A few days later I drove down to Escondido, CA to meet Sandra. I was warmly received by Sam, her best friend and caretaker. At this point I had no idea what to expect. I was told that Sandra was waiting for me in her room. I knocked at her door and heard a little voice saying to come in. As I opened the door I saw Sandra laying in a special bed surrounded by a collection of acoustic guitars. I could very well say that from this moment I knew this person had an immense passion for music. We went on conversing for hours about music and our views. Sandra didn’t quite know if she could play or sing anymore but she wanted to give it a try.  Her goal was to try to record 4 songs. I agreed to bring in some equipment and help her do this. I left her house that day not really knowing what to think or to expect. I knew very well this wasn’t going to be an easy task emotionally and professionally. 

In late April 2004, as I was working on a project I received a call from the office.  Someone had found Le Mobile’s website and wanted to inquire about recording. As I returned the call and spoke to this person, I was quite surprised about the nature of his call. This person explained he was a long time friend and caretaker of a woman sent home from the hospital to live the final days of her life. 

Sandra James, who was 42 years old, had been fighting abdominal cancer for the last two years of her life. She had been writing songs since the age of 18 and had done a few things here and there as a singer/songwriter in the industry. Her life long dream was to someday record her own album of original material but never gotten the chance. Not really knowing if she could sing anymore due to numerous surgeries, not being able to eat or drink anymore and everyday fighting her illness, I was asked if it be possible to meet with her. 

A second week passed achieving another 3 great songs filled with emotions. Everyday was such an amazement for me.  Not only was the quality of her performance great but Sandra was a talented and a dedicated songwriter. She was able to give stellar performances and do it with such passion in such a tough condition. At the end of the second week of work, I went to her room to say goodnight.  Sandra was sitting on her bed talking on the phone saying the following, “I would like to order 2 large pizzas, 2 dozen spicy chicken wings and garlic bread”. When she hung up I asked “Sandra, why are you ordering all this food ?”  She turned abruptly looked at me and said in a very serious manner “You know, the doctors told me months ago I would never be able to eat again, I love eating, no one is going to tell me I can’t enjoy this pleasure anymore”  She started explaining that she would order food every night from different local restaurants and had found a way to get the taste of it without swallowing. She would just chew and spit it out, explaining it would take hours for her to get a sense of the taste. I was literally floored. I just couldn’t believe it. The guts she had to do this knowing that one piece down her throat would end it all there.  Simply amazing. Sandra had such determination and courage. Being that I love to cook, I proposed to Sandra from this point on that every week I would cook her a meal of her choice. From lobsters, lamb roast, cheeseburgers, caesar salad, cheese fondue, you name it. This became something very special she would look forward too every week.

Came the day of recording our 8th song, Sandra asked me if she could have a talk with me. At her request, we stepped outside to her garden and she asked if I felt that we were on the way to having an album.  Without any hesitation I nodded yes.  Not only I felt we had enough songs just to do that but this was a very unique project done under enormous challenge and with such passion and emotion. Sandra went on talking about how she wanted me to take charge of her music once she was gone. She wanted it to be of the highest quality possible. I took the challenge knowing it wouldn’t be an easy task not having her there, the artist. It was only up to me. Making a record without the artist is extremely difficult and far from common. My biggest challenge and freight since the beginning had been to make it what she wanted, to respect her wishes.  One of my beliefs in recording which I have held since an early age, is that recording is capturing a moment. Music is emotion and feelings. Recording with Sandra was doing just that. I was capturing something very special. The task of adding instrumentation and arrangements underneath her vocals would be a very difficult challenge. To make a record without an artist and to respect what we had captured together was foremost important.

One day as we started, I asked for a moment to talk with her. I was very concerned since she hadn’t said anything when she listened back to her track and to see her cry, I was afraid that it wasn’t what she wanted or up to her expectations. She turned around to me and said “ Give me a break, I don’t have the time to enjoy my own songs and what I am doing, I have no time”  I explained to her that I didn’t want to have to carry on with this if she didn’t feel happy with her own performance, I wanted her to enjoy her moment.  I very much realized that it wasn’t about that. She just didn’t have time to enjoy, she was so consumed just fighting on to keep recording. She was happy but she had laid all her trust in me. After this talk everything changed. Sandra started to really enjoy her time doing this, the performances and our friendship developed stronger than ever. We started to have so much fun.

