Coproduction in the Recording Studio: Perspectives from the Vocal Booth details how recording studio environments affect performance in the vocal booth. Drawing on interviews with professional session singers, this book considers sociocultural and sociotechnical theory, the modern home studio space, as well as isolation and self-recording in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. This is cutting-edge reading for advanced undergraduates, scholars and professionals working in the disciplines of recording studio production, vocal performance, audio engineering and music technology.

Coproduction in the Recording Studio: Perspectives from the Vocal Booth details how recording studio environments affect performance in the vocal booth. Drawing on interviews with professional session singers, this book considers sociocultural and sociotechnical theory, the modern home studio space, as well as isolation and self-recording in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. This is cutting-edge reading for advanced undergraduates, scholars and professionals working in the disciplines of recording studio production, vocal performance, audio engineering and music technology.

The latest from prose stylist and accomplished novelist Rod Davis exposes the dark underbelly and underground economies of God's country. A desperate call from heiress Elle Meridian shakes ex-Dallas TV anchor Jack Prine from his comfortable life in the Big Easy as he begins his long search for Meridian’s missing teenage daughter. Instead of the girl, Jack discovers the savaged bodies of drug dealers and embarks on a journey of relentless violence and lethal betrayal across the South. As an intricate web of deception, extortion, and murder unwinds, Prine finds himself at odds with neo-Nazis, the cartel, and the Dixie Mafia. Even if Prine can save Meridian’s child, can he justify the blood on his hands? Rod Davis expands the thrilling world of South, America in this Southern noir, rife with chaos, unexpected turns, and fascinating characters.

Why does God allow so much evil in the world? Is there endless hell, no hell, or a more logical explanation? Does the teaching of endless torment harm you and others? If salvation is by grace and God can save all, why wouldn't He? Is there any force in the universe stronger than love? In this book you will find out why some answers to questions like these can leave you more puzzled than enlightened. You will discover how your theology affects your attitude toward God and others. You will also get a Biblical perspective on how some Christian doctrines have been transformed throughout history from the original, and why some common misconceptions seem to portray the Word of God as a Schizophrenic Gospel.

On an early Sunday morning walk through the empty streets of the Faubourg Marigny downriver of the French Quarter, maverick journalist and Big Easy transplant Jack Prine discovers the body of a well-dressed black man with a bashed-in skull. Soon Jack is drawn into an emerging web of violence threatening Elle Meridian, the victim s beautiful, complicated sister, burdened with a past she can barely confess. They begin a dangerous, desperate flight through Alabama, the Delta and back to New Orleans searching and evading button men, goons, racists and family secrets. Deadly ties extend to the Dixie Mafia, priceless stolen art and debased Southern aristocracy. A final, violent showdown in the Arts District of New Orleans uncovers one last nightmarish revelation that may bind Elle, Jack and a mob enforcer named Big Red for years to come -- if anyone survives. "What Rod Davis tackles masterfully in this faux hard-boiled mystery is the capturing in a simple plot of murder, investigation, solution, and deserved punishment of the essential truths of what it is to be born, nurtured, schooled, and acclimated to existence in the American South. Jack Prine's] struggle to understand the nature of where he truly lives provides this powerfully fascinating novel with energy, soul, and a hope that he'll return in another narrative to treat further what he calls 'the hard shadowed streets of the Vieux Carre, the American landfall for the fallen." -- Gerald Duff, Southern Literary Review "South, America may be set in the Deep South New Orleans and the Mississippi Delta but writer Rod Davis takes us into that classic hardboiled territory once claimed by James Cain: a man with a wandering eye drawn to a femme fatale who promises nothing but trouble, then delivers it." -- Christopher Cook, author of Robbers and Screen Door Jesus & Other Stories "Jack Prine is about as tough and gritty as Mike Hammer, especially when he has a lady to protect; corner him on a deserted back road at night and find out. A story that plays on black and white relationships over the generations, gay sexuality, the mean streets of New Orleans and the remote remnants of towns in the Mississippi Delta, South, America, is an honest, tough book and a riveting read. Rod Davis has given us a rugged and real character. I hope he keeps roaming the South in more episodes to come." -- Tony Dunbar, author of Crooked Man and Tubby Meets Katrina "This down-and-dirty yarn is a powerful evocation of pre-Katrina New Orleans and as absorbing a tale of love and evil to come out of this old town since Ace Atkins and Tony Dunbar hit the scene a few years back. South, America is a triumph of Southern noir, populated with characters who ll stay with you long after the last page, including sometime PI Jack Prine, Elle, his brainy and brave new love, and an all too-real supporting cast of thugs, low-lifes, and Southern degenerates. You heard it first here: In South, America, Rod Davis is the new mayor of the mean streets " -- Julie Smith, Edgar Award-winning author of the Skip Langdon and Talba Wallis series."

