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Mike Errico Studio Log. 07.23.10

:: July 22nd 2010 ::

Mike Errico Studio Log. 07.23.10

Recovery.

A rough vocal session last week really bummed me out. I couldn't clear my throat, couldn't do what I wanted to do, and basically, well, sucked. We packed the microphone away and got to many other things - sifting through Bruce's brilliant pedal steel takes, clearing away space to allow the songs to breathe, and plotting finishing touches - including possibly reviving "Ready or Not," a song I abandoned a couple weeks back. It's just nagging me. Finish me. You dork. It's saying. Finish me. It has half its lyrics and it offers an opportunity in that way. I'm getting that strange sadness at the close of a sentence where you hope you've said what you started out trying to say. Or maybe I'm just trying to keep the process alive. I'll know when I get there.

But my voice. I was bummed. This never happens. I can roll out of a car after 11 hours and my voice is right there for me. I became depressed, then nervous. We cancelled a day. Holy crap, that pissed me. Off.

Then I started getting coughing fits. At night, mostly, horrifying, bottom of the feet to the top of my head coughs that left my neck sore and my sight blurry. I'd be up at night, like a commercial TV dad with an abnormally red nose. In old-man pajamas. Powder blue, with a...breast pocket? For what? Why would a sleeping dad need a pocket?

Finally, I went to the doctor, a perfect blond Ken doll of a man who held a stethoscope to my back and said, "Jesus. You're wheezing like crazy. Pretty textbook case of bronchitis." He put me on a nebulizer -- there's something in this world that is called a nebulizer -- that blew vapor into my lungs and made my heart race. He prescribed drugs.