Getting right to it: This was recorded by James Frazee some weeks ago as a demo. It’s actually an old song, but, in an attempt to recommend a song for the movie – which once again didn’t make it in – we adjusted some tiny, tiny little spots and re recorded it. This is that recording. True, true: it technically doesn’t pass 365 rules, but I’d really like to finally get it in here before it’s too late…I have attempted several “officially recorded” versions of this song, but it just seems to fail. So, I’m just going to have you hear the most recent demo of it, because that’s just what I want to do.
This is one of those songs that came very quickly but took forever to finesse. Bashfully I will tell you that when I finished it and performed it for myself for the first time, I cried…I felt so silly, but they just came rolling out from the little holes in our head that we call eyes. I figure it’s because it comes from a very personal place that existed a very long time ago. (James kindly chimes in at the end… and then I reference another 365 song: You Don’t Know What You’re Doing)
Until tomorrow! More, more, more to come!
Cursive
Someday I’ll write you
Someday I’ll write you in cursive, that day’s today
One day I’ll wrong you
One day I’ll wrong you and that day is today
Don’t have to keep it, just have to read it I wrote it with you in mind
For all that I know
For all that I know
You could be bleeding at the side of the road
You kept me waiting
You kept me waiting i don’t blame you I would, too
She sure was pretty you sure were lucky, it’s a memory I’d love to
I sent out my soul, a way to occupy your mind
I hope you’re kind, I hope you’re kind, please be kind
The stars are so bright, they’ve nearly occupied these pair of eyes
Before this lady dies
Just want to say, just had to say, you’ve been on my mind
Wish I was pretty you always thought so, I guess it must be true
How could you break me I came in pieces I’m in 10 more now that you’re gone
I was so silent how could you stand it your absence speaks more than truth
With arms open wide come back to me my soul
The starts are so bright they’ve nearly occupied these pair of eyes
Before this lady dies
Just want to say, just had to say, you’ve been on my mind
Weird! I just checked the 365 today in start-up mode, and, in curiosity, checked what I wrote one year ago today, and it was Headache for a Heartache. What a surprise. The day I posted this song, it got over 650 visits. In one day. And here we are, one year later!
You may also remember that I have a beautiful video of a live performance I did of this song for Sleepover Shows:
Last night, James Frazee, producer and engineer extraordinaire for the movie (and a whole bunch of other awesome projects), and I just did first review of the movie in its entirety with final music. As these things go, we will need to tweak a few things as we are requested to do so, but we are DONE!
James Frazee and Emily Hope Price basking in the done-ness.
In celebration, I am going to post a rough draft of a song I wrote that DID NOT make it into the movie. I wrote and recorded this while on tour with Pearl and the Beard in Madison, Wisconsin last November. What a perfect use for the restart of the 365! It was intended for the opening credits then moved to the end credits, and eventually tossed completely. In very 365 style, this was written and recorded in the morning over a few hours at Anna Vogelzang‘s house. I used her “studio” (which, in truth, is a very small and somewhat friendly-cluttered office. She had several helpful instruments and a whole bunch of very inspiring pictures pasted onto her walls.)
The song that actually ended up in the opening credits for the movie almost didn’t make it as well, but, at the last minute, it was requested to be used by the director and executive producer. Suspense can function as a type of motivator at times, so I will only tell you that the person involved in its creation just might have been Sam McCormally (Day 10: A Thousand Thousands, Ugly Purple Sweater). More to be revealed…
I kept saying I would restart the 365 in a few weeks and, every time I said it, I meant it thinking the work would be done… but completion of projects like this is too hard to predict, and, even now, I know a tiny bit more still has to be done. But overall, it’s finished: composing, editing, mixing…sigh. It was an awesome experience. I feel 10 years older but wiser, nonetheless. The 365 will resume! FINALLY!
