All About The Song

So much of what I do with music and art is about trying to heal myself. I aspire to make things that will have lasting value in my life. In the creative moment, I forget about everything that’s going on in the world. I’m there to conjure and channel and capture my feelings. I can always edit and refine and detail those essential moments over time.

When I share a song, I’m always nervous. It’s similar to the preparation for a first date — put on my nicest clothes, check my ears and nostrils and eyebrows for stray hairs, and make sure my teeth are clean and my breath is fresh. With albums, however, I spend two or three years getting ready for that one night, the first impression, that solitary chance.

As the song was about to go live, I started having questions. Will people think I’m serious? Will people think I’m being ironic? Will people think it’s tongue in cheek?

I wasn’t expecting to see so many people saying, “Thank goodness, this is exactly the lift I needed right now.” I’m embarrassed that I hadn’t thought about the song having this effect on listeners. I was just going with the idea of an upbeat, simple, catchy love song about a couple of great experiences I had last August in Berlin. It’s the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (the song) of this album. As a six year old kid, I imagined that song saying: Welcome to our world, here’s the characters in our show, sit back and enjoy as we take you on a ride.

The six note signature melody, inspired by the bells of a nearby church. The breezy 60s American pop “bah-buh-bah-buh-bah, buh-bah-baow” vocals that appear in the second half of the intro. The back half of bridge two, when my Czechoslovakian string players saunter onto the launchpad. Those nagging Russian bots tucked into the far corners of the last bridge, taunting me with their “nah-nah-nah-nah-nows”. I hope you don’t mind me deconstructing all my sonic flourishes — the little gems that tumble freely from the sky and take forever to fashion into a crown of song.

That’s enough for now. Thanks for the thoughtful and encouraging words. I’m glad you’re loving the new song. And if you need another song with guitars and astronauts and hope, this one is pretty damn good. One of my all-time favorite bands, bringing the noise and the joy at exactly the right time. One more song like this and I’d say we’ve got ourselves a movement!