Making the CD

We didn't exactly raise the dead at Oakland Cemeterey, but none of them got up and walked out on us, either, so we count it as a victory. We had great weather (cloudy and cool with a threat of rain, unlike last year when it was broiling hot) and a good turnout from family and friends. A few people we didn't even know hung around and listened through the whole performance! Who'd a thunk it?
But, as you can see from the picture, we are looking ahead to the CD (and the next gigs we have lined up). That's Mike Nugent in the background on mandolin (my jokes about leaving his guitar out in the rain and drying it on the hot setting wore kind of thin at the gig) and Charles Chaz Gowing in the foreground on guitar during our recording session at Doppler Studio. We have the final mix and now we're going around about packaging. We may have decided to use some of the gig payments to pay for the packaging, rather than donate all that directly to the church, which is our usual warmhearted and generous pattern. Since we give all the proceeds from selling the CD to the church anyway, it seems like an ethically acceptable way to do it, because the packaging costs were climbing pretty high.
We have decided on a pretty ecofriendly package with almost no plastic except for the shrink-wrap, which we all hate but apparently its required for a professional look. We plan to go with a "wallet" design on of cardboard, or at least very heavy paper, that opens like a wallet (hence the clever name) and the CD slides into a sleeve. So there's no plastic jewel case. It would be printed on 4 panels, and we hope to include lyrics on an insert.
The goal is to have this done, printed, packaged, ready to sell, by the church's Homecoming in early November, so times a-wastin'. We hope to sell a bunch that day, and then sell more at the church's Live Nativity Scene leading up to Christmas. What a perfect gift for those people who are wasting their time looking at live animals and religious stuff when they should be out buying presents!
We have several gigs lined up in the near future; Avondale Estate's annual festival in the park, and a home owners association; then we have a Bluegrass Sunday at church November 15. Whew! What fun. We learned at the Cemetery we need to do more practicing on the starts and stops of songs; there's a big difference between handling the tough stuff by ourselves and pulling it off perfectly on the first try in front of an audience. Back to rehearsals!