Original Release Date: September 21, 2010
THE SONG: This song represented a big time for me spiritually. I was experiencing a re-birth of purpose. Connecting to a deeper sense of why God has given me my talents and how He wants me to use them. I had lost focus, and through writing this song, I felt I was connecting back to the real stuff. I was actually feeling the work He was doing in me. That's such a cool thing; when something like that comes out in an emotion that feels good... painfully good. There's some sense of loss involved in it... like I'd been missing out on something for months... and now it's back... not I'm back in line with Him. This song is all about being able to look back on life and hopefully feel like, "yes, I don't waste it all... I really tried to do something meaningful with it all...". I'll let the lyrics say the rest.
THE RECORDING: I really enjoy melding classical sensibilities with rock. This song is a half and half mixture. There are two versions of this. The original version was built around these arpeggios in the strings. This is the version that my band FALLBORN ended up playing live quite a bit. The video you'll see here is that version... the video was made as a companion piece to our live show, so it's sort of half light show, half music video. Daniel Chesnut and I had a blast making it together. That version is a combo of me drumming with Jules Rodriguez coming in on the chorus and bridge. Double drummer action! Also, it's Nic Rodriguez on bass and Matt Rodriguez and myself on guitars.
The version that ended up on Murder Yesterday morphed. I'd always wanted to replace the string samples with a string section recorded specifically for the track... there's a misconception about strings.... people say "fake strings" when you use string samples... but they're not fake... they're real strings, it's just that somebody else recorded them, one note at a time, so people could use them on a budget... maybe that's obvious:) But it's worth mentioning... in a blind taste test, string samples can be right up there with strings that you shell out big money for and record yourself... THAT SAID! I went for it. I hired The Section Quartet to come in and co-arrange and play this song at my studio. We layered and layered them and it ended up sounding AMAZING. They are ridiculous players. Eric Gorfain is their leader... him and I did the arrangement. The first half of the song is significantly different than the FALLBORN version. The arpeggios are mostly gone, replaced by a sort of Eleanor Rigby treatment. I love both versions. But, I do think some of the aching heart is missing in the new version, replaced by a slight playfulness. The arpeggio parts ended up being nearly humanly impossible to play with a real string section... particularly on cello... and the cellist, Richard Dodd, is amazing in The Section Quartet:) (the others are Daphne Chen on violin and Laure Chipman on viola).
On version 2, I replaced all the drums and also enlisted Dave Carpenter on bass so it had the feel of the rest of Murder Yesterday. Another thing I did was make it more in your face. There are less effects on the vocals and the mix is much more intimate and earthy overall. It's kinda crazy how different the emotion is after those handful of changes.... even with the same vocal performance and chord structure.
I hadn't heard the old version in awhile... until today actually... it was fun to hear how it's changed and how both version have their own thing. Hope you enjoy listening.