She Walked Away: Confessional

In the current Paste, Jeff Leven writes, "There's a misconception about primarily acoustic 'singer/songwriter' music that bears correction; whenever there is relatively sparse instrumentation, clearly audible vocals and a vaguely confessional atmosphere . . . the assumption tends to be that we're getting a more intimate, emotional moment" (December 06/January 07, p. 92). He's on to something there.

When you write songs that sound confessional, people assume they are confessional. And if you're happily married with children and write songs about bad relationships or the ends of relationships, it can set people to worrying. So I find myself saying ridiculous things like, "by the way, the man in this song isn't me." Well, duh.

I often write either about or from the point of view of imagined characters, just as a fiction-writer would. At the same time, I suppose a song can be confessional without being literal. I think most of what I write is like that: I expose the things I think about, the filmstrips in my head, some bits of memory and maybe a little anxiety, but I don't necessarily narrate an episode from my life.

So "She Walked Away" feels very personal to me without having much to do with actual events. In thinking about how to write about writing the song, I've been re-reading lots of journal entries from almost a year ago, and it has reminded me that it started out as the coda to the song "Shudder" (of which I have a new recording; stream to follow this post). Both songs came out of imagery from a pretty bad poem I'd written years earlier in college that started, "She turned and walked away and left him standing there with a taste in his mouth; / A thought of cool falling. . . . " Pretty soon, I had more material for the coda than I had for the rest of the song, so I decided to start over and let it be its own song.

But here's something else I had forgotten: my idea for "She Walked Away" was that it would be about the end of a trivial relationship, something that wouldn't have much of a lasting impact on the people involved. The early versions of the song try to convey this notion, that they'll just walk away and that'll be it. I was thinking about a Billy Bragg song that ends, "Then one day it happened: she cut her hair, and I quit loving her." But at some point, I was listening to another song, Paul Simon's "Graceland," and a line in that song transformed completely the way I thought and felt about "She Walked Away." Next time, I'll write about the influence of those two songs, what I borrowed from each, and how I got from there to here. And what the original title of the song was.

Here's Shudder:

Technorati Tags: music, songwriting, relationships, billy bragg, paul simon, blogs

She Walked Away

While we're working on the "She Walked Away" EP, a friend suggested I do some posts about how I came to write that song and discuss the lyrics in some depth. I admit, I have some reservations about that, but I do think it's a good idea. So I'll get started by posting the lyrics as they stand right now (I keep tinkering, so these are a bit different from the current recordings).

She turned and walked away
And left him standing there
With a taste in his mouth.
A little sweet, a trace of lime --
Once so familiar, a bit strange this time,
A little strange this time.
A thought of coolness falling,
Of his fingers, of her hair;
Of something fragile missing, he can tell it isn't there.

What can he say? How should he feel?
She walked away; he knows it's not real.

He feels a thread grow weaker;
A shadow falls between.
He lifts his eyes to see what happened,
But above there's only sky, just a hint of lead;
Just the dawning thought that longing can turn to dread.

What can he say? How should he feel?
She walked away; he knows it's not real.

Maybe they'll both feel the damage.
Maybe they'll be blown apart.
Maybe he'll feel so transparent,
Like the world can see his heart.

She turned and walked away
And as she seems to fade
He can feel himself forgetting
The museum, the parking lot
The jeans she liked to wear
The coolness falling through his fingers tangled in her hair.

What can he say? How should he feel?
She walked away; he hopes it's not real.

What can he say? What should he do?
She walked away; She walked away? He'll walk away too.

Various

Had to cancel a recording session this morning due to laryngitis. What a drag.

The rough mixes from the 12/7 session were outstanding, as I expected. By the way, the "She Walked Away" mix that's currently posted here is not from that session but from a set of three songs I recorded a couple of weeks earlier with an old friend of mine who'd done really good work in the past recording traditional folk groups. We'll start over on it with the new sessions, since it's to be the featured track on the EP.

Here's one of the rough mixes for your streaming pleasure:

Be Your Own Boss

Ear Candy

Wow, what a difference knowledge and experience make!

Yesterday morning was my first session working with a producer/engineer who knew exactly how to record me. I haven't heard any final mixes yet, but the quick proofs I heard on the spot just knocked me out. I've been hearing myself on tape for two decades, but suddenly I felt like what I heard on the monitors was what I hear in my head.

