[wpaudio url=”https://www.thewhisperingtree.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/The-Whispering-Tree-Go-Call-The-Captain-01-By-the-Side-of-the-Road1.mp3″ dl=’0′ text=’By the Side of the Road’]
A few people have asked about my songwriting process so I decided to go through Go Call the Captain and our previous EP song by song, describing the process/inspiration for each one as best I can.
Generally it goes something like this:
Inspiration hits and out comes a little snippet of some combination of melody/lyric/chord progression. Then the initial inspiration fizzles out and the “work” begins. I’m not much for work, so this part takes awhile.
In the best circumstances, when the inspiration hits it produces something that doesn’t even feel like mine, something that feels like it came from some universal translator or wavelength that I just happened to tune into for a minute. If all goes smoothly, I can tap back into that wavelength when I revisit the snippet, and more will flow. If not, the snippet sits around for months or years, while I scramble around trying to make the rest of the song sound as natural and effortless as the inspired part. I can’t tell you how many awesome snippets I have lying around, just waiting to be finished. On a side note, I wish I had a better word than “snippet,” it’s starting to sound really weird to me.
I’ll start with “By the Side of the Road,” the first track on Go Call the Captain. I actually wrote a blog about this one a while back, explaining my interpretation of the song. I say “my interpretation” because despite the fact that I own the copyright and technically wrote the song, I don’t feel like I own it. I feel like I was just transcribing something which came from somewhere else. So whatever you feel, or don’t feel, in response to the song is as valid as anything I could ramble on about 🙂
Here’s what happened:
Back in the Spring of 2007 I was riding my bike home from the YMCA. I passed a golf course in my home town of Pelham, NY, called Mt. Tom. Near the road there was a small mound of dirt, like a child-sized grave. As soon as I saw it, the first verse and melody popped into my head.
“They buried me by the side of the road, my mind grew distant, my body got old, so they dressed me up in my favorite clothes and they buried me there, by the side of the road.”
and I thought “holy shit, this is fucking awesome,” (modesty is so overrated) and proceeded to sing it the rest of the way home.
As I imagined the song unfolding and the arrangement, what came to mind was a didgeridoo and tribal drumming, maybe a little Paul Simon-ish. What you hear on the album is not what I had originally envisioned for the song, but we didn’t have the time to really record it the way we wanted – I would love to record another arrangement at some point in the future.
So after the initial verse came into my head I let the idea and lyrics marinate a little while, coming back to them from time to time.
The chorus and rest of the verses seemed to flow really effortlessly as well, I was in the zone for this song. This was one situation where having a limited musical vocabulary was actually helpful, the few chords I can play on the guitar fit perfectly with the initial melody and helped inspire the chorus.
I find that being in awe of what comes out, holding onto the pure excitement of creating something without worrying about what to do next, is the best way to go forward. As soon as I start stressing out about where to go with the song, or feeling incapable of completing it, I am pinched off from the inspiration and the song is dead in the water.
I think I completed the song while we were in Macau in 2007/2008…it always reminds me of that specific period of time. I first played it to a bunch of fellow performers in a grimy Best Western in Taipa.
You can check out the lyrics here 🙂