"The Box" ....... A personal journey within a song!

Photography by Nicole Dalhuisen Photography

As most of you know, I recently released a tune titled, "The Box", an emotional journey of a little girl holding onto a dream in her tight little fist. To say that writing "The Box" was difficult would probably be an understatement, but like many musicians, sometimes songs close to us need to sit in the vault until we're ready to re-visit them. Writing the lyrics was the easy part, they were something that kinda just poured out of me, one of those Thirty min deals, it was the music I struggled with.  The lyrics are powerful, so the music needed to be just as intimate. I have Rick Tucker of Rock Garden Conspiracy/Gold Pan Records to thank for finally, after two years of sitting on the song, giving the song life. Rick wrote a beautiful basic melody line on piano and helped spark something else within me to bring to my Producer Bill Hare. 


Recording day: I was actually nervous for Bill to hear what I had so far on the song. Being that he's a Grammy award winning engineer and Producer, the bar is very high when I walk through the doors of his studio, but, I knew I had something very special. Bill liked what I had so far and we proceeded to lock ourselves in the studio for the next Twelve hours. Bill's wife Jennie was nice enough to throw us food and coffee here and there and by the time evening rolled around we had laid some great tracks. Sometimes it's very difficult to block off that much time with Bill as he's hugely in demand, but I know he knew how much this song meant to me, and how long I had waited to write and record it, and there was no one better than HIM to help me make that happen. 

The song in it's released form is very close to that day I left the studio. Very little has been added since. It was important to me that the song remain very true to it's original form. Not over done or over produced, simple yet intimate. We accomplished that. 

"A little girl heals"

Monique


Special thanks:

"The Box"© Monique DeMoulin, Rick Tucker
Engineered and Produced by Bill Hare
Single Photography: Nicole Dalhuisen
Photo editing: Cherie Davidson
Model: Kayla Dalhuisen