About
About the site
On this site, we track the recording and production of our album. The site is equal parts blog and “behind the scenes” production journal. You can watch and listen to our progress as we shape the songs, from their first demo versions through the final mixed and mastered album. We hope to have that completed by December, 2007.
You’ll enjoy TheMorningRain.com if you’re a recording enthusiast, a music fan (especially an alt-country music fan,) or if you like watching the creative process in action. We post sound clips, rough mixes, photos, and videos. And given Des’s background of writing about the recording process, there are lots of technical details on our recording techniques, hardware and software choices, and production decisions.
About the band
Des McKinney
The Morning Rain is a two-man recording act featuring Rich Brewer and Des McKinney.
We’ve collaborated on dozens of songs since meeting on Songfight, most notably in the band Gert. We’re a little different than a traditional collaboration, however, since we live 700Km apart. With Des in Toronto and Rich in Boston, our work is all done via the Internet. We’ve only met in person once!
Rich Brewer
We also come from different places musically. Rich creates progressive rock, with a style reminiscent of Meddle-era Pink Floyd, where Des writes mostly folk rock and pop. (You can hear more of Rich’s songs on his personal site, and Des has lots of tunes on his site and an album Waking Up In August.) But early in our collaboration, we found a shared love of alt-country, especially upbeat, energetic alt-country - think Old 97s Too Far To Care.
The Morning Rain was born when we realized that between us, we had a dozen “unfinished” tunes that fit the genre. Like most musicians, we heard “a dozen tunes” and thought “hey, that’s an album.”
Why the name?
It’s a line from Des’s song Wrath of God. And from Stevie’s Summer Soft. But mostly the first one.