Weakness
Oh how it works
Is that it’s you and this is me upon a mountain
The highest mountain
Oh how it works
Is that I say that you are small and terrifying
So terrifying
So I’ve been cursed
Oh I’ve been wounded on my heel, my heart is bleeding
Oh, boy it’s bleeding
And only you
Yeah, only you can heal the damage that I’m feeling
Oh, yeah, I’m feeling
Five, four, three, two, one and I say
Weakness, you are my weakness
Savory and sweetness
You are my weakness
Weakness, you are my weakness
And I am so compelled right this moment
I’m comin’ home.
It’s how it is
Oh how I just can’t stand to see you suffer
Oh how you suffer
So I will seize
I will seize you by wrist, and we will conquer
Oh, how we’ll conquer
Come willingly,
Come willingly and be accomplice to my devising
Oh be my shill
And we will break the banks of all who’s worth
Five four three two one
Weakness, you are my weakness
Savory and sweetness
You are my weakness
Weakness, you are my weakness
I’m so compelled right this moment
I’m comin’ home.
How was the super-bowl? While I was recording tonight I heard people screaming, so I assume it was entertaining at least, no?
I received this email recently:
Sent Feb. 3:
hey sista, been enjoying your songs with this new project!
i have a jazz little melody, you wanna try to make a song out of it sometime soon? i can come to you in NYC or we can do it here in Jersey City. Abbie
I was so excited. Abbie Gardner is a solo singer/songwriter and also performs with Red Molly. I met her through Anthony Da Costa from Day 28 You Only Love Me When I’m Gone and No. 5 You Don’t Know What You’re Doing. I love Abbie’s music, her voice, and her amazing ability to play several different instruments- the main emphasis here being the Dobro: kick ass! As it is now 3 am, I am running to bed, but will return tomorrow morning to write more about this song, Abbie, and why I got to Abbie’s house at 6:30 and didn’t get home until 2:00 am. Until morning (although it’s already morning)…
The one thing I will say before retiring is that this is one of those moments where time just slipped away from me, the song was a stranger, so preparation was needed that we didn’t have time for. This is comes to you in the form of a demo, so bear that in mind- instruments will be changed at some point and other more needful things will be added in the future. Until then, enjoy this infant of a song!
I arrived at Abbie’s house in New Jersey at 6:30. We chatted it up over dried apricots and tea, and then she showed me this most wonderful melody on her Dobro (such a sexy instrument). It was beautiful. This is a great example of a different kind of songwriting I don’t get to do with people very often, though I probably should for reasons I will explain in a moment. I notated the entire melody out on staff paper and to each corresponding note, I brainstormed all of the possibilities for chords that might function there. (This is an exercise in getting out of the normal chord choices I might make. For example, this song could well have started on a C major chord, but I liked a minor much better though choices were endless, we had to be reasonable.) This is a longer way of doing something that might take most theorists minutes, but, as I have explained before, I have a degrees in performance, not theory, and though I was required to learn theory, it’s like math and is super hard for my brain to remember! Regardless, theory is key for me when I’m stuck or want to find a more colorful path.
Abbie had roughly two or three melodic themes that we worked with. I added a few more, and we came up with a good form we liked… but only after a few tries. It wasn’t until we had lyrics that things began solidifying with the form. I think this song, should it continue on past this stage, will become a really great one. I love the entire feel of it, and I feel good about its initial direction.
The lyrics, after some debate and trial and error, we decided needed to be simple and repetitive. I like lyrics that repeat given the proper circumstance. We were actually using some very old jazz and folk standards as inspiration for our word choice. It wasn’t an easy task only because the way songwriter used to write was more like this: (I’ll use Misty by Johnny Burke and Erroll Garner as an example)
Misty
Look at me
I’m as helpless as a kitten up a tree
and I feel like I’m clinging to a cloud
I can’t understand
I get misty
just holding your hand
Walk my way
and a thousand violins begin to play
or it might be the sound of your hello
that music I hear
I get misty
the moment you’re near [and so on...]
