Season 2, Ep.19: The Song A Week (Sort Of) Experiment--Behind The Scenes

This is the first time in 19 weeks that I have not made my deadline of releasing the podcast late Sunday night/early Monday morning. And I beat myself up about it for a couple of days. It put me in a foul mood and I immediately felt like a failure.

Then I decided to get over it. “It’s all about the song” as they say and while I wasn’t able to put this out in a week’s time, I got pretty damn close. And I felt like I was on to something with this one. So if it took a little longer to get it right, then so be it. A better song makes for a better episode and that was my focus instead of adhering to some self-imposed deadline.

I had the main skeleton of ‘Behind The Scenes” written two or three weeks ago. But I really didn’t start arranging it and whittling it down until last week.

In episode 5 of this season, I talked about Impostor Syndrome as it pertains to our career goals. But it creeps into our personal lives as well. We tend to look at others and their relationships and think that they have it all figured out, while we are over here floundering, hanging on by a thread.

I ran into this beautiful woman that I have known since we were kids. She was one of those girls growing up that was “out of my league” in my mind--unattainable. We were always friendly to one another but the thought of any romantic involvement was outside the realm of possibility. In fact, she scared the hell out of me to be honest.

I didn’t date in high school. I was a late bloomer and was always afraid of my own shadow growing up. It wasn’t until my late twenties and early thirties that I started taking risks.

So when I ran into this woman, who is even more gorgeous now, we started catching up. It turns out that she was going through a transition in her life. So I went out on a limb and took the chance that I had always been afraid to do for so many years.

And as we got to talking, it turns out that she had always had a crush on me too and even stated that I never noticed her in school but it was nice that I did now. 

Well, needless to say, you could’ve knocked me over with a feather.

It’s not like I intended to write a song about this but hey, you write what you know, right? And what I know is that sometimes you just never know. “You just never know” could be an alternate title for this one.

So this revelation coupled with my constant battle with ‘Impostor Syndrome’ became the impetus of my next song.

I was goofing around with this fingerpicking thing and I just really liked the feel of it. I  was messing with this A chord formation and then took it to a G then immediately to a D. This simple progression had this really nice release of tension to it.

Then I just started singing these nonsense lyrics over it to try to build a melody. I call these “scrambled egg” lyrics which comes from Paul McCartney when he was writing ‘Yesterday.’ As he was writing it, he would sing the words ‘scrambled eggs’ before he came up with the word “yesterday” to build the melody.

And just as with ‘Any Other Way,’ the words just came. I was thinking about how clueless I am sometimes when it comes to relationships and I just blurted out the lines “I watch what other people do to try to learn a thing or two, but I just can’t seem to get it right."

I’ve been called morose as both a person and a songwriter and maybe I am. I think I’m a pretty happy guy but I do gravitate toward sad songs. Patty Griffin, whose songs can make me literally sob, is the best at this and is one of my favorite songwriters on the planet. Check out her song, ‘When It Don’t Come Easy.’ If that song doesn’t move you, you had better check your pulse.

So I like songs with depth. For a song to hold my interest, there has to be some sort of conflict. That’s what makes for a compelling story. And even if the song doesn’t end with a nice little bow tied around it, I at least want a glimmer of hope at the end.  I am an optimist no matter how much I have been pegged over the years as a sad sack.

So that’s why the first verse ends with “But maybe tonight.” I knew immediately after throwing that in there that I would repeat the first verse at the end of the song. It is unresolved both musically and lyrically but there is that hope.

To be a good songwriter, we must be observant. Marty Dodson talks about being a sponge, taking note of everything. And this has made me careful about what I consume. I mean, garbage in, garbage out. I think that my songs are naturally a good fit for sync licensing due in large part to the number of independent art films that I have consumed over the years.

So without being pretentious about it, I try to take in a ton of media that inspires me. And for me, this usually isn’t summer blockbuster movies or mainstream music for that matter with one dimensional storylines and lackluster dialogue or lyrics.

I became obsessed with the first season of the podcast Serial, which is the true life story of a teenager who was quite possibly wrongly convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend. I know, talk about morose, right? Then I found the podcast “Undisclosed” which is hosted by a team of lawyers dissecting this case, trying to get the conviction overturned.

And that’s where I believe that the lyrics for the chorus came about. While trying to write the chorus, I went to a minor chord that walks up to the major. Then the lines, “I fall in love with lovers walking in the rain, there’s no sign of struggle, no evidence of pain.” just came out. Using sign of struggle and evidence peppered in a love song was the perfect counterbalance to the “lovers walking in the rain” line.

I didn’t intend to write a waltz but that’s what happened. And looking back, this gave the song a nice bounce to give the song a lighter feel. A waltz is not exactly a recipe for a hit song but I’m not writing for Nashville here. These songs are mine. I am in service of the song, nothing else. And besides, Elliott Smith wrote a ton of songs in 3/4 time and I love them.

So I laid down two acoustic guitar parts and hard panned them. And just like with “Any Other Way,” I searched for a nice bed to give a spacey feel. I found this preset that has this harmonica sound. I’m not the biggest fan of the harmonica as an instrument, but this gave the song both a spacey and a rootsy feel to it.

Then I messed around with a guitar part to put in the middle and found another tremolo setting. This wasn’t intentional but I noticed after playing the song in another position on the guitar, it sounded like the intro to Jeff Buckley’s ‘Lover You Should Have Come Over.’ I’m a huge fan of Buckley and this little happy accident had me overjoyed.

Then I laid down my lead and harmony vocals. I originally had an extra chorus come in after the first verse but decided to change that to two verses, then the chorus. So I just went in and cut out the extra chorus and pieced the song back together.

With this song being a waltz, I decided not to write a bridge but rather do a simple guitar solo. I just laid down one solo part this time and duplicated it instead of recording it twice. But I did hard pan them. The reason for not recording it twice is that I found an effect that would ping from left to right in the speakers. So I wanted the guitar parts to be exact. The notes were a little too piercing so I played around with another effect to use on one side that had a warmer tone to it. It turned out perfectly.

I really hate that I wasn’t able to release this episode on time, but I believe it was worth it.

Brandon Barnett: Left Of Nashville EP

How To Get Noticed In The Music Industry When You're A Nobody (Like Me) An Ebook

Patty Griffin--'When It Don't Come Easy'

Jeff Buckley-'Lover, You Should've Come Over'