Dads & Daughters album to be reissued

Yes that's right folks, we've decided to do a second pressing of the Dads and Daughters' album Song Books and Pianos.

Some of you may or may not know that the Dads and Daughters is a gospel group that is made up of some of myself, Piccu's and Merlin's family members. My grandfather was sort of the leader the of group and my mother plays the piano with my aunt and cousin and great uncle involved as well, among others.

Basically every dad had a daughter in the group, but I guess what made people love their music so much is that anyone that wanted to sing along could join in. Of course they had a nice group of really solid singers that they would use to fill in, but the core group was what made them go.

Piccu and I made up these CDs last Christmas and gave them away. The recordings are far from professional. They were made with the cheapest boomboxes and cassette players that money could buy. They were all made by my grandfather and he only made them to see how they sounded. He passed away several years ago as have other dads in the group, but despite the poor audio, people can't seem to get enough of them.

The music is straight up old time gospel with only a piano played by my mother accompanying them. There is something about the energy in the songs. Nothing in the contemporary christian or traditional gospel genres can touch it. I can't listen to that stuff. For some reason I guess people think that making the simple hymnal songs huge arrangements with a full band would be a good idea, but it's not. I don't even care if the piano isn't in tune. For a Christmas vibe I also threw in a recording of my mother singing the only version of O Holy Night that need be uttered by the human voice. But that's just my opinion. Elvis could almost do it as well, but not quite.

With the last run of 50, the biggest setback was that I was trying to make it look as professional as a desktop production could be and cover on the actual discs themselves is tough to do well. You can print out sticker-style labels, I did, and they are adequate, but I wanted something a little better. I noticed that after being in my truck for a winter that air bubbles formed under the paper.

I was looking into Lightscribe CDs, which would be ideal in my opinion despite it being monchrome, but I don't need a $150 DVD burner. I just need a device that will do the Lightscribe part. Lightscribe is awesome because it uses the laser in a DVD/CD burner and etches a picture into a special coating on top of a DVD or CD. Incredible technology, but discs are somewhat hard to come by and I don't want to invest in a DVD burner when I already have one.

My solution at this point is a fairly new printer from Epson, my favorite inkjet printer company. I just purchased an Epson Stylus Photo R220 inkjet printer today. It is a very inexpensive printer in that it only costs $100. What makes this printer super cool is that it can print covers on CDs and DVDs. And they have blank discs with a pure white cover for just such a thing. The only difference is that most CD printers are much more expensive. The only draw back is that since it is ink, they have to dry for about 24 hours and they aren't waterproof, but it's much better than a silly old sticker. And it's a regular printer too. Most consider it to print photos very well. With 6 colors it should.

So, after a $15 two year warranty and 50 printable CDs, I'm out about $150. I'll get about 75 CD covers/notes printed at a local print house and we'll be in the run for about $225 or so. I should be able to make that back and hopefully make a sizable donation to the church.

So I'll probably get my snow photo for tomorrow and come home to figure out how this thing works. I made CDs the last time it snowed.