Dear Backers,
I wish we could bottle our October 30th excitement and share it with you like a bottle of champagne. I'll try my best to share it in words.
As you may have noticed, "My Love Affair With Marriage" has a lot of songs (23 of them!) and from the very beginning we knew that the film would end with a song over the closing credits. A song that hopefully would encapsulate the message of the film and uplift and inspire audiences. But we postponed writing it until the end of production and didn't get to it until September.
Writing the lyrics for the song was quite hard and took many weeks. The result I named "Lion / My Love Affair With Marriage" in reference to importance of cats in the film. Our composer Kristian Sensini quickly wrote the music, but took a couple more weeks to fine-tune it.
Now, who was going to sing it?
We wrote a wishlist: she had to be musically adventurous, be good with language (lyrics!), and be able to record before November 1st when we were scheduled to begin the final sound mix in Luxembourg.
Believe it or not, we spent several stressful weeks trying to find a singer who would be a good fit for the project and could do it before the deadline. Finally, one bleak October evening, an epiphany struck me in the form of Pink Martini and their two spectacular singers - China Forbes and Storm Large. Immediately, we reached out and got a word that China was about to go on a tour and could not do it, however, Storm was interested but could only record on October 30th, two scant days before our deadline.
This past summer Storm Large was on "America's Got Talent" where she blew them out of their panties with "I've got You Under My Skin". I also really liked her playfulness, musical acting and language skills on "And Then You're Gone". That Storm has a powerful voice is obvious to everybody with ears, and her large soul is visible to anyone with a beating heart.
October 30th came with anxiety and anticipation. The recording had to be done from distance - Storm is based in Portland, Oregon and the studio had to be there. We joined on Zoom - Sturgis and me from Brooklyn, Kristian from Italy - to recording producer Steve Sundholm's studio.
After a short chit-chat Storm started to sing and she nailed the song in a few takes. Then, after a brief break, she said she had a couple of creative ideas she wanted to try. We said sure. She added soaring harmonies on the chorus and it was amazing! We got our song!
Storm said goodbye and took off.
We were left in the wake of Storm, incredulous, happy to a point of feeling high. She was so kind, generous and creative! Did we really just record Storm Large and she gave all she had to our song?
YES! And we have a picture to prove it:
Storm records "Lion / My Love Affair With Marriage"
We had been taken by Storm.
However, we didn't get to dwell on our happiness for long. The next day, Halloween, we hopped on airplane to get to Luxembourg for the final mix.
THANK YOU so much for your Love and support!
With love,
Signe, Sturgis and the entire "My Love Affair With Marriage" Team