Tenth Avenue North – Christmas Time Machine

We didn’t track the horns on the 30’s song. We did a road map and just recorded the drums and the bass. It was a really rough draft. Then we sent it away to this guy named Keith who does horns for tobyMac. When he sent back the horns and we listened to it in the bus, it was the first time we thought, “This is, like, a real record. Oh, my goodness!” It was amazing. We definitely sought a lot of outside help on this record.

CCM: Any fun times of particular note with any of the collaborations?
MD: On the 90’s track for Decade The Halls—we are hoping people might feel like they just stumbled across a lost Boyz II Men track that they didn’t know existed.

Boyz II Men II was the record on repeat while we were going, “What’s the sound? What are the drums?” Our drummer sat there and listened to the drums off that record exclusively. I don’t think we listened to any other music from that era to do the 90’s track. We we like, “This is going to belong on the Boyz II Men II record!”

Colton [Dixon] came in and obviously took it to the next level. But the real hero was Rob Nix, who is the piano player for Britt Nicole. While we were trying to figure out the track, he came in and was like, “I heard y’all doing a 90’s R&B song.” ”Yeah, yeah, we need help with the vocals.”He goes, “I got a degree in Gospel quartet composition.” WHAT? “Get on the mic!” Ton of those vocals are his.

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