More on TWWRL

Can you believe it's almost December... almost the end of the year? Wow... And as if to remind us... I'm looking out our picture window at a perfectly dreary nearly December winter sky which is purported to hold 3 to 8 inches of snow... Of course.

After a great Thanksgiving full of friends, family and food, it feels like a sprint to 2009... I'm still waiting on the final mixes and masters of the album, but we've managed to sort through the results and put together a song order... so I've gotten the ball rolling on the packaging design and the release plan. I know I sound like a broken record with this, but in looking over the 9 tunes that comprise the album, I'm so taken by the cohesiveness of the lyrics... without really making it a priority, we wound up with about as close to a "concept record" as I could imagine ever being part of.

Some of it is obviously that all the songs were written in a fairly narrow window of time... so of course there are lyrical threads and themes that run throughout the 9 we selected and recorded... But it seems like it turned into something a little larger and more significant than just common themes and common words.

And the magnitude and scope of it crept in a bit as I sang the vocals, but really not until I looked over and settled on the song order of Things We Would Rather Lose... which is:

More Things We Would Rather Lose One More Quiet Song Til I Couldn't Cry Crystal Skyscraper Hearts How the Heart Moves On Almost Gone Explosions Below

The thing that got me... was putting More upfront as the lead track. Putting together Look Alive taught me how important a first track is to the perception of an album... I mean, I knew how important it was before but it wasn't until I lived with that group of songs under the name When You Left for a few months and then settled on Look Alive with a new order that I really got how different two orders of the same songs could be... Same with Things We Would Rather Lose.

Once we settled on it as the first track, I went back and looked closely at the lyrics of More to see what they would tell the listener about what was to follow (i.e., the rest of the album). I was more (heh) than a little surprised to find that More functions almost like a topic sentence... that all the other songs fit into the thematic framework put forward in More... like, it's almost spooky.

More was written in July and August of '07, in the midst of the very end of the divorce. So I guess it shouldn't come as a surprise that it acts as a topic sentence for an album that is about picking up the pieces from loss.

More has a couple of features that I'm really proud of... a couple of things that I've never been able to pull off previous to writing it. First, it starts immediately with vocals and has the chorus up front... something I've admired in other songs, but for some reason have never been able to pull off. Second, it has some slight time changes... nothing drastic, but just a few little variations that keep the listener interested. Third, it has a few small lyrical variations in the chorus... this is probably the most important feature from a thematic "topic sentence" standpoint...

MORE Can you leave the ghost behind Breathe the kindness That echoes to tomorrow Beneath the easy sorrow That's bleeding into blame It feels all like someone Gave more than is good Gave more than one should More and more I'm starting to believe Would you say your skin Covers up an ocean of waiting Of falling without end Would you say your sky Has broken into pieces and pieces Of unrelenting blue Can you leave the ghost behind Breathe the kindness That echoes to tomorrow Beneath the easy sorrow That's bleeding into shame It feels all like someone Gave more than is good Gave more than one should More and more I'm starting to believe Would you say you dream Of embers in the ashes Exploding into someone's perfect flame Would you say you pray That into every loss Some life and some love are going to come Can you leave the ghost behind Breathe the kindness That echoes to tomorrow Beneath the easy sorrow That's bleeding into gray It feels all like someone Gave more than is good Gave more than one should More and more I'm starting to believe More and more I'm starting to believe More and more I'm starting to believe ********

So the thing that really got me upon further thought, is the slight lyrical variation in each of the three choruses... the sorrow bleeding into "blame," "shame," and "gray." I remember I was really proud of this when I wrote it... it struck me that it perfectly summed up this progression in grieving over and dealing with loss... where you kind of go through these phases of being sad (sorrow), angry (blame), ashamed (shame), and finally just numb (gray as it were).

Now... over a year later and in a completely different place emotionally than I was when I wrote it... it resonates even more (heh again). And I also see that every song on the album falls into one of the three categories in the song: blame, shame and gray.

Which is totally by accident... well, not by accident, but... not a conscious feature. I wasn't thinking that when I wrote and when we picked the songs... I was just writing what I was feeling, which happened to be these three different phases of grieving. As I was looking at TWWRL it struck me that there weren't really any songs that represented sadness or sorrow... and then I realized that Look Alive was an album full of them...

