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
Sunday, December 07, 2008
Thursday, December 04, 2008
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
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
Sunday, November 30, 2008
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
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
Sunday, November 23, 2008
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
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
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
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
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
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