Can’t Wait Until Dark was an experiment.
I wish I could tell you that I went into making my first album with some grand artistic vision, a perfectly mapped-out sound, and complete confidence in what I was doing.
Absolutely not.
I had no clear path. I knew I wanted to make music, and I knew the things that excited me — hip-hop, rock, pop, goth, R&B, electronica — but knowing what you love and knowing how to turn all of those influences into something that sounds like you are two very different things.
I was in my twenties. I was figuring it out.
I started working with two producers who were at Sound Bakery at the time, and we basically started throwing things together. Different sounds, strange combinations, interesting lyrics, whatever caught our attention. There was something exciting about that because there weren’t many rules.
There also wasn’t much of a map.
Eventually I started moving from producer to producer to producer. Some people I loved working with. Some I didn’t. Some sessions felt inspired. Others felt like forced labor. And somewhere in all of that, I think I lost sight of what I actually wanted the record to be.
That’s probably the biggest thing I understand now that I couldn’t understand then:
I didn’t know how to protect my own creative voice yet.
When you’re making your first record, everybody in the room seems to know more than you do. The producer knows production. The engineer knows engineering. Someone has an opinion about the vocal. Someone else has an opinion about the arrangement. And when you don’t completely trust your own instincts yet, it’s very easy for your voice to become one opinion among many.
That’s what happened to me.
The result became Can’t Wait Until Dark — six songs released July 1, 2010 under The Davis Fountain, the name I was recording under at the time.
But here’s something I still think is incredibly cool about that little record.
Somehow, in the middle of this scrappy experiment where I was basically learning how to make an album while making one, I got to work with some seriously talented people.
Michael Urbano played drums on the album.
Yes — Michael Urbano from Smash Mouth.
How cool is that?
And when it came time to master the record, I was incredibly fortunate to have Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering in Los Angeles master it.
Those things still make me smile.
Here I was, trying to figure out what the hell I was doing, bouncing between producers, experimenting with genres and trying to find my voice — and somehow my first record had Michael Urbano playing drums and ended up being mastered by Chris Bellman.
There are parts of making that album that I questioned for years.
Those are not among them.
Was I completely happy with the album sonically when it was finished?
No.
I can say that now.
At the time, I felt like I had let some people down. More than that, I felt like I had let myself down. There were things I heard in my head that never quite made it onto the record. I hadn’t learned yet that sometimes being an artist means being the person willing to say, No. That’s not it. Let’s do it again.
For years, that disappointment affected the way I thought about the album.
But I’m in my forties now.
And looking back at my twenty-something-year-old self with very adult eyes, I’m much kinder to that person.
Because now I don’t hear Can’t Wait Until Dark as some creative failure that needs to be explained away.
I hear a bunch of people in rooms trying shit.
I hear a garage-band experiment that somehow pulled hip-hop, rock, pop, goth, electronica and R&B into the same little universe.
I hear somebody learning how records are actually made.
And I hear the beginning of me.
The funny thing is that even though I didn’t walk away from that album completely satisfied with the finished product, I walked away fascinated by the process.
Not just writing and performing.
The technical side.
Why does this sound like this?
Why does that vocal sit there?
What happens when you change the production?
Why does something incredible happen when the right people get into a room together — and why can that magic completely disappear when the wrong people are there?
I became fascinated with what happens between the idea in an artist’s head and the thing that eventually comes out of the speakers.
I didn’t know it at the time, but that curiosity would stay with me.
So no, I wouldn’t go back and “fix” the experience.
The confusion belongs there.
The disagreements belong there.
The producer-hopping belongs there.
The things I love about the record belong there, and the things that still make me think, Girl, what were you doing? belong there too.
Because Can’t Wait Until Dark gave me something much more important than a perfect first album.
It gave me my first real education in making one.
And somehow this strange little experiment is still out there. It still streams. Every once in a while somebody discovers it all these years later, completely removed from everything that was happening behind the scenes. They just hear it. Fresh.
I kind of love that.
Because I can finally listen to it without asking it to be something it wasn’t.
It was the beginning.
Messy, ambitious, confused, creative, imperfect.
Chapter One.
And there was a lot more to come.