I mean, come on: who writes like that anymore? So, we tried our best to use syntax that might evoke this kind of time period. However, when it came to the lyric, “You’ll break my heart… ” (Here, it’s as if she’s daring him to do it) and the same melodic section that comes later, it was important for us to change up the female stigma of the forlorn, lonely maid syndrome that I feel is often portrayed in songs like this: Man loves, man leaves, woman is still waiting for him, longingly. So, the ending line gives her power by suggesting she has some say and independent will. I don’t necessarily consider myself a “feminist” in the strictest definition, but in a song where two women are leading the melody, it was important to me to express strength and autonomy not only in the melody and harmony lines, but the lyrics as well. (It probably goes without saying that these lyrics are sexually charged: sex being given to the female as a source of power and persuasion as opposed to submission and self-sacrifice.)
My Only Love
Love, my love, you’re my only love
Come, oh come my only love
Fill my mind, you fill my mind,
So fill my mind, my only love.
Touch me love
Hold me love
Drink me up
You’re my only love
I cannot tell where things will end
But I know that you’re mine tonight
The stars do hide their bashful eyes
For this night is just you and…
Love, my love, you’re my only love
Come, oh come my only love
Break my heart, oh break my heart
You’ll break my heart, my only love
(instrumental)
Love, my love, you’re my only love
Come, oh come, my only love
Oh your heart, oh your heart
I’ll break your heart, my only love
A STUDY ON THE WESLEY HOOK and THE INDIE POP SONG. We’ve written you an indie pop song. Yay!
Wes Verhoeve: Yes, his hair is actually that awesome in real life, too.
First of all: I’m feeling very overwhelmed by the generosity of the artists who have thus far participated in this project with me. So many hours are being spent writing and recording these songs: every single musician I have worked with has been so generous, giving, and enthusiastic. I’m so honored, and, frankly, feel very undeserving. Very undeserving. Thank you so much.
*This is a revised article. The original posting is still here, but, as you’ll read, I started falling asleep. This morning at 6:30, I am making additions with a new, rested capacity for thinking in complete sentences.
Just a little bit about hooks today. I’m not really good at them and, frankly, have avoided them because I always had it in my mind that it was a sell-out gesture (not true! Hooks can help drive a song’s direction and aid in people remembering it for all time!), but my dear friend and Pearl and the Beard manager is great at identifying a hook. (A great example is contained in the song Lost in Singapore [accordion by Franz Nicolay!] from PatB’s album, God Bless Your Weary Soul, Amanda Richarson. The music box plays a melody that Wes’ came up with!) So, I asked him to write a song with me. (As a side: Nadia Ali, my ultra gorgeous, incredible singer friend, is FAMOUS for creating hooks. We spent a good chunk of time once going through her iPod identifying hooks as a help for me. I never realized Radiohead hooked so much in their music. It was a weird realization for me.)
I’ve just had a really lovely evening with Wes Verhoeve of Family Records‘ fame, PatB’s friendly family record label. Wesley V., the Dutchman, and Family Records, has taken Pearl and the Beard under their wing, fostering us and our music. We love him. I thought it only made sense to ask him if he would write a song with me for the 365.
Hook: A means of attracting interest or attention; an enticement.
The Construction: I met Wes at his office at Engine Room Audio down by Battery Park at about 3:30. (Though we were in an office that had a $1,000,000 recording studio, we were across the hall using my crappy little stereo mic and garageband: it was awesome! I much prefer this to a studio at the moment.) We worked until about 10:00 pm. We began writing at about 4:00. Wes had in mind a specific topic for this song, and we used a lot of images from Wes’ experiences in a relationship from a while back which were very endearing and lovely. This song was really challenging for me lyrically. Wes brought with him an interesting guitar riff he’d had on him for a while which we began molding into the start of our song. Again, I was challenged by the style of speech the song was requiring, as my writing is much more cryptic usually, so this required a lot of my brain power to come up with something a little more Ben Gibbard than EHP. So, I did my best. A lot of inspiration actually came a Death Cab for Cutie song. I like Death Cab for Cutie, but I’m only a casual listener, and I’m not totally familiar with the specifics of their music. I did my best to keep up, drawing from things in my past that I thought paralleled.