What can Christians do to cut through all the religious rhetoric and offer true direction to those around us? A memory from childhood remains vivid in this writer's mind: Tagging along behind my mother through a Chicago store, I clung tightly to the hem of her red skirt. Releasing it to get a closer look at all the toys, we became separated. Frantically searching for her, I grabbed a red skirt and held on with a death grip following her all over the crowded store. Finally, looking up at the person towering over me, I found myself staring into the face of a total stranger who was also wearing a red skirt Looking back I wonder how many of us who call ourselves Christians are like that lost little boy. We think we have a firm grip on the truth, but we let religious attitudes and baseless traditional teachings lead us to make wrong decisions. This book takes a look at wrong choices and the confusion plaguing Christians in the modern church, and offers suggestions on how to make right choices.

Voudou (an older spelling of voodoo)-a pantheistic belief system developed in West Africa and transported to the Americas during the diaspora of the slave trade-is the generic term for a number of similar African religions which mutated in the Americas, including santeria, candomble, macumbe, obeah, Shango Baptist, etc. Since its violent introduction in the Caribbean islands, it has been the least understood and most feared religion of the New World-suppressed, outlawed or ridiculed from Haiti to Hattiesburg. Yet with the exception of Zora Neale Hurston's accounts more than a half-century ago and a smattering of lurid, often racist paperbacks, studies of this potent West African theology have focused almost exclusively on Haiti, Cuba and the Caribbean basin. American Voudou turns our gaze back to American shores, principally towards the South, the most important and enduring stronghold of the voudou faith in America and site of its historic yet rarely recounted war with Christianity. This chronicle of Davis' determined search for the true legacy of voudou in America reveals a spirit-world from New Orleans to Miami which will shatter long-held stereotypes about the religion and its role in our culture. The real-life dramas of the practitioners, true believers and skeptics of the voudou world also offer a radically different entree into a half-hidden, half-mythical South, and by extension into an alternate soul of America. Readers interested in the dynamic relationships between religion and society, and in the choices made by people caught in the flux of conflict, will be heartened by this unique story of survival and even renaissance of what may have been the most persecuted religion in American history. Traveling on a criss-cross route from New Orleans across the slave-belt states of Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia, dipping down to Miami where the voudou of Cuba and the Caribbean is endemic, and up to New York where priests and practitioners increase each year, Rod Davis determined to find out what happened to voudou in the United States. A fascinating and insightful account of a little known and often misunderstood aspect of African-American culture, American Voudou details the author's own personal experiences within this system of belief and ritual, along with descriptions and experiences of other people, ranging from those who reject it entirely to ardent practitioners and leaders. Davis also places voudou in a broad context of American cultural history, from slavery to the Civil Rights Movement, and from Elvis to New Age. Current interest in voudou is related, in part, to the arrival of large numbers of people into the United States from the Caribbean, especially Cuba. Blacks in that country were able to maintain the African religion in a syncretic form, known as santeria. The tensions that have arisen between Cubans and African Americans over both the leadership and the belief system of the religion is discussed. Davis raises questions and offers insight into the nature of religion, American culture, and race relations. The book contains an extensive bibliography for further reading and a glossary of voudou terms for readers unfamiliar with the subject. ROD DAVIS is an award-winning journalist and magazine editor who has taught writing at the University of Texas at Austin and Southern Methodist University in Dallas. A fifth-generation Texan, he has lived most of his life in Texas and the South.