. We've met some of our goals. We've recorded an album. We've learned how to work in a studio. We've grown closer as a team. And the music has already touched some people who've heard it.

To paraphrase the song "Moving Forward," we're not going back, we're moving ahead.