about:

The title of this song traces back to thoughts while jogging. I tend to think more clearly when I am exercising and it’s a great place to collect ideas. Perhaps I filed it away for a few weeks. While Lori and I had a brief getaway to southern Utah this March, I finally had some free time and decided to demo a song idea. This title came back to mind and I believe I imagined a soul/rock ballad not far different to some of Steve Winwood’s work in the mid-1980’s.

Normally, I start a song with a musical idea – a melody or a chord sequence at least. For this song I started with the lyrics, though I might have had some melodic framework in my head. My personal experience with writing lyrics tends to be one of two varieties: (1) a quick dump of writing where the concept and execution flows efficiently (2) a slow process where a line or two comes quickly but the rest feels stuck for days or indefinitely. Much of my lyric-writing of the last few years tends to be of the second variety and I have been glad to have help by Alan and Lori for many projects. Fortunately, the lyrics came quickly on this one, except for a few lines which fell into place later.

After writing most of lyrics, I figured out the song structure on my parents’ keyboard. This also was a fairly streamlined process. I made a quick demo. Lori really liked the lyrics and the demo recording. I shared it with Alan who also gave positive feedback. Alan and I actually had our first face-to-face meeting since the pandemic started shortly before writing this song and we met up in Enoch, Utah at his dwellings shortly after.

A few weeks later, I worked on putting music to Lori’s lyrics called “Blueprint.” After that project was completed and a few collaborations were in progress, I turned back to the song fragments I had not yet developed. This song was one I considered scrapping either partially or entirely, and both Lori and Alan convinced me to keep it intact.

Since this song felt like a ballad that I connected musically with the 1980’s, I wanted to use some ques to that era. I took a long time diving through the Roland menus to find the most appropriate patch for the lead and supporting sounds. After I had taken the sequence to 6 minute territory, I workshopped the ideas to my brother Brian and also my cousin Alan who both offered valuable suggestions. Brian suggested since it was a long song that I strip down the first verse to only its essentials. I applied his idea by removing the bass and simplifying the percussion in this spot and it worked well. One of the four verses was either intended to be a solo or perhaps it was added added in error. I decided at this point to perform a radical edit where I changed this solo/third verse into a dropout, borrowing the chord sequence of the intro and outro. On this middle dropout I again took out the bass and supporting keyboards initially.

When I had exported the sequence, I applied another of Brian’s suggestions which was to replace the sequenced bass with an electric bass (there is a small remnant of the sequenced bass on the lowest notes and first few notes in the intro). I recorded two supporting guitars playing similar parts but one had overdrive and a different pickup setting in some parts. I had a very clear idea in my head for the backing vocals in the outro. My original idea was recorded with five voices and two parts and constitutes the first two repeats. I then tried layering the vocals on the last two repeats with two more parts and four more voices.

I recorded a simple lead vocal. Alan suggested I reference the original demo for some great melody ideas I failed to capture. I re-recorded the vocal and added some effects, thanks to Alan’s ideas. The guitar solo tried to be a bit of an over-simplified John Mayer. It would be better if he played it, for sure. After the third mixdown, I felt like I’d captured what I wanted to capture. It was easy to bring this recording to a fairly good level but took 80% of the effort taking it to a slightly better spot.