Let me start by saying that this is technically cheating… but it’s my “song a week” project, so I’m making an exception in this case.
One of my best friends also happens to be a musical genius. I don’t throw that term around loosely, and I’m not one to pile on superlatives, but I believe this to be true. I’ve been lucky enough to play music off-and-on with Larry for the past, oh, 10 years now, most recently as a duo acoustic outfit called The Supposers. Not only does he have a great ear, a keen interest in and aptitude for recording and the ability to add just-enough-but-not-too-much to a new song, the guy can play guitar like nobody I’ve been in the same room with. Seriously.
And so it was in Larry’s basement that I found myself, back when McKinze and I were in the States last spring. We had decided to get together and record a brand new song — the first decent thing that came out. No toiling over bridges and passing chords, no humming through the verses for lack of lyrics… This was about starting and finishing a song, plain and simple, in a very short amount of time (like this song-a-week project, actually).
The first day we messed around with a chord progression for a couple of hours, then scrapped it entirely and switched gears to what you hear on this track. We put on a drum loop and quickly wrote/recorded the basic guitar/bass tracks (in one take, if memory serves).
The second day we started the lead vocals. At the time, I was feeling pressure both to stay in America and to go back to Georgia. My thoughts centered on obligations to family and obligations to myself, and how those things were sometimes not always in lockstep. I hastily scratched the first verse and chorus down on a notepad and we pressed “record.”
The third day, a week or so later, I finished the lyrics and we recorded the rest of the lead vocals and a few harmonies. That was it.
I went back to my life in Georgia and Larry went back to his life in the States. Then, recently, Larry pulled the song back out, added a lot of accoutrement, and mixed it all down to this track, called “Everything’s Fine.”
It’s definitely not in the same vein as the other songs in this project, and clearly reaps the benefits both of software that is not GarageBand and an engineer (Larry) who knows what he’s doing behind the knobs and levers. I’m proud of it because a) it’s unlike anything we’ve written together before, b) it was done so quickly, and most of all, c) we just did it. Even though it’s not perfect and we might do things completely different here and now, at the time we used what little time we had and just did something.
On that note, I have two or three new ideas to get this song-a-week project back on track. Time to get them done.
Click to play below, and/or Download Here.