I think I need a sidebar here: I was talking to a recording tech. student in Hollywood last summer at a pool party (OK, it was at the Days Inn; I was in LA for a family wedding). I was telling her how I would want to record, that I'd want to play and sing at the same time and try to get a natural, ambient sound. I wasn't very good at articulating what I meant, but she was saying, "oh, that's not how you do it! You record each thing separately on it's own channel, totally dry. Then you can add whatever ambient feel you want with effects. You can always add, but you can never take stuff away." Well, that made a kind of sense, but it didn't feel right for me.

So I've been talking and corresponding with Jimmy E. since the summer about getting started on this record, and he's asked me all kinds of questions about my recording values, about records I like, about what I hear in the songs I like. He's listened to my rough "laptop" demos and some live recordings of my songs. In other words, he was well prepared. When I arrived, it was clear there would be no soundproof chambers and isolated microphones and channel separation and electronic tricks.

I sat in a chair and played awhile as he put nice microphones close around me and some others far away, then he went down the hall to his control room and said, "we're rolling." We recorded multiple takes of six songs in about two hours. Sometimes he would say, "well, I don't think you can improve on that unless you just want to do it again"; other times, he'd say, "why don't you try slowing that down a bit; I feel like you're rushing it," or "don't be afraid to really dig in on that E minor chord there; I feel like you're a little tentative." Sometimes he'd move a mic a few inches or ask me to turn my chair a little.

When I listened back to the rough mix, there was no need for electronic reverb or various other kinds of gimmickry; intelligent microphone placement had provided natural reverb in just the right proportions. I just kind of stood there slack jawed. I guess there are some things they just can't teach in recording tech school.

So I'm that much closer to having a well-produced EP. Yay.

Let's Get this Party Started

Tomorrow morning we start recording for the "She Walked Away" EP. A couple of weeks ago I got my feet wet with a new demo of SWA along with two other songs, which I recorded with some hard core folk friends of mine who run "Wing 'n a Prayer Studio" out of their home just north of Atlanta. The new demo may well be playing right now if you just loaded the page. Here's a link to download it: She Walked Away.

The old one was starting to drive me nuts, and I'm sure this one will get on my nerves eventually. But for now, I like it. Laurie, the engineer for the recording, is also the guest vocalist. Shelle was not available for the session, and as you can hear, Laurie made for a fine stand in.

Jimmy Ether is producing and engineering the EP, and in addition to an all new version of "She Walked Away," it'll comprise a handful of acoustic guitar-and-vocal tracks. It's good to finally be getting some traction.

Getting Started: Part One

I write songs, I sing, I play the guitar. My amazing wife and I are raising three great kids while working demanding day jobs. So I thought I'd go out and make a record, just to keep things lively.

The "recording industry" is supposed to work a certain way: you make some demo recordings that you pay for, and you "shop them around," usually with the help of an agent or something. With some magic combination of luck and persistence and actual ability, you get "discovered," which means that a record label of some sort invests some amount of money in making a record with you as the artist. And then the real gamble begins: your future value as an artist may well depend on factors beyond your control. But if things go freakishly well and your record sells, you might be able to quit pumping gas or flipping burgers and become a musician.

I'm sure things still work that way for a lot of people in the industry. And for either the young with little to lose or for high-quality established artists, it's cool. But for an old guy like me, forget it. Still, there's this problem: I have all these songs I've written, and recently I've been writing more all the time. And forgive my immodesty if I say, I'm pretty sure they don't suck.

So I concluded this summer that I need to get serious about making a record of some sort or my head will explode. By the time our family went on vacation in early August, I was so fixated on making a record I was already making song lists and looking at sequencing and thinking about cover art and album names and record labels and all that stuff. I was chomping at the bit.

Well, here it is three months later and I'm still not in the studio. But it's not all down side: I have a great producer with great ideas; someone who really understands my songwriting and my approach to music; someone who cares more about making great records than about trying to "make it big." And I have Faith: it will come together. I have plans to get in the studio in early November if all the stars align.

So in part two I'll talk about how I got from full steam ahead to spinning my wheels, and what I plan to do about it to get moving again.