|
Sylva singer-songwriter records, releases debut album
By Justin Goble
A Sylva musician has just released her first album.
Hanna Levin recently put out “Road of a Lifetime,” a CD featuring 15 original compositions. Copies of the album are available at Riverwood Pottery and through www.cdbaby.com.
A guitarist since the age of 17, Levin said she had been writing songs for some time.
“It wasn’t until after college that I really got serious about it,” Levin said. “In the past five years especially I’ve been more serious about my writing and playing.”
Singer-songwriter Hannah Levin of Sylva recently released “Road of a Lifetime,” her debut album. The CD features 15 original compositions, each displaying strong folk and bluegrass influences. Copies of the album are available at Riverwood Pottery and www.cdbaby.com.
Now a visual arts teacher at Mountain Discovery Charter School, Levin said music became more important to her once she began working.
“I just wanted an artistic outlet, but I didn’t want to come home and do visual arts,” Levin said. “I do that day in and day out, so I wanted to do something different. So I started playing guitar and writing songs more. But I didn’t know if I could keep it up. It’s been a dream of mine to put out a CD, but I just wanted to record what I had up to that point. I wasn’t setting out to tour or get a lot of recognition.”
So it was at the start of last summer that Levin began planning to record an album. Though she had plenty of songs to put down on tape, she didn’t have any idea of how to finance the whole process.
“I had a talk with a friend of mine, and somehow we got to talking about financing the album,” she said. “She told me about asking my family and friends to ‘pre-buy’ a CD. That way, these people could buy their CD up front and I could record it and give it to them once we’d recorded and mastered it. So I sent a letter out to a bunch of people to see how they would respond.”
The response was so positive that Levin sold enough CDs that she was able to purchase studio time.
While all of the songs on “Road of a Lifetime” center around Levin’s voice and guitar, she called on many local musicians to help out. Dave McGill of Webster produced the album and played bass and guitar on many tracks. Levin’s father Ron also contributed lead guitar parts. Karen Barnes and Jessica Johnson sang back-up vocals, and Mac Brown played mandolin.
Levin said she is a fan of string music and wanted her songs to reflect that.
“It’s pretty simple,” Levin said. “I like the aesthetics of simple, sparsely arranged music. There’s no percussion, piano, horns – nothing like that. It’s pretty straightforward. I was honored that these people wanted to play with me and help me make this.”
While recording her parts and singing wasn’t too difficult, Levin said recording all of the parts separately took some getting used to.
“We had to record scratch tracks,” Levin said. “I would sing along with my guitar to get a basic outline down, then everyone would come in and record their parts separately. We did 16 tracks like that. There’s only 15 on the CD, but we went ahead and recorded all the songs I brought in. That way we could pick out what we wanted. There was a weeding-out process going on.
“But we had time,” she said. “I started last August, and I didn’t want it to have a huge deadline. It also made it flexible for the other musicians to come in and record their parts whenever they had the time. I actually took a couple months off from recording, which was nice. It allowed me to have some space and come back with fresh ears.”
Levin said most of the album was recorded with a Martin 00-18 acoustic guitar, which was a gift from Jan Brooks, one of her father’s college friends.
“I teach at a summer camp in New Mexico,” Levin said. “A lot of the people out there kept telling me I should bring my guitar out and play. But I didn’t want to take my guitar, so I called Jan, who owns an antique shop out there. She went to graduate school with my dad. I asked her if she had an old “beater” guitar I could borrow, and she told me she would look around and get something for me. When I got there, she said she had something special for me and kept telling me to just look in the case. When I opened it, I couldn’t find the words. It was really amazing.
“I told her it was too nice of a guitar, but she just said, ‘That’s the guitar I want you to take,’” Levin said. “Jan kept telling me that it had a lot of stories in it. She had played it with my dad in school. Her ex-husband had kicked a hole in it with his cowboy boot – all kinds of things. So I was surprised she wanted to give it to me. She said I should have a guitar that’s mine. The other guitars I have are on permanent loan from my dad, who seems to have ‘guitar acquisition syndrome.’ He has around six guitars that he cycles out and loans to me. But Jan said I should have my own guitar. That was a big thing for me and was a big inspiration do this CD. If someone was willing to give me a guitar, I thought I should get this album done.”
Now that the whole process is over, Levin said she is glad to have put many of her songs to disc. She says she has enough songs for a second album, though she’s still surprised her first one is already done.
“All the pieces have come together, and now it has a life of its own,” she said. “It’s odd, because I really don’t know what to do now. All the decisions are made and everything is done with, which is odd. I worked on this for almost a year, and now it’s done. But I am ready for the CD to get out there.”
|
