One Guitar is a group of singer/songwriters who have come together to meet at Our Redeemer Lutheran Church. This outstanding group of talented singer/songwriters are donating the proceeds of the double cd they have recorded to Maureen's Haven Homeless Shelter Program.   Click the photo to the left to watch the pre-release trailer for this project!

Please donate to help defray the cost of production of this amazing project.  CD's will be available for purchase after production is completed.

HISTORY:

About 2 years ago on a very rainy night we had a small attendance at our monthly songwriting workshop at Our Redeemer Lutheran Church in Aquebogue , NY. We got through our songs quickly and decided to each play one more. I suggested everyone play their next song on my 1961 Gibson J45. We were setup in the very center of the sanctuary. The natural reverb was great. Everyone played and we all remarked we should record right here with this guitar sometime.

Well this past year, Thrivent a Lutheran affiliated insurance company that I am a member of, was offering a seed money grant for good ideas within the community to show how to live generously. As the end of the year was approaching I put in for a grant. Thrivent endorsed the idea of a recording session with proceeds going to help the homeless and gave the $250.00 grant and some great tee shirts too, to get us started. The trick was to get the project done within 3 weeks so as to be done before 2014 was over. 

The One Guitar Project started as a call out mostly on Facebook to all the members of East End Songwriters Showcase and by word of mouth to many of our Singer'/songwriter friends. I asked Mick Hargreaves of Lantern Sound Recording Rig if he would be interested in being our recording engineer. He loved the concept and said yes. And at the same time 31 people said yes to a single day recording on December 27th, middle of holiday weeks,

Let me say this. Only God could have made this happen! Because if you have ever tried to get 4 musicians to get together for something you know trying to gather 31 musicians together is a mathematically impossible task.

Each person would have a 20 minute slot to play up to 2 songs on my guitar which they had most likely not seen or played before they arrived. I asked for 2 songs each to ensure a rich variety and styles to choose from for the final product. I wanted this to be something you could listen to over and over, not just be a compilation disc to raise money that good folks would buy and throw on the shelf or worse in the garbage because they wanted to help a cause.

Mick and I did 2 test setups in the weeks before the date to find the right configuration of mics etc.so our participants could just step in and start recording. Thanks you Mick Hargreaves for this extra work!

I hoped to get maybe a single disc of good recordings at best based on the short playing time for each player. The day began at 6 for me to make sure we had a great green room we doughnuts and coffee and later pizza etc. We encouraged everyone to come earlier than their timeslot to hang with each other. A community was born. I prayed with many and I always asked ask them to be"Awesome" especially if they were nervous. And they must have listened. Mick made them feel at home and got them right in their groove. They messed me up. They gave me 1 usable take each. 1 of our players called in with the flu and another great guy came and played 2 cover songs. This is a shoe string budget project and we can't pay to use copyrighted songs with no permission. So sadly we were down to 29 great takes. Maybe I shouldn't say sadly? I had to let everyone Know they messed up and played great so now we need to do a double album. That was a lot more work for Mick and I but the love each player put into their song gave us the push we needed to make it sound right.

This is a true old school live in the room recording. The only reverb is from the room. There is no pitch correction. Engineers hands, eq, and some compression. The goodness is from the heart of each participant. We just completed final mixes. We know we need between $2,500.00 and $3,000.00 to master and begin pressing. I ask you all to consider donating to help us complete this project. I will post details how you can do that in the next day or so. If we don't have to spend any money on final production costs then 100% of disc sales will go directly to Maureen's Haven Homeless Outreach.

Hope you love this story and pray you can be part of a great happy ending! Ask your friends to like this page help us spread the word.

Thank You
Don Bracken