The Heights of North Lincoln Ave.

Another fine Sunday morning from the heights of North Lincoln Avenue... Coffee, the paper, Meet the Press... good times. More things happening with the record... album design finalized and in production... final corrections to mixes and mastering this week... I'm ready. Ready to have it in hand and get it out to people.

So... Today's song is Crystal. Crystal was written last year in an attempt to break out of writing songs about winter in Chicago... It's simple and straightforward, both lyrically and musically. The recording of it was also fairly straightforward, although there are two drum kits on it and a really nice layered vocal section, as well as a few little guitar tricks...

I especially enjoy the louder lead parts which Jay and I created on the fly at Gravity, saturated with effects, and then doubled at I.V... Manny further manipulated them in mixing and they sound like what Smashing Pumpkins was before compression and ego made them sound like a band of mosquitoes amplified by a megaphone.

I had initially envisioned this one with quiet choruses and a dramatic build... but Jay and Darren pushed it towards the upbeat... the choruses became all about the power-disco with a wonderful wurlitzer hook... the verses pulse with what I think is some of Jay's best bass playing on an PA tune.

Lyrically... I didn't fret much over these words... they came pretty easily and I really just wanted to capture the feeling of the first time you stop crying. Maybe not the last time, maybe it's not Til I Couldn't Cry where you can't cry anymore... but the first time you feel strong enough to take a breath, look at a situation more clearly... assess other's actions and motives and capabilities... recognize what it outside of your control. I like the sense of acceptance that runs through the choruses and the quiet, unsteady hope that starts to creep into the verses... I like... this song.

CRYSTAL Emptiness abounds The growing summer light I'm sinking into sounds of The city's rush to life Crystal dreams tend to break Crystal hearts, they can't be shaped I walked alone along the lake Until my tears had dried Forgetting all our sins As the blood is washed away Beneath we find new skin That comes back day by day By day Crystal dreams tend to break Crystal hearts, they can't be shaped I walked alone along the lake Until my tears had dried Crystal dreams tend to break Crystal hearts, they can't be shaped I walked alone along the lake Beneath the crystal stars we made And crystal nights and crystal days Are all that's left of what we gave Are all that's left, are all we saved And now my tears have dried Now my tears have dried

jbg

6 of 9

So... It was cold this morning. Like single degree-cold. Although... when we took the dog for his beloved Sunday morning walk, it didn't feel as cold as one might expect. Still... I much preferred coffee, Meet the Press, the couch, a relaxing afternoon watching the Bears game, getting to the gym for swimming and weights, and eating salads from Whole Foods. Not bad for a Sunday...

Four songs left to pick apart here... album details are starting to really come together in ways both concrete and esoteric. The four songs I haven't yet explored are Til I Couldn't Cry, How the Heart Moves On, Crystal, and Skyscraper Hearts. I'm saving Skyscraper for last... I'm hoping my entry on it coincides with having the mastered album in hand... plus it's still in some ways the most mysterious of the songs on the record... I know what it means (to me), but I think it may mean something bigger than my personal meaning... it may be the window into the record that follows Things We Would Rather Lose...

So today... I'm going with Til I Couldn't Cry, which was written in the fall of 2007... I don't often get the chance to "introduce" songs at shows... something about indifferent bar crowds. But at the Gemma Hayes show at Schubas, the attentive audience allowed me to do some talking about the tunes I was playing... And, somewhat surprisingly to me, I introduced this song as a song about my friend Greg's dad passing away in September of 2007 after a lengthy hospitalization. Which isn't what the song is about.

Or wasn't.

At least I don't think it was at the time... it was a song about getting to the point of grief where you just can't do it anymore... where you've cried and cried and you're out of tears... which is pretty much where I was in the fall of 2007.

Although I certainly see the connection to what Greg and his family were likely going through at the time. I remember being sick the week I started Til I Couldn't Cry... I wrote the first verse as I rode home from work on the train. Then, later that week, I was up late with insomnia one night and the smoke from a midnight cigarette downstairs drifted into my living room on Cuyler... so I got out my guitar, and quietly started working with the words I'd written on the train, nearly whispering as I tried not to disturb a sleeping girl and dog in the other room.

I was also thinking about the Hank Williams song I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry... which might be the saddest song ever written... and with Hank in mind, we decided to record Til I Couldn't Cry in as old-timey a way as possible... So I got in touch with Anthony and Drew and we wound up using the "free" day at Gravity to take a shot at getting it in a live setting. I had emailed Anthony and Drew an acoustic version of the song, and they showed up at Gravity ready to go.

Well... hungover... but ready to go musically.

We rehearsed the song twice, with Drew on piano and Anthony on stand-up bass. Jay set us up, Drew in the big live room, and Anthony and me in separate isolation booths. We took a couple of cuts at it, and it was sounding okay. The one piece that wasn't there, was the vocals. I realized I was singing the song too strong... and it didn't fit lyrics that were about being exhausted, being drained, being unable to muster up even the will to cry. So we took another couple of shots at it with me pulling back on the vocals... and it clicked.

Drew then overdubbed a gorgeous organ part, and suddenly it was more of a spiritual... it was a song about suffering, but also somehow a song that looked forward towards redemption... towards recovery. And I think it sits so perfectly in this group of songs...

TIL I COULDN'T CRY I missed your opening and lit the lights As crosses faded into the night On top of copper needles raised Into the sky, and for the saved I'm reminded How I Sat with you and Cried and cried Until I couldn't cry Til I couldn't cry no more The smoke it rose into my room As down below the fires bloomed In tiny breaths the life was passed From lips to lips, from first to last I'm reminded How I Sat with you and Cried and cried Until I couldn't cry Til I couldn't cry no more

jbg

Details

It occurs to me that my last few posts have been exegeses of tunes from Things We Would Rather Lose... So... if it ain't broke... (side note: "ain't" is showing up as a spelling error... which seems strange to me. We've managed to boldly accept split infinitives... why can't we accept ain't? For instance... "I ain't got no swimming in my show.") 