Early on, we decided that we’d split things up: he would write and sing in his perspective, and I would write and sing in the girl’s perspective. I found a good the chorus, and he shaped hooks and found initial melodies and together, we finessed it as a whole, finding our own voice within a conversation between two people who once were lovers, now meeting as friends. (I’m really proud of those chorus lyrics, actually. I literally asked myself, “What would Ben Gibbard say right at this moment?” I’m not sure that’s exactly what he would say, but that’s what I would say thinking of myself as B.G.) These kinds of songs based onsomeone else’s actual event can be difficult I’m finding. In order to choose language and make smart word choices that I enjoy hearing and reading, I have to dig around in my own actual event, too, or use empathy. I used a lot of empathy here: How would it feel if this happened to me? If I were this woman, what would I say? How would I think? It’s a fascinating study in the human mind and healing actually. Also, I found my own intensely personal experiences turning up inspiration like dry wells, but the experiences I haven’t really weighted as being that significant are helping me out the most in this circumstance. This isn’t always the case but certainly was here.
Recording: Initially we wanted to track the song (do everything separately), so we initially recorded the guitar first, then laid down Wes’ vocals. (I’m am learning I need to organize my time better for this project when it comes to recording. I haven’t been very realistic. It needs to take less time or we’re both just too tired at the end of it all.) I realized after finishing all the recording that it was 10:00 and there was no way I was going to be able to make it home, over-dub my vocals, a cello part, maybe something else, mix everything and write about the song before tomorrow. So, solution No. 2 was to just record it live, which is what you’re hearing here. I would have loved to have recorded cello on this or redo my vocals because they’re very quiet and hard to understand, but it will have to wait. When I got home, I had Jon listen to the basic mix I did on the one live track. Not getting home until 11:30, I was already discouraged and frustrated and felt I didn’t have enough time, he said, “It sounds great and lo-fi. Ben Gibbard did the same thing in his basement on a 4 track recorder.” Maybe it’s a good sign?
I must tell you, it is taking me quite a bit of personal persuasion to not stay up half the night rerecording this or that or trying different instrumentation. (I, personally, am shuddering at my performance in this song. But, whatever.) It needs major cleaning up: I messed up on the end when we performed it live. Wes was supposed to sing that by himself, so we overdubbed his last vocal, but as I tried to put it in, it sounded just slapped in there no matter what tricks I tried and now it sticks out like a sore thumb. I will revisit this song, but in the meantime I did my best with what I have to give today. Today will have to be one of those songs that needs to be an uber-demo song, so I apologize if the experience listening to this song isn’t as nice as it could be.
I don’t think I have been to bed before 3 am in the past week and a half, and my body wakes me up at 6 am. Literally. Even then I can’t get back to sleep, so I’ve just been staying up all day until the next night when it’s 3 am again. (I’m falling asleep at the computer!) I need sleep or I won’t make it through tomorrow, so I’m offering this song to you as a very low-fi version of a pop song. So I’m off to bed then:
THANK YOU WES! I HAD SUCH A GREAT TIME WRITING THIS SONG WITH YOU! YOU’RE THE BEST!
So, tonight I’m ending it here, with a kiss goodnight to you and see you tomorrow!
Love,
EHP
Caps, Sweaters and Scarves
Verse 1
I’ve got new caps and sweaters and a scarf you’ve never seen
We put up a fight we had to let go
I drove the last ten miles alone, alone
Saw your face in the front of my mind
Over time, over time
Verse 2
My town has flooded I can see you from my roof
The water’s making it so I have to let go
You put me up though we were strangers then
Could I be in the front of your mind now
You will find there’s a lot to learn
Chorus
Form a synapse to remind you, remind you
Place a call so you might hear me, can you hear me?
Verse 3
I put a note behind the frame that’s on your wall
When I come over I’ll show you where it is
Closet’s full, photo for every memory
To the back, I’ll climb deep inside
Over time, over time
Chorus
Form a synapse to remind you, remind you
Place a call so you might hear me, can you hear me?
Verse 4
You had to carry yourself three thousand miles from home
To find it didn’t change you at all
Your voice has changed, I can recall with ease
Moments when you first spoke my name
You will find there’s a lot to learn
Chorus
Form a synapse to remind you, remind you
Place a call so you might hear me, can you hear me?
I can hear you.
Abbie
