Only One

It's winter in Chicago and winter makes me think of quiet songs.

Every Paper Arrows album has had at least one quiet song.

Look Alive (the quietest of our albums) has Again and Again as well as Fight and also When You Left.  And you can even throw December Static in there.

Things We Would Rather Lose has Almost Gone (and an ironically titled One More Quiet Song).

In the Morning the most polished has Near.

And Days of Getting By has Only One.

The thing about choosing to record a song sparely is that you are essentially telling the listener that the lyrics are the most important thing.  There's nothing to hide behind, nothing to distract so the lyrics are front and center.

And that's appropriate for Only One.

Every once in awhile as a writer you go some place so far under your skin that it makes you uncomfortable.  But in a good way.  Because of the honesty.

Every once in awhile you get right down to the bone, right to the heart of what you're feeling and trying to say.

Jesus, maybe I could use one more cliched image involving the human body.

Fuck it.

Only One is that song for me.

I recorded the guitar part on a capo-ed 12 string acoustic.

The vocals are hard for me to listen to but, again, in a good way.

I can hear myself believing everything I wrote, which isn't always the case.

So here's to songs that capture the truth.

I guess even the loudest ones should be quiet at their cores.

ONLY ONE

She's out on the water
Wondering where he went
And if he's coming back again
And why she never left

But I am not a drinker
And you are not the one
Who walked away from what was made
Who turned your back on love

I am the only one
I am the only one
For you

He's out on the wire
Wondered when he fell
How he wasted what she gave
If he knew he'll never tell

And I am just a dreamer
But you are not a dream
Flesh and blood and skin and sky
And everything in between

I am the only one
I am the only one
For you

jbg

Love Goes On (Three Year Update)

You know what you can't fuck with?

Time.

It just happens.

And what marks the passage of time (for better or worse) more than anniversaries.  A year is an arbitrary time period from the standpoint of actual accomplishment but it does offer a chance to reflect on accomplishments and take stock of what improvements can be made.

Which is particularly relevant because yesterday was the third anniversary of my last day working at Baker & McKenzie, the so-called "day job."

Three years of pursuing a career in music head-on, full-time.

Let me sum up the last three years in one word:

exhilaratingexcitingdepressingreallyreallyhardrewarding-
wonderfulterrifyingdepressinghumblingbeguilinggloriousmoving-
crushingfrustratingmystifyingultimatelythebest

I think that covers it.

While it's easy to get buried in the details and the day-to-day of building success in music (and any career or business I suppose), I try to remind myself as often as possible of how lucky I am, how hard I work, and how far I've come as an artist and a businessman in these three years.

Truly, my worst day as a musician is better than my best day doing just about any other job and that gets lost in the noise from time to time.

The other thing that gets lost in the mundane side of music is the reason why I did this to begin with: the music.

So much of being a musician has nothing to do with music.  It's like any other business: administration takes up a disproportionate amount of time, a necessary evil for any measure of true success.

But at the center of this bizarre ride is and has to be music and my love for music.

One of my favorite songs ever is What I Did for Love from A Chorus Line.  So simple, so perfect.  Captures the common thread of love across so many different things in life, but especially the love for a craft or art, the sacrifices one makes, and the pain and failure one tolerates to pursue it.

That's the song I had in mind when I wrote Love Goes On and the idea of what love means and how it exists has become the subject of this next set of records we're working on.

Recording Love Goes On was a blast.  We changed very little from my demo version... added a little interlude and a double chorus and that's about it.  The core of the tune (including the rhythm guitar) is from the live tracking with the band.  The lead part was done on some weird electronic-infused guitar that was hanging around the studio... it was like playing a live cat.  The thing was just howling in my hands.  So much fun.  The background vocals and hand claps we all did in the big room together around one microphone.  The lead vocals I cut near the end of my sinus infection period (it's like Picasso's Blue Period only with less post-nasal drip).  And the mix was expertly handled, as usual.

As far as the lyrics... I think it's all there.

Love is love.

Love for people, love for music...

Love is going to face the same obstacles, the same challenges.

When you're weary and beaten up, when you're fighting doubt...

Love goes on.

I believe it.

No, I know it.

Because I'm lucky enough to live it every day.

**************

LOVE GOES ON

Walking the same roads
In these worn down shoes
Singing these worn down blues
Again and again

Waiting for new light
In a darkened place
With a belly full of broken grace
And remedy spent

But lines are drawn
From night to dawn
And in between
Love goes on

Digging the same hole
With a heave heart
Trying not to fall apart
In front of the kids

Leaving the light up
As the darkness crawls
From the windows to the pale walls
Of the heartache we hid


But lines are drawn
From night to dawn
And in between
Love goes on

jbg

Love, Faith, Light (Out)

The life of a song is a strange, strange thing.