Look Alive was sorrow and TWWRL is the sound of sorrow bleeding into blame, shame and gray. And that... it pretty damn cool. And I can't wait for everybody to hear it...

jbg

New/Old

So we went swimming tonight... trying something new... thinking about working towards doing a triathlon or two next spring. Two years of marathon training with very little time away from running has left me feeling I should find exercise that puts less (or different) pressure and impact on my body... and swimming seems to fit the bill. Although... even just our informal 30 minute foray into the water left me with an appreciation of how much work I'll have to do on the swimming portion of the triathlon to be successful.

Anyway... The record is more or less done... Jay and Manny are making a couple changes to the mixes and we should have the finished product back from mastering in the next two weeks or so... I heard a good chunk of the nearly-final product and it sounded amazing... just amazing. Now I'm busy putting together the packaging and the release plan... for The Things We Would Rather Lose.

It's so nice to not be starting from scratch with this record... I have a substantial media list, the business is already up and running... but most importantly, I have all the things I learned from the first release, and I have a (I think) fairly clear plan as to how this new record (and what comes after it) fits into the big picture.

Because I have a hard time sitting still artistically, I'm considering trying to do a short acoustic EP in the near future... I spent some time listening to the left over songs that we didn't record for TTWWRL... and some of them are really, really good... and I don't know if the subject matter will lend them towards being part of the next record... so they may be more suited to their own little quiet interim project... something along the lines of 5 Songs in Search of a Record...

One tune from the rejects has been especially sticking with me... called Analog Dreams... I've been playing it on our recently acquired piano and really been digging it as a piano tune... I'm also starting to wrestle with writing new material... I've got all sorts of lyrical ideas and music seems to be sitting just below my skin... waiting for some attention.

I'm right at the end of one writing book and have a beautiful new one ready to go... So... things are new and old at the same time... which is how it usually works out. And my fingers look like prunes.

So there's also that.

jbg

Mix

(In best Woody Allen voice): I distinctly heard him say mix.

Anyway... It is true: the album is being mixed this week... Tuesday through Thursday. I stopped by I.V. Lab Studios on Tuesday night to sing Skyscraper Hearts, the last lead vocals I had left to record... in fact, the last recording of any sort I had left to do.

It was weird... the Skyscraper vocals are among the most challenging on the record in terms of the range... and coming in cold on a rainy November night... was not the recipe for success. So... we wound up going back to my original scratch vocal track from the acoustic sketch of the tune we recorded back in the summer when we were getting started... and something about it worked perfectly... which is very cool. It just has this vibe that wound up fitting in with where the tune went in the recording process. I don't think I've ever had that happen before.

So... I was also able to hear the final mix of One More Quiet Song... Which was awesome. Manny (who mixed the first record and is mixing this one too) just killed it. It rocks harder than anything I've ever done... it's got two kick ass guitar solos (yes, I was allowed to play some guitar on this album) and it's got a three piece horn section. Yeah... we got a little horny on this record.

Three tunes wound up with a horn trio of baritone sax, tenor sex, and trombone... Back to One More Quiet Song... It's most likely going to be the lead off track of the album. Listening to it, I just can't believe what it turned into... It was written, quite literally, as a quiet song... a whisper... and a meditation on trying to move on from writing quiet songs.

So... is it ironic then that it turned into a burner? A rocker? Musically, it is what my dad calls "A real song." It's harmonically, structurally, and melodically sophisticated. But it's the lyrics that I might be most proud of. There's not a wasted line, not a wasted idea... each line means something.

Something very specific... and it really pulls together a lot of the lyrical themes from throughout the record. I think I posted these when I wrote them but... here they are in context...

ONE MORE QUIET SONG I'm holding on to the first time she looked up and smiled Breakfast in the kitchen and phone calls across the miles I'm holding on to the last time she looked down and cried Dinner on the table, tears and last goodbyes The same moon In the same rooms And one more quiet song The same heart We're falling apart And trying to move on Trying to survive And build it to the sky I'm letting go of the good times that haunt me in my dreams Island skies and Hold on Tight are fading memories I'm letting go of the bad times that bleed me til I'm dry Unpaid debts and When You Left and two sets of bloodshot eyes The same moon In the same rooms And one more quiet song The same heart We're falling apart And trying to move on Trying to survive And build it to the sky We build it to the sky jbg