Came the end of May, we had a good 15 songs recorded when I was pulled away on another project for a few days.  Sandra was in peace. She had recorded all these songs outstandingly and she wanted more but time was running out.  As I left that day to go back to LA, I went to her bedside and I didn’t know if this was the last time I’d see her.  We made our final goodbyes just in case. It was such a tough moment. She called me the son she never had and said she'd try to hang on for a few days so we could resume recording. She had set up with her doctor to restart doing chemotherapy just to slow down the cancer cell progression.  I was once again taken off my feet.  I just couldn’t believe it.

I returned a few days later and there she was waiting with that smile bigger than ever. We resumed recording. It became more apparent as days went by that the end was near.  As time went on, I was spending more time by her side watching her having medical injections and the addition of an automatic morphine pump. It became very difficult, but she was still giving performances filled with so much emotion. We recorded our 26th song in mid July, three months after we had started this journey. Sandra could barely stand up anymore and very much out of breath. But she pulled it off. She had recorded enough material to make a few records. The next two weeks after that, I spent at her bedside, helping and just being there as my good friend Sandra was going through enormous pains.

Came our first day of work. As I walked into her room, there she was all ready to go, receiving me with a huge smile. She was so happy to be able to try this, it was a very special moment. After a good hour of setting up, the time had come to try recording the acoustic guitar guide track that she would use to sing over. Sandra picked up one of her guitar sat down on a chair by her bed and started strumming away. There we were with the Pro Tools recording. She rapidly laid down two solid takes of her first song without any metronome which is not an easy thing to do to keep it in time. She did it with such confidence and was very precise on timing. I was very much taken by surprise to see the quality of her performance knowing her condition. 

There was this woman, bravely fighting to do this, plugged on intravenous fluids, not knowing if she would be there tomorrow. She had been given a 2 weeks left to live from her doctor just a few days prior to our first recording session. Her condition wasn’t good, cancer cells were rapidly taking over her body. After a few takes of her playing the song on her guitar came the real moment of challenge. It was time for her to try singing over this first track. With a lot of support from Sam and myself she went up to the mic and this sweet voice said, “I’m ready”. I was than taken to hear what came across. So much emotion, happiness and pain came through her first take. She sounded great even though Sandra's diaphragm had been severely damaged in surgery. It was an enormous task for her to push her vocal cords. She also couldn’t drink anything. She would literally chew on ice cubes all day long to keep her mouth moist. She got her nutrition from an intravenous tube that went directly to the main artery of her heart.

The end of the first day came, she had performed in such a way to achieve the recording of this first song. I was simply stunned in amazement.  I left the house that day knowing that something amazing was going on and I was gonna be a part of making someone’s dream come true.  4 days in a row passed by achieving her goal of recording vocals on four of her songs.  Sandra wanted to be heard, to leave something behind that would be inspiring to others, and wanted her songs to be fully produced with arrangements. After this first week of work, she felt she could continue to record more of her songs. I agreed to do just that. 

We went on recording until the end of May where I had the opportunity to meet her doctor. Sandra, Dr Vicario and myself sat down in her garden. He sat directly across from a very proud Sandra, looked at her directly in the eyes and said “ Sandra, I’ve been treating patients in their final phase for over 20 years now. I cannot believe what I’m seeing here. All the test results show that you shouldn’t be here right now. Teach me - this is beyond medicine".  I was speechless to hear this from her doctor.  I knew that I was a part of why she was still here.  She was here realizing her most precious dream. Like Dr Vicario said; Her soul had taken over. Everyday as I walked in that house, as soon as Sandra would see me I would be received with her smile cranked up to her ears.  She would be sick as a dog all night long then find the energy to perform in such a magnificent way.

The friendship between Sandra and myself developed very quickly. Recording is a very personal thing. In all the struggles, the support I brought her along with Sam made her go further everyday. Here we were a month and a half later. Sandra had not been willing to hear any of her songs that we had recorded and I started to get concerned with that. It was always hard to stop her as she always wanted to do one more take.  One morning as I walked in, she told me she didn’t feel she could pull off the song she wanted to do that day. So I encouraged her to try. She did and it came out as one of her most emotional performance. I wanted to show her she could do it.  I insisted that she listen back to it. So I played it in her headphones and she just looked down and cried. I didn’t really know what to say or feel, she wouldn’t talk about it. She wanted to record another song right away. So we just went on. It really bothered me for a few days.  At my first meeting with Sandra and on several occasions, we had discussed that if I felt something was wrong, I wouldn’t want to continue recording. This was very hard emotionally and I didn’t want to do this just as a job, to take the money that she was paying me for the equipment and time just to be recording tracks that couldn’t be used or up to her expectations. I was very concerned with that. I also knew that she had given me an immense challenge of finishing these songs after she passed. I didn’t want to do this if she didn’t feel great about it.