At some point I started to get used to it but even now when I stop and think about the steps of creation it amazes me to no end.

It's possible I'm thinking about this right now because somehow we're already starting to put together the details of our next recording.  And between this new material and our current release I'm managing songs at just about every point in the process.

Which seems apropos for writing about the song Light Out.

Light Out is one of those songs that seems like it took forever to get right.  From a writing standpoint at least.  And then almost no time to get right in recording it.  And then a whole lot more time to get it out for public consumption.

I wrote it (or the first draft of it) in March of 2011.

I went through a couple rounds of complete rewrites (like, everything except the choruses) in July of 2011.

We recorded the song in August of 2011.

It was released as part of our first Slothtrop single in July of 2012 and on the new EP in September of 2012.

The tune was arranged, rehearsed, tracked, and mostly mixed in one day, including the lead vocals.  The only thing added afterwards were the background vocals.  It was the first song we recorded for Days of Getting By and in some ways I think it's the best thing Paper Arrows has done.  It's simple and moving, direct but complex in theme.

The coolest part of the process for me was recording the vocals in one take near the end of the day.  I had taken a couple runs through it and we actually had what we thought was enough to put together a good performance.  But I decided to give it one more shot and see if I could do something a little bit different with it.  And it worked.  Which is really, really rare for me when it comes to singing.  Usually the more I think, the more I "try" things, the worse it gets.  But somehow Light Out came together.  I found the intimacy it needed but also added a little bit of extra muscle for the choruses.  It was a great experience and even more meaningful to do it in front of a group of musicians I admire and respect.

The textures of the recording are very cool.  Luke did some great work blending simple piano and organ parts.  Jay plays a stoic but forceful bass line.  Darren plays a truly beautiful drum part with a nod to Steve Gadd (to my non-drummer ears).  And I added a ridiculously simple guitar part during the choruses as well as a couple of ambient eBow parts.  Jay's backgrounds are typically wonderful and the lyrics he sings for the counterpoint... let's just say they'll be coming back on the next recording and featured more prominantly.

The lyrics...

As I mentioned, these went through some serious reworking... somewhere in this process the song went from being about as vague as possible (just a bunch of images strung together) to being about something specific: the idea that love is faith.

This may sound simple, trite, cliche (all of the above) but for me, for where I was in my life, it was a revelation on a number of levels.

I'm not a religious person.  In fact I have a very uncomfortable relationship with religion both practically and theoretically.  And a lot of it stems from vocabulary.  I realized a couple years ago that I thought I was an atheist namely because religion has co-opted the word "God."  Religion owns the word.  So when I was saying "I don't believe in God" what I really meant was "I don't believe in anything I've heard attached to that word."  Subtle but very meaningful distinction.

And what I found when I started examining my beliefs and my life is that I behave in ways that indicate I do believe in a God.  And the more I dug, the more I realized that the language of faith in God and the language of falling in and staying in love are largely the same.

Here was this huge piece of life, the most important piece and the piece in which I've had the most struggles, in which I was expressing faith on a daily basis.

And so the song became an affirmation of that, of how faith in love (or anything) can be renewed every day, about how it deserves all the reverence normally apportioned to religion...

And this in turn became a kind of lynchpin for the next three records.

But there I am getting ahead of myself in the lifecycle of our music.  Again.

jbg

*************

LIGHT OUT

Maybe love is just as strong as we let ourselves believe
And in the days it fades away and leaves us on our knees
So upon the setting sun we lay our hopes to keep
That in the silence we'll be healed while we sleep

Turn the light
Turn the light out on me
Turn the light out on me now

In the dark we built an ark to carry us to land
We gathered all our things around and made one final plan
And in this dream I let you go and the end was drawing near
I was left knee-deep in the water and I was trying to catch your tears

Turn the light
Turn the light out on me
Turn the light out on me now

(One for sorrow, two for tomorrow, three for the show)

Won't you go to the river maybe you can save yourself
If you go to the river maybe I'll see you there
'Cause if love is faith then I'm all out of prayers...

Tell the Kids

The new Paper Arrows record, Days of Getting By, is out and available on iTunes and Amazon.

It's our fourth release but in some ways it feels like a new beginning, owing to the fact that it's our first on Madison's Slothtrop Records, the indie label with which we signed earlier this year.

It's also the first in what I hope will be a new thematic trilogy of records for us.

Our first three record arc, Look Alive, Things We Would Rather Lose, and In the Morning, was so satisfying to me from a writing and creative standpoint, that I'd like to try that conceit again, stretching a narrative or theme over a number of releases while having each record stand on its own.

