#2 Boulder (“The Fine Print” track by track)

For the third album in a row, I’ve decided to showcase each track in a “behind the song” blog series. I hope some listeners find it interesting or helpful. “Boulder” is the second track from my latest release, The Fine Print. For convenience, the lyrics and YouTube & Spotify streams are at the bottom of this post.

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This song actually started its life as an assignment! Over the past year, as I’ve had more free time to work on the creative side of my music, I’ve tried out a bunch of online songwriting courses. One of my favorites of those is The Songwriting Academy’s (UK) weekly masterclasses. Every week an experienced (generally pop) songwriter does a presentation about the creative or business side of songwriting and there’s an assignment.

One week the theme was empowering pop songs. “Firework” by Katy Perry was actually presented as the prime example. I knew I wasn’t going to (and didn’t even want to) write another “Firework,” but I figured it would be a nice exercise to write my own version of an empowering song.

I started by brainstorming some images and metaphors that felt empowering to me, because that was part of the idea of the exercise. I came up with a bunch, but for some reason the idea of pushing a boulder stuck with me. Maybe because it’s a common enough image in general, but I can’t really think of an example of someone using it in a song. (Correct me if I’m wrong as it sounds like my kind of a song!) Most of the other images I could think of were pretty overdone in songwriting.

I started with a couple of other constraints: first, the key of A, because in my mind each key — played with open chords on acoustic guitar — has a different feeling: G and C are basically your old standbys that can do anything; D and A are the most empowering, positive ones (A being the quirkier of the two), and E can either be quirky or kind of punky. I think this is more of a factor of the specific songs I’ve happened to cover and write in each key rather than some kind of musical genius (or a universal fact), but anyway, that’s how I chose the key.

The other constraint was deciding the structure ahead of time. Obviously, the chorus was going to be the high point that summarized the empowered feeling. The reason I didn’t put my main image (the boulder) as the chorus is that I had written those final lines already, I liked them, and they didn’t really seem to work as a chorus. I knew that was going to be the ending. I decided that I would organize the verses simply by time: verse 1 would loosely focus on the past and verse 2 would loosely focus on the present.

I find that these kinds of constraints and pre-planning usually lets the exact lyrics and melody write themselves, and this case was no different. Although I can’t see it holding up to “Firework” for the average music fan, I was pleasantly surprised by my results. It’s a nice little tune, and I’m particularly fond of some of the lyrics in the first verse — “days when a little push led to a dream come true, and months and months when I tried and tried and I barely made it through.” For me, that was one of those lines that expressed a feeling/experience perfectly from within.

A careful, musically inclined listener might notice that the strumming pattern I use for this song is one I seem to have gotten hooked on in the past year. My first instinct used to be the “Old Faithful” pattern (DDUUDU) or what I like to call “acoustic punk strum” (DDUDU), but now it’s this one. I have to consciously force myself to come up with something different. Most of the songs on this release actually used this same strumming pattern until I went in and changed some of them. Hopefully I did a good job of that so they don’t all sound the same.

Production wise, this was the track that eased the listener into more instrumentation after the first track being acoustic only. I added some minimal electric guitar chords, vocal harmonies towards the end, bass, and minimal (digital) drums. Actually, I added the instruments to all of the songs first, taking each song where I felt like it wanted to go, and then I listened to them to decide the ordering. I liked the idea of starting and ending acoustic, with the bigger songs in the middle.

Anyway, overall, I’m happy with this song, and I hope other people enjoy it too.

P.S. If you haven’t already, I highly recommend checking out this song in the Spotify mobile app, which as far as I know is the only place where you can see Canvas art (3-8 second videos that loop while you’re listening to a song). My favorite graphic designer, Matthew J. Corrales (I highly recommend him for all your design and animation needs), has been creating Canvases for some of my songs, and this one (featuring a cool animated boulder rolling down a hill) is one of my favorites.

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LYRICS

I’ve had ups and I’ve had downs in my time
Moments on top of a mountain, and moments down in the grime
And I’ve had days when a little push led to a dream come true
And months and months when I tried and tried and I barely made it through

But I’m powerful, so I won’t just take anything
For I was born to sound off… to sing
So I’ll take all of my pain, put it in a song
And nobody’s gonna tell me that it’s wrong
Because now that I’ve made my mind up, I’m dangerously strong
And I think I knew that all along

And as I grow the gains get higher and the failure’s less
And I never, feel regretful, as long as I do my best
And I get people telling me how much my music means
And after years and years of trying, I’m finally who I want to be

I pushed a boulder and it rolled
I flicked on a light switch and the world lit up
I pushed a boulder and it rolled, it rolled

#1 The Bench at the Top of the World (“The Fine Print” track by track)

For the third album in a row, I’ve decided to showcase each track in a “behind the song” blog series. I hope some listeners find it interesting or helpful. “The Bench at the Top of the World” is the first track from my latest release, The Fine Print. For convenience, the lyrics and YouTube & Spotify streams are at the bottom of this post.

