Shaking Through
Man, you just never know.
I spent last weekend mixing “The Desert Star EP.” The last thing I would have expected to do this weekend is spend it in front of my laptop. But there I was, recording a new song, all weekend. And loving it.
Check this out. It’s Saturday afternoon. I’m taking a break from mixing “Boomtown,” one of the three bonus tracks from “The Desert Star EP” (all of which can be yours if you pre-order now!). I’m eating vanilla frozen yogurt with a Kinder Egg crushed into it. And I’m watching some wedding show on Oxygen or WE or Lifetime or something. And despite my self, tears are actually rolling down my cheeks. In a good way. I’m laughing, and crying, and eating, while I watch a three-year-old tell a bride-to-be, “You’re the most beautiful bride I’ve ever seen.”
I grab my Martin and I climb the spiral staircase to my studio. On, maybe, the fourth step, I start playing a D chord. But I play it differently than ever before. And next thing I know, I’ve got a new song on my hands.
Thing is, I have dinner plans, so I barely get a scratch track recorded. But I do. And I walk to dinner listening to the hook. It’s kind of baroque: the same notes in three different octaves. But I’m wordless… Until I walk home from dinner.
I’m thinking I want to write a song like, “Everybody Hurts,” you know, that really ernest, almost cheesy R.E.M. song? I’m thinking I want to write really, really beautiful song. The kind of song people dance to at weddings, or proms.
It took me all day. I finished mixing sometime around eight o’clock tonight. I think it’s one of the prettiest things I’ve ever written, or recorded. It’s all about vows. It’s a love song, a promise, to someone you love: a spouse, or a child.
And it came out of thin air. Thank goodness.