Because we may now have the opportunity to record our second Slothtrop release sooner than I thought (this winter), I've already done the bulk of writing on it... and I'm really pleased with how it might sit in relation to Days of Getting By.

But that's getting a little (a lot?) ahead of it all.

We have a record to promote, and I'm really, really proud of it.

As a group of songs, Days of Getting By is a little scattered sonically, but that's generally by design.  We recorded it spread over about 6 months.  When we started, I intended to release the songs one at a time as singles with videos, but that plan got scrapped when it proved too expensive.  When Slothtrop got involved, we converted it to a more standard EP format.

For the most part, we recorded one song per studio day, starting in the morning with just my demo, rehearsing until we had a good band take of it, moving on to some overdubs and vocals, and then even trying to get a rough mix of the song to listen to.

Tell the Kids was the third song we did, convening at I.V. Labs in November of last year.
Whereas we had Luke around to play keys on the first two days, this song we recorded just the three of us, Darren, Jay and myself.  Which took me back to Look Alive on which the three of us recorded just about everything.

Jay had it in his head that this song would have no regular bass guitar on it, so Darren and I set up together and banged out a version just the two of us, with me playing acoustic guitar.  Once we had the drums I tweaked the acoustic part and we had a framework within which to work.

I added a couple simple electric guitar overdubs.  Darren added banjo (an inspired choice) and an organ which takes the place of the bass.  He also added a second drum kit.

I cut the lead vocals very quickly and added some low harmonies to the verses on the spot.

We had a working mix.

Then the song sat for awhile as we went through negotiating the record contract and figuring out how we were going to finish up the release.

When we came back and listened to the rough mixes, we liked the song, but felt there were a couple things missing.

The final mix fills in the spaces with some really nice background vocals in the chorus, a shimmery (technical term) programming sound, and what I think is a tremendous job by Jay of adding and subtracting instruments in the mix to shape to the song.

The format of the tune, three verses plus choruses, can be tricky to keep interesting.  There's no bridge, no solo... and all the verses and choruses are identical in length so... the task of engagement falls largely on the dynamics of the mix.

This somewhat bland format was intentional on my part.  I wanted the emphasis strongly on the words and the story they tell.

Their genesis was a misheard lyric from The National tune Vanderlye Crybaby Geeks.

I hadn't looked at the title and I thought Matt Berninger sang "I'll explain everything to the kids" instead of "I'll explain everything to the geeks."

But that got me thinking about how powerful the word "kids" is... how it can stand for so many different things beyond just, well, little people (not midgets, but you get my drift).

And I started crafting this lyric around the idea that every heartbreak has collateral damage, has little innocent things that get swept into the whirlpool that is loss.

So these three releases on Slothtrop are going to be about... love, faith, life... all the mostly good but still complex things that come after you resolve loss and you're left with yourself.

And away we go...

TELL THE KIDS

In the end, everyone loses everyone
Our castles come undone
My dear friend, before our glass returns to sand
Let's get out while we can

So go and tell the kids
Explain it all to the kids
He'll stay with me
She'll be with you
So go and tell the kids

When you're done, kill the lights and lock the door
This palace is no more
My sweetest one, we didn't go without a fight
We tried to make it right

So go and tell the kids

Explain it all to the kids

He'll stay with me

She'll be with you

So go and tell the kids

After all, a song still needs a voice to sing

A kingdom needs a king

In the fall, remember me for who I was

When you believed in love

So go and tell the kids

Explain it all to the kids

He'll stay with me

She'll be with you

So go and tell the kids

jbg

Singular

Hear and download my cover of Bloodbuzz Ohio here and here.

**************

Well, it's been dark here for awhile... maybe the longest stretch of silence since I started this page over seven years ago.

Seven years!

Goodness.

Anyway...

As usual, silence here is related to noise elsewhere: I've been hard at work in nearly every facet of my musical world.  And that work is starting to bear fruit.  Last week, our new label (Slothtrop) released new Paper Arrows music... a "maxi-single" consisting of three songs: Love Goes On, Light Out, and a cover of The National song Bloodbuzz Ohio.

I'm going to write more extensively about the two originals when Slothtrop releases our EP in September (which will consist of Love Goes On, Light Out, and five other songs) so I thought I would take this post to write a little bit about Bloodbuzz Ohio.

Where to start?

When I signed the deal with Slothtrop in February, we already had four tunes recorded and mixed... which was a great starting point.  After considering a couple of different release plans, we settled around the idea of putting out a seven song EP in the summer/fall, preceded by a three song "single" to generate some advance press and radio.

Eric (owner of Slothtrop) was pretty adamant that both the single and EP should contain a different cover tune, something to tie Paper Arrows to larger bands and turn some new ears and eyes our way.

Which presented a slight problem: after going my entire musical career without recording even ONE cover song, I was being pushed to select and track TWO of them.

