Behind the scenes with Ted Russell Kamp on writing "Crystal Clear"

This is a project that has been a year in the making. It started last summer at the Blackwing Experience at the Chuck Jones Center for Creativity in Costa Mesa, CA. There, hundreds of guests drew on walls, wrote poems and played games inspired by the Blackwing pencil. For a full recap of that event, check out this video.

One of the activities guests participated in was a collaborative songwriting station, manned by LA-based singer-songwriter Ted Russell Kamp. The station tasked guests with writing down a lyric to a song on one side of a slip of paper and placing it in a bin. Then, guests were asked to pick up a slip with a lyric on one side and write complementary lyric on the opposite side. The finished lyric sheets were gathered and taken back to our headquarters in Stockton, with the end goal of using them to write and record an actual studio song.

Last month, we had the opportunity to head back down to Los Angeles to meet up with Ted and finish this project. We spent a day in Ted’s home studio, poring over lyrics, piecing together a song and, ultimately, recording it. Here are the results.