THE SONG: Good old fashioned love song. I remember picking up the guitar at my old semi-house thing I lived in off Chapman in Orange... I found this finger picking riff and sang the melody and lyric "Hey beautiful lady, how does it feel". Then I sat there and went "I don't normally refer to girls my age as ladies...??" But it just fit, so I kept it and kept going... this is still one of my most popular songs from that era. It's been used in a lot of weddings, which is super-flattering.
THE RECORDING: Big roomy drums in the bridge. I'd leave the little bedroom food open and put a mic in the bathroom and compress the crap out of it on the NUKE setting on a distressor.
The acoustic part is doubled with this cool asian string instrument sample.... gives it this jangly world-music sound (go figure).
Those were pitch shifted bongos making up the percussion loop.
I recall I was exploring some new tones with my voice when I recorded this song... throatier than other songs from this period... more raspy... it's a little placement thing... different support... makes for more natural high-end which is useful... 2003 seems like forever ago... a lifetime ago. That little junker house in Orange was great though.... I boarded up the windows after filing them with 4" foam. The place had virtually zero light coming in. You'd walk in the front door and there was the studio. The back bedroom was filled with drums and a speaker cab... and I slept in the tiny bedroom next to my window AC unit. I had this tiny fridge that I'd keep red bulls in. I'd eat Jack in The Box everyday. Yikes! This was the place I was living in when Andy and I co-wrote a song that would change our lives forever... another song with "beautiful" in the title.
:)A
Original Release Date: November 4, 2004