One Saturday, Nick and Kevin met at Margaret's Lovely Studio to make some music. Nick played some pretty sounds on the Clavinova, and Kevin pressed Record on the computer in hopes that one day, other people would be able to hear and enjoy the…

Another lovely Monroe-Robinson collaboration. This one was originally titled "It's There For Us," but when Robbie's wife really liked the line "it's simple and easy to say the words that keep us alive" in a draft version, Leum was happy to retitle…

A love song from Kenny to his lovely wife Rebecca, about 20 years in the making! Kenny wrote and recorded the vocals and most of the instruments on his own, then kindly brought the tracks to the studio to see what magic our cadre of friends…

Another lovely song from Leum. He's prolific, that one is! It was fun to collaborate on lyrical tweaks for this one, working together to tighten up a solid draft into a rich, compact song. For recording, we used a couple of condenser mics…

Mike's fun rockabilly follow-up to Scammers, Spammers, and Cons from a previous RPM Challenge. We recorded the drums, bass, one rhythm guitar track, and a scratch vocal take live off the floor, then added the other guitar tracks and a clean…

Leum Monroe - Lyrics, songwriting, vocals, acoustic guitar Margaret Bibb - Vocals Kevin Craig - Recording, mixing

Leum Monroe - Lyrics, songwriting, vocals, acoustic guitar Mike Anders - Vocals, acoustic guitar Matt Appleberry - Electric guitar Kenny Tannehill - Bass, background vocals Nick Peshman - Recording Kevin Craig - Drums, recording, mixing

Leum dropped off these lyrics at the April REM Challenge recording session, to see what other folks would do with them. At the first May recording session, we scanned through the lyrics and decided to try to put them to music. Robbie had a couple…

A lovely, sweet sentiment that, to my ear, could be a love note from one hopeful individual to another, or could read as a celebration of this everchanging group that assembles to entertain and support one other each February. Like I told Leum…

Early on, after we recorded the first couple of takes of Leum’s song, Silence is Sound, Nick and I chatted about Leum’s request for somebody to replace the guitar part on the song. I thought about maybe using my baritone and/or 12-string hollowbody…