Studioversary: A Video Look Back at WIN’s First Vocal Sessions
A behind-the-scenes look at WIN’s first studio sessions—revisiting the early days when the score first found its voices.
December 14, 2025
When it dawned on me that it had been a year since our first days in the studio– recording vocals (plus some piano) for the first 7 demos for WIN–I wanted to mark the occasion by revisiting it and sharing it here. Building arrangements and instrumentation had been beautiful in its own right. These sessions took things to a new stratosphere of becoming, realizing the promising dynamics of a range of varied voices--hearing "character" interplay, musically, and experiencing company harmonies.
My stepdaughter, Meredith Fell, joined us in the studio during much of the session, generating a trove of video and photos. We plan to continue to draw from that as we push more into social media frontiers. In the meantime, I saw an opportunity to share a window into the experience–a brief walk-through of the recording process, presented largely in the sequence in which it unfolded.
The 3.5-minute video features snippets from all 7 initial demos. These include the opening number, "Every Moment a Museum," and its prelude: "I See You (Museum Prelude)." "Remarkably Unremarkable," "Bet He Knows," and "You're the President Now" round out Act I. Act II's "Decision" and "Winsome Times" complete the ensemble.
WIN's first studio sessions--Dec 13-14, 2024
I cannot begin to express my immense gratitude for all who contributed to bringing this experience into being--especially WIN's core music development team: Tim Tracey, Eleanor Tracey, and Susan Eissele. As I write this, we're well on our way to readying a third batch of demos—the duets!—for recording in January. A middle batch also emerged along the way. I’ll be featuring them next month.
-DM
Recording Credits
Videography Meredith Fell and Darren McDaniel
Edited by: Darren McDaniel
Music Preparation: Tim Tracey, Eleanor Tracey, and Susan Eissele
Music Supervision & Coordination: Tim Tracey and Eleanor Tracey
Arrangements: Tim Tracey, Rob Alexander, and Susan Eissele (additional)
Vocal Supervision & Coordination: Michelle Lindahl
Featured Vocals: Tony DeRosa, Rebecca Graae, Marsh Hall, Chris Keough, Michelle Lindahl, Qiana Miles, Zach Nadolski, Claire Rainwater, Eleanor Tracey, Shanden Vance, Jenn Warren, Katie Whetsell
Studio Musician (Piano): Tim Tracey
Additional Track Musicians: Rob Alexander, Stephen Thomas
Engineer: Tom Rau
Recorded at Lone Pine Studios (shout out to Michael Hurley!)
Music and Lyrics by Darren McDaniel
Creator of WIN: An AmericanAmusical
©️ 2025 WIN The Musical, LLC
Please see our Team page for additional music credits
Thanks to all involved!
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