Back to LA on the Path, Sunset Marquis Hotel

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In February I went back to LA. I had a bunch of songs to record and wanted to write new ones with my collabs there. But where to record and with who was yet a mystery. Via my publishing-company Kobalt I was booked to stay at Hotel Sunset Marquis. I thought it would be just another hotel, but it really didn´t turn out to be just only that. Arriving early evening to the hotel, checked into my room and went down to get something to eat before my eyelids hit the floor.....The hotel has a quite small room for dining inside, and there I sat by myself enjoying a lovely meal, when a man comes up to me, says hi and welcome to the hotel..".-you just arrived ehh??you must be an artist???" "-Yes I replied" in my daze... "-Well you are here all by yourself and there are 2 gentlemen in the bar sitting by themselves, would you mind if I introduced them to you? Before I even had time to take a breath 2 happy guys stood at my table. They were giggling and friendly and I asked them to sit down. We started talking about everything else except what we were working with..but later of course that came up. The wonderful guys were Stuart Price and Steve Sidelnyk, working down in the studio in the hotel with the new Madonna album. So, the big world in LA became very small when first, Stuart, who´s been working with Madonna for a long time, of course knew my friend Jonas Åkerlund who makes a lot of her videos etc, but Steve, who suddenly became quiet and said "-sooo you are THAT Meja, whos album I played on a few years ago????? "It turns out that Hamish (Stuart) who produced my "Mellow" album, were best buddies w Steve and called him in for some drum additions in London. 2 degrees of separation...
One afternoon I was doing down the elevator to the studio to see the guys. The door opened and a blond spiky haired stranger stood there and said " Hi Meja! How are you doing???" He was also going down to the studio, that he apparently was the owner to. For a weird reason it felt like I had known him forever. That´s how I got introduced to Jed Leiber. Timing.

Jed Leiber and Meja

I decided to start the recordings at Dave Ways studio in his house in the Hills. It has a great vibe and Dave is one of the most talented people I know. As I trust him dearly he gathered the band. And the band...I loved "my" band. Keyboards :Jeremy Ruzumna, Bass :Dave Wilder, Guitar : Lyle Workman and on drums for day one Brian McCloud. We started recording Roses in December. All the takes live and the song straight thru as is should be. The vocals are just one long take with no corrections what so ever. That´s what we ended up with and that´s what´s on the album.
I owe Dave thanks for these wonderful sessions!! Really!!