Today's track is the title tune... Things We Would Rather Lose.

This tune... well, it's the title track for a reason. Throughout the album, there's a palpable sense of wanting so badly to get through grief, to get on to the new... but being pulled back again and again, almost (well, not almost... more like totally) against one's will to sorrow and pain.

I wrote TWWRL about a year ago... fall/winter 2007. It was provoked/inspired by a weekend trip Andrea and I took to Madison to visit my uncle. I hadn't been back to Madison in some time... and it was a really wonderful weekend, both in a general sense (beautiful weather, great times) and a more personal sense for me and Andrea. It was also tough in some ways... not exactly tough but... emotional.

Therapeutic. Intense.

It got me thinking and feeling about the past... in a healthy and productive way I guess... it was an instance (maybe the most or second most significant to that point) of me feeling strong enough to consider and come to terms with the past... or at least try to. And to look forward.

Musically, it's a very simple, pretty song. The chord progressions (and this is not by accident) are echoes of two Burn Rome Burn songs... the verse is related to Bottle Boy, the chorus to Wait. The relationship with those two songs... well, I don't know if I need to write about that right now.

But beyond the thematic and place connections (Bottle Boy, especially, was about a drive back to Madison about 5 years ago and the nostalgia it engendered), this was also a period of time when I was dealing with a more concrete end to BRB... which obviously involves its own process of grieving and moving on.

The recording: this is the first song I've written that has been recorded with no guitar. That's right, I play zero guitar on it. During our first sessions at I.V., Darren recorded some amazingly musical drums, and then added some organ. Finally, he put down some Harmonium, an accordion-like instrument you can hear on the Jeff Buckley song Lover, You Should Have Come Over.

At the Gravity sessions, Drew recorded some gorgeous, inspired and fairly spontaneous acoustic piano, which really replaced (and improved on) the acoustic guitar part I had initially written. Jay added some minimal bass (an organ acts as bass for much of it) and we were on to vocals. I'm not sure which vocals Jay wound up using but... we took one swing at it one morning in the B Room at I.V., and another at about 1:00 in the morning the night of our beer-fueled recording of Almost Gone.  Finally, Jay tracked some Beach Boys-inspired background vocals.

So... the lyrics: I know I keep saying this but I'm really proud of these... I wanted this song to be evocative but also concrete and direct. Again, nothing within this song happens by accident... I really strove to make every line mean something, every word important... the Bob Dylan approach of having every line be strong enough to be the first line... not that I accomplished that but that was the goal.

So many allusions... to our trip, to our histories, to songs from previous projects, to songs on TWWRL... Some words and their connections:

*** We dreamt of birds all blue and loud That fly through the night and hang from the clouds *** I have an attachment to the color blue, obviously (vid: the chorus in this tune, Wait, The Blue, etc.), but this line is about the birds. So to speak.

*** And come to us here in these moments of fear As the skyline appears and the road falls away *** A concrete connection and attempt to replicate the first verse of Bottle Boy (Aimless AM radio. spinning through the miles/I'm falling into silence, I've gone another mile/When the feeling of suspense meets the skyline heading north/Going down that road you've gone down many times before).

*** Out in the darkness, I'm spinning in place With my eyes to the sky and my hands to my face *** Somehow, I managed to preserve the rhyme scheme from the first verse, almost exactly, down to "fly/night" and "eyes/sky."

*** Somewhere between all the dead and the dreams You're waiting for me in the static. *** "Between" and "static" echo "live somewhere in between" from Wait, and "I'm in between the static" from Bottle Boy. I was also taken by the somewhat unconventional rhyming scheme of the verses... I think it really helps stress the last line of both verses...

*** Oh, everything dear disappears Into the blue Oh, we're left holding on to The things we'd rather lose *** Allusions to "Fade into the blue" from Wait and others... I also like the ambiguity in listening to "everything dear"... it could also be heard "everything, Dear," if that makes sense... and maybe that's really a better take on it anyway. Eh... maybe not.

*** The highways are burning, the night's at an end But we're still sleeping and dreaming of when The skyscrapers fell, the smoke and the smell Of the dark devouring light and love *** This verse... well... so many things... "highways are burning" is a reference to an unrecorded BRB song... And the last two lines... I'll save the "skyscrapers" piece for when I write about Skyscraper Hearts but something about the sound of these lines... the sibilance of the first and then the consonance of the second in "dark devouring" and "light and love"... and "light and love" is a tie-in to the line in More: "Into every loss, some life, some love is going to come." 

So that's that. All that... And here are the lyrics without my ramblings interspersed:

THINGS WE WOULD RATHER LOSE We dreamt of birds, all blue and loud That fly through the night and hang from the clouds And come to us here in these moments of fear As the skyline appears and the road falls away Out in the darkness, I'm spinning in place With my eyes to the sky and my hands to my face Somewhere between all the dead and the dreams You're waiting for me in the static Oh, everything dear disappears Into the blue Oh, we're left holding on to The things we'd rather lose The highways are burning, the night's at an end And we're still sleeping and dreaming of when The skyscrapers fell, the smoke and the smell Of the dark devouring light and love Oh, everything dear disappears Into the blue Oh, we're left holding on to The things we'd rather lose Oh, we're left holding on to The things we'd rather lose

jbg