I suppose I should start this off with an announcement!
BRAND NEW MUSIC!!! Yay! (check it out right HERE)
The new song is called MEND
It's a bit of a mix between some R&B grooving, bluesy alt/art-rock, and spoken word poetics.
But who cares about any of that right?
Really it's just an excuse to show off some of the amazingly talented folks I've met down in Nashville! This particular experiment features the talents of Tyler Sutphen on lead guitar, Ashley Wright on keys, Jacob Utting on Bass, and Whitney McCombs with some tremendous vocals. As per how we do, Jacob worked that engineering magic, Alex Crain mastered something fierce, and I may have done some acoustic guitar and percussiony stuff and maybe rapped and sung a bit or something (who can really know).
But now down to the stuff I only share with my lovely blog-readers (the maybe 2 or 3 of you special folks in all the multiverse).
Why Mend? (Why in the world did I write and record this strange concoction of musical styles and thematic imaginings?)
Well, let's start with the MUSIC ---
The acoustic guitar part was the first thing I wrote, and about an hour before coming in to the studio for the first time, I (nearly) completely rewrote it. See, I had been mulling it over for a while, and it was too simple, too obvious, so I sat down on the edge of a small park and added just a pinch of groove to it.
This groove was built upon when Jacob and I were figuring out some percussion for the beat. The kickdrum-like sound was achieved by my foot kicking a door, and the snaredrum-like sound was achieved by the quick shutting of two hardcover books. To find just the right hi-hat/tiny tambourine sound for the subdivision, we employed a pen and a glass pill bottle. Add some claps and a bit of delay and a beat is born. The bridge between the melody and the rhythm provided by Jacob's high class bass playing; if you listen to the verse, he really found something special with that riff.
The next step of course was bringing in the talent. I have met some truly insightful instrumentalists since coming down here, but these folks I met back when I was at the Contemporary Music Center in Brentwood, TN. Between Ashley's classical meets pop keys and Tyler's precise and emotive blues guitar, the space was filled in and the energy really builds up. I learned so much watching each of their unique approaches to coming up with a part that melded their personal styles with that which most grew the song.
I knew though that this song was in many ways inspired by listening to my friend Whitney McComb's own EP and that her voice would suit it perfectly, even as I was writing it. There is a deep soulfulness and longing there behind her phrasing. I believe she took the melody I'd written and gave it a whole new life and distinction.
Taking all that together and mixing it just right requires a disciplined ear, hours of painstaking work with tiny subtleties which often go unappreciated, and of course patience with a crazy artist who never quite knows what they want. Jacob Utting can take a blast zone of ideas and organize it into a playground of a singular vision. Seriously, he spends so much time helping bring my psychotic dreams to fruition with a patient dedication every artist should envy for their engineers.
Honing that all in to a point, bringing out what works and smoothing out the rest is what the mysterious world of mastering is all about, and I was very glad that Alex Crain agreed once again to help us all make that possible.
It took some time, some hits and misses, and a whole lot of experimentation, but there is an artfulness than can only happen through collaboration. I am incredibly grateful to have gotten to work with these amazing folks. After all, my real hope for this whole Odist Abettor Music thing is about bringing folks together to create something of both artistic and sociological value.
Which brings us to the LYRICS ---
Did I ever really love you
Did I ever take the time
Did I ever really want you
Or did I just want you to be mine
Did I hold you like a trophy
When I should have held you like a friend
This is my confession, I treated you like a possession
All along, but what I possessed was at best pretend
And now what I’ve broken I can’t mend
You know what they say, it’s great until it ain’t, and you can serve it up on a multi-million dollar plate/ But will it still look the same waking up the next day, when the fairy-tale has faded and fate must’ve made a mistake/ So we fake it till we break it enough to give it away, never puttin’ on the brakes to whom we give it away, anyway/ and then we dare to be dismayed when they don’t see it our way/ when what was charming gets alarming and our heart’s led astray/ we’ll play the game, adjust our aim, and leave the past to be blamed/ seeking completion, over-reaching, when our target’s the same/ we’re not two halves to a whole, but rather holes that feel halved/ in our attempts to fill the emptiness with what we can’t ever have/ and to possess whatever wrestles us from selfish introspection/ by clues we follow through in Hollywood’s grand deception/ so I’m suggesting we break the trend and end with an intervention/ here’s to love and all it can be when we set aside our pretension and mend it...
Did I ever really trust you
Did I ever really share
Any part of me that really mattered
Would you have even cared?
Did I hold you like a trophy
When I should have held you like a friend
This is my confession, I treated you like a possession
All along, but what I possessed was at best pretend
And now what I’ve broken I can’t mend
You know what they say, but would I say it again/ try to retract so we can act like it’s not playin’ again/ the fantasy of first dates like loose change in your pocket/ stored up bits of expectation from payments of a big lie you bought into/ and you can choose and i can choose if the abuse of our past/ and the paths we’ve stumbled down will echo through it and last/ if we’ll see the other through the lens of the hurt that we both carry/ all the bones in the closets of broken homes we never seem to bury/ and if the wounds that we keep nursing are a curse of our own making/ self-inflicted by our insistence we don’t deserve the time healing’s taking/ when really we don’t think we’re worth being loved at all/ or maybe we can defend love, mend up, and watch these old walls fall/ as i admit my imperfections will you back up in disgust/ or will we work to earn this trust—building up into something real/ one small step at a time to chase after more than what we feel/ that’s wider than emotion, taller than a glass ceiling, honestly imperfect but what starts here is healing
Did I ever really love you
Did I ever take the time
This is my confession, you were never my possession
I wasn’t yours, and you were never mine
I'm not gonna go on for too long about this. I prefer folks interpret meaning in a song however best works for them. Some of these words first came to me while I was in a philosophy class almost two years ago, and some I wrote on my way to the studio.There is definitely an attempt here to present my version of a love song, whatever that means. I was inspired by how often we see love presented in terms of ownership. "You complete me" is a ridiculously self-centered way of looking at love, as in I am mostly good except for this piece I need which you can provide for my benefit. Even saying that someone else is yours makes me feel uneasy, whether meant cherishingly or not. That love should be about giving more than receiving seems to be an idea often missing completelt from our loves songs, also that love is therefore painful and sad and confusing and forces you to deal with scars and baggage---BUT THAT'S OKAY! Love heals, but first it must recognize that we're all broken.
Then again, if you find yourself catching a different meaning out of it, I am more than okay with it. As John Green has pointed out about books, they belong to their readers. This music belongs to its listeners. Interpret as you will.
If you do decide to download a copy of the new song, any proceeds will be donated to This Star Won't Go Out Foundation--
The purpose of This Star Won’t Go Out foundation is to financially assist families struggling through the journey of a child living with cancer. Caring for a seriously ill child creates tremendous stress for the family system, and having to worry about money is both burdensome and distracting. TSWGO’s goal is to carry a bit of that burden for hurting families through financial gifts.
Feel free to listen to and download the song HERE
(all music and lyrics copyright 2013 Luke Schutz)
No comments:
Post a Comment