I have been nominated for a total of 9 awards by the Indie Music Channel, the premiere source for indie/alternative music in North America, and I'm going to talk about the songs that have been nominated. This is Ordinary Life, the heart of the EP and one of the most ambitious tracks I've ever recorded. This track picked up nominations for best rock song and best rock band, and boy did we work for it. I would like to think that the video would have also been nominated had it completed on schedule, but I'll get to that.
The song itself was inspired by a conversation with a friend of mine who is in the band Fear2Stop. He is based in Texas and desperately wants to move out for the sake of his teenaged daughter, but is unable to becuase he relies on his day job to support his family. I told him that I was sorry he had to live in the Hee-Haw version of the Handmaid's Tale and he told me that would make a great lyric. Everything else coalesced around that.
The verses are a pretty straight ahead E minor 9th to A Major progression, and while most will associate that with Pink Floyd's "Breathe" there are actually many songs that use it, and what I initially drew inspiration from is Little River Band's very first track on their first album, called "It's A Long Way There".
We had literally just finished up the drums when my computer died, and while I was pretty upset it turned out to be for the best, because we came to realize that all of us had to give our absolute best and be willing to do take after take of a song that would clock in at about 11 minutes.
Once I had a new machine we re-recorded the drums, and then both Jim and I recorded the chorused guitars, one for each channel. We have different playing styles and different influences, and one result of that is that the guitars, while in sync from measure to measure and chord to chord, are NOT in sync during any specific chord. It really fills out the sound. I told Jim that I'd do the solo and he went on vacation. Jason put in the bass track after, because he wanted to hear the guitars to come up with ideas for any runs and such. He would wind up going back and redoing that a couple of times as we added layers.
Lee brought in the organ, which he said was directly inspired by the work of Richard Wright of Pink Floyd. With that in mind we decided to lean into it are really accentuate that aspect of the recording, although I ultimately went another direction with the distorted guitars that lead into the second chorus and play through the first solo. We spent a couple of weeks passing files back and forth between each other until all we had left were the vocals and the solos.
I did a couple of takes of the solos and to be honest they were crap. So I stopped and refocused and did the lead vocals. I did 6 takes of the entire song, trying to get just the right blend. Thje finished prodeuct is actually 2 different takes, one much lower in the final mix. It gives the impression that I'm singing in a large room but every once and a while I don't sing the same notes, and it gives a nice harmony effect.
I sent the vocals around to Lee (a tenor) and Jason (a baritone) and man oh man did we come up with some nice harmonies in the chorus. I'm really proud of that.
So now all that's left is the two solos. I spent days trying to get them right and I never did. With Jim unreachable I decided to do something we'd never done in the entire history of the band - hire a session player. Enter Takis Koroneos, a guitarist/producer based in Greece that I hired on fiverr. I sent him a rough mix of the song and told him where I wanted things and what I was after, and he said, "So you want David Gilmour?"
3 days later I had both solos in hand and they're marvelous. At the end of each solo there is a harmony solo that plays for a bar or two and that's me, basically lifting Mr. Koroneos' ideas and playing along with him.
That's when I realized I had a blank spot in the song - I had forgotten to put in strings in the outro of the final chorus. I was playing around with patches and fell in love with a sound I selected by accident, a calliope. So yes, there's a calliope solo in there too.
I knew this would need a stellar video, so I called upon the same artist who had done the video for "Stick Around", which in my opinion is the best one I have. He had never done one of these at nearly 11 minutes. In fact, "Stick Around" was the longest one he had ever done and this would be twice as long. He agreed to do it, but it wouldn't be ready until well after July 1st, which was the release date of the single. I put up a temporary video using public domain video from an old DeMille movie (one of the rare non-racist ones) but Abdul K's is far superior and is the one embedded above.
We worked our butts off for this one, and I'm very proud of the result. Whether or not the song wins will really depend on if the judges want to see screaming guitars or an old-fashioned slow burner driving rock tune to represent the category.
I'll keep you posted. There will be one more post tomorrow and one more nomination to discuss.