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Of all the songs on my new album, I definitely think I’ve had the longest and most serious relationship with this one. It wasn’t actually the first one I wrote in the batch (though all were written in the same three-month span), but it was the first one I fell in love with and began playing in my weekly Facebook Live streams. I liked it so much that I played it nearly every week, and when I didn’t it was often requested.

It evolved over time, and yet this was one of only two songs that I kept acoustic (the other being the last track, “I’ll Bring My Voice”). But of those two, the other is very delicate and begs to be acoustic, whereas this one has a more acoustic punk feel. I honestly could have seen it going either way because I felt that it was catchy enough to stand on its own, but the style was also suitable for a fuller arrangement. I saved it for last for that reason, and in the end, time made the decision for me. I was exhausted from arranging all the other songs and I felt it was better to keep the arrangment bare than to do a bad job with it.

bench at the top of the worldThe song came about for a few reasons. First, I was missing London, my happy place — in particular my favorite bench on Parliament Hill, Hampstead Heath (which was correctly and precisely identified in a photo by one of my fans from London on Facebook). Full disclosure: this is not my actual favorite bench, but this bench happened to be more photogenic than my actual favorite.

London is my favorite place in the world. As weird as it is to be in love with a city, I’m in love with it. From the first moment I set foot there, I’ve just always felt weirdly at peace and at home there. I was fortunate to go once a twice or year for several years in a row, but at this point I haven’t been there since December 2018! And two and a half years is a long time to be away from the one you love, so I was feeling a little sad, which is the perfect reason to write a song.

Ironically, it’s always hardest for me to finish songs that mean a lot to me because I’m afraid I won’t do justice to the emotions I’m trying to convey. So partly to motivate myself, I ended up trying to get a songwriting challenge going in one of many musician groups I’m a part of. I said we should all write a song about our favorite place in the world. Unfortunately, nobody else cared about my challenge and I don’t think a single person took me up on it. But on the bright side, evidently I was able to motivate myself to finish this song!

Musically, I think I was listening to Xtra Mile artists (my favorite record label) a lot. In this case, I don’t feel like I was particularly channeling Frank Turner (my favorite songwriter, in case you’ve been living under a rock), but other songwriters like Dan Allen of Ducking Punches. I’ve always liked his style, and I felt like this was the one time I was kind of channeling it.

If you haven’t already, I highly recommend checking out this song in the Spotify mobile app, which as far as I know is the only place where you can see Canvas art (3-8 second videos that loop while you’re listening to a song). My favorite graphic designer, Matthew J. Corrales (I highly recommend him for all your design and animation needs), has been working on some Canvases for my songs, and this is the first one he completed. He used my bench photo and created some sky animation with clouds and the day passing to night. I thought it was very cool!

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LYRICS

It’s always such a struggle to get here
But this is my favorite spot in the world
For daydreaming
And looking out onto the city that I love

Even if some might say it’s too much work
Or they’d simply pass it by and they’d take no notice
I’m in it for the long haul, even if it hurts
Meet me on the bench at the top of the world

It’s always such a struggle to get here
But this is my favorite city in the world
Sense of belonging
And finally feeling like it’s my chance to be heard

Even if some might say it costs too much
Or that they can’t stand all the oppressive crowding
For me I can always see the beauty, it’s got that touch
Meet me on the bench at the top of the world

New Album “The Fine Print” Out June 18th – Pre-Order/Presave Here

After a year of intensive songwriting and improvement efforts, and months of trying to record, mix and arrange as best I could, I’m finally ready to release something new! The Fine Print is the first album I’ve made all by myself that’s not acoustic. I wrote and played some electric guitar parts, and then I added some virtual drums, bass, and even strings depending on the song – and I’ve only learned how to do this stuff this year.

I had a lot of fun making this album and I’m very proud of it. Of course there’s always room to improve, but I finally feel like I’m coming into my vision of what I want to sound like. I hope everyone else will enjoy it as much as I do.

Check out my album page for more information, or pre-order/presave it if you know you’ll want to hear it on release day!

Here’s a special preview where you can hear one verse and chorus from every song: