AlbumEyeOfTheStorm

The "Eye Of The Storm" recording sessions took place at Witchwood Productions in Cosby, Tennessee over a couple of years, which depended on Mark being able to tear himself away from his busy schedule in New York.

In July of 2006, the following songs were recorded for the Eye Of The Storm CD. 'No Regrets', 'When The Dreams Dreamed Us', Eye Of The Storm', 'Hammer And Nail', 'We Fall', ' The Turning of the World', and Rockin' In The Cradle of Love' .

In November of 2006 Demonesque was recorded along with some other songs which due to technical recording problems did not make it onto this CD but will most certainly make it onto the next Vagrantz CD. .

In August of 2007, Peggy listened to a tape recording of Mark's song 'Briefly Cruel', she immediately loved it and requested to have it included on the CD in lieu of songs which could not be used. "Rockin' In the Cradle of Love was completely revamped and rewritten and 'The Voice' was recorded.

All of the songs written and recorded for the Eye Of The Storm CD were live performances played directly into a microphone and recorded on cassette tape. Peggy transferred the songs from analog cassette tapes to digital audio wave files on the computer. By using several music production programs Peggy produced the CD. It took her longer than she had anticipated after a couple of computer crashes and the power supply on her computer going out rendering her once trusty computer useless, not to even mention her PMS.....

The exciting thing about working with Mark McNutt over the years is that we have a wonderful friendship and work history together.   Our cllaborations began almost as soon as we realized that we were both musicians and have produced a considerable body of work which stretches back to the early '70's.

The beautiful thing about putting together a new CD is anticipating what kind of new songs we will both bring to the table. It gives a a chance to see where each other's personal lives, insights and craft has brought us to. We get to really listen to one another.

With each collaboration of songs we try to write something new but we also try to bring some songs forward from the past. This is after all our history and songs are written to be heard. The older tunes usually get a make-over to some degree or another, but we like to keep all the aspects intact that make each one unique and polish them up from there into something more than the sum of their parts. Below is a time-line of the songs written for 'The Eye Of The Storm" CD.

1985 - Eye Of The Storm                                2006- Hammer And Nail
1987- When The Dreams Dreamed Us       2007- No Regrets
1988- Rockin In The Cradle Of Love            2007- The Turning Of The World
1993- We Fall                                                   2007- The Voice
1997- Briefly Cruel                                          2007- Demonesque

Special Thanks from Doc

I would like to take the opportunity to thank a couple of people for their hard work and personal sacrifice on behalf ot this project. Thank you Mark for driving all the way down from New York with your car full of instruments, good vibes and a lot of determination. There is a frenetic energy behind the making of a Vagrantz CD.

Mark is usually here for just a handful of days because of his job and solo outings witing back home. I can't even afford to take any time off work unless he just happens to show up on my two days off, so most of the music happens in the evenings. That usually means that we write and arrange two, sometimes three songs a day roughly. That includes penning lyrics and working out harmonies and recording continuously until we learn our parts and capture down a version with the least amount of mistakes. This usually does not leave us much of an open window for experimenting around but we did manage to try on some new directions and approaches with our music this time out... one of which was bringing keyboards into the mix. It was truly a labor of love....

And speaking of love. thank you Peggy for all the simply wonderfull work that you have poured into every facet of this endeavor. Thank you for literally living with these songs day in and day out during the course of the entire production process. Tweaking and shaping them into something much more unique than what we started out with. You are an integral part of the band.