Recording Artists

By TREVON MILLIARD Chronicle Staff Writer

The residential neighborhood running along Nez Perce Drive is quiet and calm. Inside one home’s two-story shed, 18-year-old Peter Mortenson sits behind a pane of glass with an acoustic guitar nestled beneath his arm and a microphone inches from his mouth.

SEAN SPERRY/CHRONICLE Chris Cunningham, owner of Base Camp Recording Studio, adjusts the microphones before a recording session Wednesday with Peter Mortenson, one of 10 young songwriters who won a spot on a new CD. On the other side of the glass, a crew sets up the recording equipment, with towers of electronics and one computer to control it all.

Levi Kujala - the drummer from the band the Clintons - and a few others sit back and wait for Mortenson to begin.

It’s the first time Mortenson has recorded in a professional studio. He strums a few chords and then sings, “Here we are once again at a fork in the road.” He gets through the song, “Hard to Say,” playing with a bass guitarist and drummer, and then lets out a laugh of nervous excitement.

Only 20 or so more takes, and two and a half hours, to go.

“My fingers were definitely sore,” Mortenson said.

Mortenson is one of 10 songwriters ages 11 to 18 who won a local competition put on by the nonprofit group Hand Me Down Some Silver, that gives young songwriters a chance to professionally record one of their pieces with a band of seasoned musicians, such as Kujala, and jazz bassist Kelly Roberti who’s toured on five continents with people like Peter Gabriel and David Murray.

Husband and wife team Jake and Jeni Fleming run the nonprofit, and privately teach music to 60 students in their home.

During the recording sessions, Jake Fleming directs from the booth, but lets the youngsters take the lead and tell the professional musicians what to do, he said.

“Usually the teacher gives the material to the student,” he said. “This is a role reversal.”

That’s just fine with Kujala. “They learn more when they see how their own ideas turn out,” he said. “It makes them think.”

Fleming said that’s the whole purpose of the competition.

“We want to show them that they’re creations are valuable,” he said. “It’s not just their parents saying, ‘This is a cute song.’ It’s not just some cute song. It’s a real thing.”

This is the second year the Flemings have put on the competition. They’ve had about 30 applicants each year, Jeni Fleming said. A composer, a Montana State University music teacher, and a singer-songwriter - who all wish to be kept anonymous - decide the winners based on such factors as harmony, form and style, Jeni said. But originality is the deciding factor, she said.

“We’ve had admissions in almost every genre,” she said. “Classical, rock, jazz, punk, Celtic, folk.”

The 10 winners record in Base Camp studio, Peak Recording, or The Recording Edge for about two and a half hours each and will have their songs compiled for a CD titled “Footnotes, Volume II.”

A CD release concert will take place in Bozeman sometime this November, Jeni said.

“We’re trying to bring them through the whole process of being a working musician,” she said.

And recording in a studio is a big part of that, Jake Fleming said. “They learn a thousand times faster,” he said.

He might tell them to do something simple like ‘play a note shorter’ or ‘pronounce your vowels differently.’ They think they are, but when they hear it played back nothing has changed, he said.

“Recording is a great mirror for musicians,” Jeni said.

Mortenson has never recorded in a studio. “It’s rekindled my enthusiasm for writing and recording,” he said. “It’s easy to get frustrated and give up on it.”

He is going to Brigham Young University next year to possibly study medicine, he said. “But I’m going to keep playing, keep writing, keep recording,” he said. “See where it takes me.”

Second-time competition songwriter Megan Makeever, 17, has been playing the piano since she was 6, and she put out an album last year, she said.

“Music has always been part of my life,” she said.

This has given her the confidence to keep that alive, she said.

She’s going to St. Olaf College in Minnesota to study flute performance and other musical disciplines, she said.

“After this, I realized this is what I want to do for the rest of my life,” she said.

And she did get to play with the Clintons drummer, Kujala.

“She said she had a Clintons ring tone on her phone,” Kajula said.

Trevon Milliard can be reached at tmilliard@dailychronicle.com or 582-2657.

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