188. I’m Going Down To the River

DAY ONE-HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-EIGHT

Watauga River

I thought I would try this idea today. This song came from the first few days of tour and is actually the song I intended to work on yesterday. I woke up early one morning and worked on this song while in Columbus, Ohio. I was half way through when Jeremy woke up and gave me some ideas about Moses floating down the river. The vision in my mind was oddly clear to me: a man walking with his dead son in his arms to bury him in the river. When it came down to recording it, Jeremy and I actually did a rough recording of it that morning, and, his voice being so nice, it sounded awesome, but we never did a final for it. So, for the song today, I just did one take each of three parts, each of them joining the walk to the river. Because it’s basically a tragic funeral procession, beats and vocals aren’t lined up on purpose thinking that this funeral song would be more improvised by the father anyway, and, grief-stricken, he wouldn’t care about cleanliness, timing or intonation.

My choice to add a distorted amplification effect was made mainly to aid in the recording process: it’s easy to get distracted by the voice whilst recording and focus on the wrong things. The effect helped me clean my ear and focus only on the emotion rather than critique the little things. I kept it in.

Hope you’re doing well!

P.S. Ray Charles has an incredible song called “I’m Going Down to the River”. The first line is “I’m going down to the river to drown myself.” Now that’s an opener.