Product Description

Holt Vaughn & This Ain’t Opera was fun. And it was a way to minister to lots of folks. Our fans wanted a recording of some of our songs the way we did them at concerts. We never did capture any of the acoustic tunes (we loved to see people raising their hands in worship, swaying, at times shedding a few happy tears to those tunes) but we managed to get into a studio for some of the electric set. We set up in one room as if it were a live gig, ran some microphones into an SSL board and recorded. Soon after, the band ceased to exist and we never really did much with that album. We had managed to capture a handful of tunes, without any overdubs or extra takes. The guitar and bass tracks you hear are exactly what we played start to finish, every note, imperfections included. Later we did just one or two few-second tweaks to vocals. For fun we took actual applause from a concert performance of Jesus Attitude and added it to the title track. We had to do some work on drums due to a handful of problems (that’s what happens when you do something like this in two days in the middle of a snowstorm), but things worked out ok.

Later still, through my good friend Andy Smith, who helped with the post production, I asked the ever-cool Nelson Starr (Nelson Starr and the Benjamins) to add some keyboards. On the title track and Grace and Mercy I asked my pal Rick Cua (who has 2 Gold Records with the classic rock band The Outlaws, along with a half dozen CCM hits of his own) to sing with me as we trade back and forth on some lead vocals. And many thanks to Robert White Johnson for his killer background vocals on a couple tunes (RWJ has worked with and written for major recording artists including Celine Dion, penning her first worldwide hit, Where Does My Heart Beat Now, The Beach Boys, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and . 38 Special, and he’s been nominated for 2 GRAMMYs. Yikes!).

The last track is an add-on, with a different vibe, called Twin Towers (Song For America), recorded with a different incarnation of This Ain’t Opera types. It was probably the first song ever recorded immediately after 911, way before all the rock stars, and was released via the internet and some through retailer (at the time) Media Play. It was our way of helping. It had over 20,000 downloads, about half a million hits on its website, TV interviews and some radio, which was pretty amazing back then. We also raised some funds for Salvation Army relief efforts. It was written, recorded, mixed and mastered in a few hours. U. S. Senator Hillary Clinton, Vice President Dick Cheney, (and on the 10th anniversary of 911) Vice President Joe Biden sent us notes. This mix is an updated version for the 10th anniversary.

In the end, it’s all a bit bootleggish, but we kept a Jesus attitude and hey…This Ain’t Opera. We hope you TAO fans like it. Maybe someday there will be a reunion.