Obviously I learned and performed other bands' songs for years... check that: decades.  Going to back to middle school talent show performances of (gulp) Heaven by Warrant and Every Rose Has Its Thorn by Poison... wait did I just type that?  Yes, I did.  Heck, my first band was essentially just a Guns N' Roses cover band.

But there's a huge difference between covering something live and committing someone else's song(s) to record.  And I initially struggled with both song selection and artistic approach.

I came around to the concept of doing the cover for the single in a spare, stripped down setting, and then ramping up the EP-cover as a full band affair.  Which meant ideally I would choose songs that were the opposite, picking something loud to make soft and something soft to make loud.

So I spent about two weeks getting up each day and learning a new song or two... songs from my iTunes library, songs I was teaching to students... random songs I heard on the radio the day before... songs I had wanted to cover for years, songs I had sort-of covered for years... I learned songs by The Flaming Lips, The Blue Nile, Madness, Fine Young Cannibals (not kidding)... Wilco, Sharon van Etten... a whole host of Motown songs... it was fun as heck but also a bit beguiling.

Finally, after numerous trials, I settled on the quiet tune for the EP:  Bloodbuzz Ohio by The National.  I really like The National and I really like this tune... we saw them open up for  Arcade Fire a year or so ago and they were really, really good.

And Bloodbuzz Ohio had a bunch of things going for it...

1) It was a driving rock tune inside of which I found a quiet fingerpicking pattern, so it satisfied the radical reinvention criterion.

2) The National is the type of band with which Paper Arrows would like to be identified.

3) The lyrics fit nicely next to what we do in Paper Arrows... love, loss, longing... it's all there.

4) The voice... Matt Berninger has (in my opinion) a truly singular and remarkable voice.  Deep, resonant... unmistakable.  He pitches his songs where even lower male rock singers will not (check that: cannot) go.  So that meant I was forced to figure out how I could sing it my own way.

And that meant changing the key, lowering it a whole step into the guitar-friendly key of G but then singing the melody an octave higher.  And that unlocked the magic.

The key of G presented numerous opportunities for me to re-voice the song, stressing harmonic movement that is (at best) implied in the original.  It also put it squarely in the strongest part of my vocal range.  High enough to convey tension but low enough to sing with relative ease and gentleness when desired.  Truly, a lucky strike born (like most luck) out of a lot of work.

So I started practicing it until... an antibiotic-resistant sinus infection kept me from singing for nearly 4 months.

Talk about torture... I sign the first record contract of my career and then I CAN'T SING.  Can't practice.  Can't write.  Can't record the remaining vocal tracks for the EP, which included committing Bloodbuzz to tape (hard drive).

So I did my best to practice Bloodbuzz, focusing on the guitar parts, visualizing (or whatever the sonic equivalent of visualizing is) the vocals ... and result was that I kept finding different ways to play the song... or rather, I kept finding useful variations.  I just couldn't quite figure out how to fit all the variations together into one seamless performance.

But necessity is the mother of invention.  And we needed to get the record done.

So a stormy spring evening I braved the run from my north-shore students to I.V. Lab, and we set up to get Bloodbuzz dialed in.

I knew I wanted to replicate a guitar set-up and sound we used for the song Fight on Look Alive... my 1960's Gibson  ES-125 through a reverb-saturated isolated amp.  Ghostly, mysterious... just right.  And mic'ed acoustically to give it a little more punch.

And I also wanted to cut the whole song live, playing and singing at the same time in one take.  It just felt like the right way to go.

But the live approach also resulted in a lot of pressure: one mistake and the take is useless.  No editing and in this case, no auto-tune.

Good thing I had been able to rehearse so much.

Oh wait.

To make matters even a little more tenuous, my voice was still not fully recovered from my sinus issues.  Better to be sure, but still ragged and lacking in stamina.  I was not going to be able to sing Bloodbuzz over and over and over... this was going to need to come together pretty quickly.

So we got set and I started in, running through it a couple times to get warmed up and used to the room.  From the beginning, we were pleased.  The work I had done selecting and pitching the song was paying off and by the second take, we had something usable.

And then on the third take, the magic happened.

Something just clicked and it was like I was following a map in my head... all the variations I had worked on flowed from one to the next in a way that was so perfect it seemed obvious but had never occurred to me before that take.

And my voice was right on the edge of breaking.  I let myself go places I hadn't been comfortable with before, took some leaps of faith... and they paid off.

I'm extremely fond of the phrase "The machines love discovery" and when I listen to my version of Bloodbuzz, that's what I hear: I hear myself discovering how to play and sing the song the right way in real time.

And all live, one take, no editing.

I'm on a Bloodbuzz, God I am.

jbg