The Rita Miller Sessions #

I thought that these sessions deserved their own section of this document. We did a lot of exploration, trying things to see what works. I also wrote the first string section for a couple of Rita’s songs. I had never written for strings before and there was a lot for me to learn about that as well. As you know, Joe Fritz was part of our motley crew of people that was around the studio all the time and helping out wherever they could. These were all a great bunch of friends and I really liked being around them. Besides being a gifted singer, Joe was also a talented violin player and good violin players know other violin players so he pulled these people that he knew. They were probably studying music at the university. When I gave them the music they were asking me about bow articulations. This was a learning thing for me, if you want the long continuous string like sound you have to alter different violins to when the can bow down and up. Joe helped out and they put bowing articulations on the scores. I have since taken classes on writing for strings and have gone through all kinds of things that you can articulate on the music that tells them what to do in a given part.

Some of the songs that they also recorded came from Richards old concept band “Dorsty Grimpits and the Mehavolets Boys”. These songs I was not involved in the production of them so in the end Rita had enough tracks to fill an album. I found out just recently that P.J. Perry also played saxophone on some of the tracks that they recorded.

During this time I figured I should get the songs registered with a performing rights organization. I tried to get Wild West Music as a publisher with ProCana and they could not give me that name. I wasn’t sure what was going on but it was then that I decided to go with CAPAC and they had an office in Vancouver. I made the call and it was not a problem. I think it was just some intervention to get me on the right path. I became a pretty strong advocate for CAPAC and even made some friends when I went to visit them one day.

Helen Wong painted this beautiful picture that was going to be used as the cover for the album. It was a painting of Rita and her hair turning into a dove. Helen was very good with these kinds of projects. I don’t know what state any of the recordings were in. I am sure we must have mixed them down from the 8 tracks to a finished master. I just know that I did not have any of the tapes that were done during those days. I just had cassette tapes of the songs that we did.