Give It All Away For Love
I am very excited to have just completed my latest Kirtan chant CD Give It All Away For Love. I began the CD back in February 2015 and it has been a quite a journey. As with my previous CD, Devotional Heart, I was very blessed to have Tom Simenauer (aka Tabla Tom) as my musical partner and producer. Tom is a phenomenal tabla player and musician with an incredible attention to detail. He played for many years with Goma and has also played with Krishna Das and Bhagavan Das among many others, and he was the perfect person to bring my vision into reality.
Singing Kirtan (devotional chanting) is all about singing from the heart. The moment we begin to chant there is a feeling of letting go, a deepening of the breath and a sense of coming home. We can let go of the doership and simply be in the present. While focussing on these repetitive sounds our thoughts begin to recede. Feelings of fear, anger and separation are gently transformed into feelings of love, compassion and Oneness. When we chant we let go of needing to impress, perform or even sing ‘well’. What is most important is the heart connection, the feeling of devotion and longing. In light of this making a Kirtan CD is an interesting conundrum! How to balance these seemingly very different needs? On one hand there is the desire to call outfrom the heart without any concern for vocal perfection but on the other hand as soon as you record something to be listened to over and over the natural desire is to want it to be as good as possible!
Tom and I decided that the best way forward was to record the harmonium, tabla and vocals live. That way we could lose ourselves in the chants and allow them to develop very organically and my vocals would be as natural and heartfelt as possible without undue focus on making them flawless. Once this foundation was successfully laid and the moment captured we were then able to edit any glitches and then add other instruments, sounds and vocals to make the CD sound fuller and more professional. I was very fortunate to have the wonderful violin playing of Martin Solomon who added a beautiful quality of longing and devotion to the recordings. On two tracks, fellow devotional singer Vaishnavi added her exquisite vocals. Bit by bit the initial live recording was transformed into an incredibly full sounding CD. Finally we recorded a roomful of friends chanting along to create a real richness and authentic Kirtan sound.
Listening to the recordings again now after a couple ofweeks off I am really thrilled with what Tom and I have created. It is such a joy to have finally birthed this CD after such a long gestation! If you listen very closely you might notice that my vocals aren’t ‘perfect’ but I really hope you will feel compelled to chant along, and you will experience the power of Kirtan to quiet the mind and awaken the heart. This, after all, is the purpose of chanting and this CD. Give It All Away For Love is an offering from my heart to yours and I hope you will enjoy it.
To listen to samples from the CD visit: http://www.timchalice.com/cdsdownloads.htm
The CD is released on 23rd April 2016 and available to buy here: http://www.timchalice.com/apps/webstore/
The album will also be available to download from iTunes, Amazon and CDBaby.
