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I admit, not all songs are worth salvaging. What feels inspiring one moment can soon feel dumb, insignificant, and lacking any meaning even by abstract standards. Certainly, this could be insecurity which I imagine all artists face. But if the sense perseveres after a few re-visits, I move on.
Conversely, some songs, no matter how old, gnaw at me if they remain unfinished or un-recorded. Such is the case with a song I wrote when I was 26 years old, then called Stormy Weather.
Naive, I had no idea there already was “a song” called Stormy Weather. A lot of the musician guys I knew at the time warned me. These guys played the same beach town bars as my band Moxie, their set lists comprised of white man blues. From Eric Clapton to the Allman Brothers, they’d slam through masturbatory pieces filled with maddening layers and endless solos. I found it interesting that they felt a need to comment on my song title. They never played anything original. My own band didn’t seem to care nor even notice.
Though it stayed as a core song of our set list for a year or so, Moxie never recorded Stormy Weather. Every spring since (that’s a LOT of springs!) the melody and lyrics swirled in my head. “Flowers bloom. Their perfume fills this bright and sunny day. Sparrows swoon, sing their tune and I feel so damn out of place”
I tried with my Tascam four track cassette recorder, then with my Adat 8 track. But I just couldn’t figure out how to capture the groove, the relationship between the drums & bass and guitar even though we had figured out a live song that I thought worked well.
Then last summer, with a few years of amateur sound engineering under my belt, I kind of figured it out. A couple of things happened. (I know, bad passive English sentence, but sometimes you have to relinquish control and let shit happen.)
First, I picked up a bass, hit record and just let LOOSE. It is by far my FAVORITE aspect of being a musician. Just closing my eyes, letting the beat move my body and fingers, feeling my eyeballs roll back into my head, escaping conscious thought. I don’t really play bass, but I guess I know enough from guitar where the notes are, and an obsession with dance music gives me a sense of what a bass can do. And this, a compelling bass line, as it turns out, was the crux.
So now, where to put this very busy, very groovy bass? Can I sing over it? I felt I should alternate, starting with a simple bass mirroring the guitar, then building. This called for an extended arrangement. A place to drop the bass line, and make it the focus, like so many house/EDM songs. So instead of the original song arrangement, a simple and short verse/bridge/chorus, verse/bridge chorus, I changed the structure to verse/bridge/musical interlude, verse bridge chorus, verse bridge chorus.
Well. This required a NEW verse. Imagine, 30 years after “finishing” this song, I need a new verse? All I can say, in my Long Island accent, is “like, how?”
By the time I had this realization, it was deep into April/May 2023. I had a new dog for the first time in quite a few years, and the park next to my building where I take little Barbie for walks burst with inspiration. Crocuses, daffodils, then tulips, magnolias and pink buds on tree ends expressed the genius of the NYC parks department and the under rated lush landscape of NY. After a few tries, I worked out something that I felt fit perfectly. The rhymes were tight as in the other verses; the stanzas painted a landscape and expressed contradictory emotions. “Leashes trail wagging tails. Yellow balls sail through the air. April paints a Monet. I remain a smudge of gray.”
Alas, it must have been late May by the time I was ready to record, and it wouldn’t make sense to finish and release it by June or July. I moved on to other music, vowing to circle back.
Help, I hope I’m not becoming a writer who can only reflect on the process of writing. Snore. Ok, I got this far, so…..
This past winter absorbed me in helping Cat record four full length LP’s but as soon as March rolled around and the tips of the crocuses poked through the earth, I told her I had to dedicate some time to this song.
I had the instrument parts, built the basic drum loops, the rest should be easy, right? Sigh. I sing. Singing is a verb, and I spend a lot of time and effort on this instrument. But I’m not a natural born, great singer. I’d love to pair this song with a great singer, but nobody’s knocking down my door (or returning my messages) to sing my songs, so girl’s gotta RISE to the occasion.
And this song….if you look at the notes…the half steps…the range…I imagine it’s a tough song for anyone to sing… I stumbled upon this production technique…called “stacking”…where you sing a PHRASE at a time, then sing it over four more times. You then align the phrases’ timing using some ingenious feature that probably all softwares have (I use Cubase). After this, the technique calls for auto-tuning EACH note. I’m not talking about running some AI auto-tune on the whole damn song. I mean EVERY SYLLABLE is broken down into piano looking notes, and if they’re a half step off (or if the program interprets it as off) or even 1/16th step off, you can adjust it. After hours and hours of grueling technical work, I achieved an in tune, albeit occasionally un-natural sounding vocal. Which I don’t care, I love dance music, and this is a pop song.
I then had to layer harmonies, align timing, and tune those tracks note by note. As you can imagine, this took incredible CHUNKS of time. And I have SEVERAL day jobs, so I can only do this nights and weekends. But I was NOT waiting another year to release it. I gave myself an April 1st deadline.
After auto-tuning EVERY note of every track, my ears got so sensitive that I was able to hear parts I missed; a single note buried in 8 vocal layers, whose pitch was off by 1/8th of a note. Next, the technique called for mixing up the effects on the different layers. Some tracks pan left, some pan right, some add effects/compression and pre-sets, others leave untouched except for maybe some EQ.
I get that some people might perceive this as cheating. Well, I wish they would convince Crystal Waters to sing my song. Until then, a girl’s gotta rise to the occasion. Stacking is also a well known, fairly common vocal production technique in EDM/Dance/Pop.
I also learned how to bring out the bass sound. I reinforced the simple parts with synth basses, but the complex parts are just me playing. It’s incredible what EQ tweaking can do, vintage compression, as well as “cassette tape” effect and virtual bass amps.
By the time March 31st rolled around I still hadn’t figured out the space before the second guitar riff. Maybe if i had a collaborator, or another 2 weeks I would be satisfied with these 4 bars. I settled for weird space savers, and a faux Led Zep snare build. I wish I could have dreamed up something better. And sure, there’s some other things in retrospect I wish I could change.
But more important than creating a perfect song, after 30 years, I RELEASED this song. And you know, how it came out, it may not be my best production, but it’s something that I can be kind of proud of.
I’ve heard advice from great writers. Just take your old projects and throw them out. If you haven’t finished them by now, you won’t. But I’m not so sure. I mean, it kind of feels dumb to finish something out of anxiety spurred by “unfinished” projects. As someone whose started countless books and abandoned them, I don’t really value following through for the sake of following through. However, as Tony made me aware, there’s a certain continuity of time, where past mixes with future and present. And if you still feel connected to something as if it was today or yesterday or tomorrow, then doesn’t it deserve an attempt to complete it? I don’t know if this song will ever reach anyone outside my 17 Spotify followers, or ever resonate with another human, which is always my hope. But regardless, I am now free of 30 years of longing (to finish this song) and open to what is new.