Deep Dive #2: Gone So Long

Time for the second installment in my “deep dives” series, 10 blog posts that will delve into each of our album tracks, one by one, in order (the track #1 review is here if you missed it: https://www.muhammadseven.com/blog)

Today's song, "Gone So Long", has enjoyed a renaissance in our live show - we revamped the intro, which is now an explosion of drums and bass and KJ vocals and distorted guitar. The video in this post is from our recent release show.

Without further ado...

Deep Dive #2: Gone So Long

I have been writing songs for about 27 years and they fall into three basic categories:

• High school to age 30
• Age 30 (when I toured with Chris Sand, this changed me and leveled up my writing) to age 37
• Age 37 to present

My early work was exactly what most people’s’ early stuff is like - trying to learn the craft. There was some nice stuff in there.

My middle period was substantially better (it’s represented in my first album, “Bedouin Cowboy”, available for free on our Bandcamp page) but I did not LOVE those songs (although I honestly am currently falling in love with a few of them, which is nice. You’ll be hearing them live in the near future.)

My current period is the culmination of a life’s work - I’ve reached a place where I have real confidence in my abilities and where I feel deeply proud of the work. It’s very satisfying to have arrived at this point.

Gone So Long is the second song I wrote in this period. “Welcome Every Breath” was the first, which will come later in this list. It’s possible that “Swampers At Fame” from my first album is the real tune that kicked off my current run - but I’d rather think of it as a strong end to my middle songwriting period. “Gone So” bears some of the hallmarks of my earlier writing (I find it a little messy in terms of tone and narrative arc and the lyricism I find enjoyable but lacking in deeper poetry) but I also hear in “Gone So” some of the sophistication of my newer work.

It is, at its core, a song about homeland - which is more obvious in a song like “Sour Cherries” than it is here. On first blush this appears to be sort of an outlaw ballad, the story of a person who struck out for adventure and glory but “burned friendships” and “overturned lives” in the process and now is coming to terms with the damage that was done (you’ll find different takes on this theme in other songs on the album.) But “Gone So” came from my experience as a first generation immigrant and my relationship to a home that I have not managed to ever visit, my father’s homeland.

The line I am personally most pleased with is “If there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that I’ll never learn.”

“Gone So” is not about my literal experience but it does weave together a tapestry of feelings and experiences that are mine; longing, loss, regret, nostalgia, re-evaluation, self-realization.

For me, the real strength of “Gone So” is in its composition. The chorus is a wail of harmonies, it’s brash and effecting and rambunctious. The verses are more restrained, then it explodes into the chorus (“I’ve been gone so long…”), which then crashes into the quieter sub-chorus (the part that comes after “I can’t remember”) in a way that is unconventional. My instincts as a songwriter are often to arrange a song in a fresh way, so that in addition to the allure of the lyrics, the song-parts hit you in a way that is new and different. Generally, if you hear my song and thing “this sounds familiar”, I consider that somewhat of a failure on my part. I think “Gone So” is a good example of this.

In deep dive #1 I talked about how Coling Fleming (producer extraordinaire) helped me re-arrange the song before rehearsing and recording it - this is another song he drastically reshaped. To oversimplify: he changed the choruses so that the catchiest part “I’ve been gone so long…” happened twice instead of once and the original end part (“I ain’t going home”) only comes at the end of the song, not after each chorus as I’d written it. Once again I didn’t like it when he proposed it and I now see that it greatly improves the song.

In the studio, this song had a more stable progression than some others, though it was not quite as straightforwardly itself from the start as, say, “Wood Stove Whine”. The guitar, bass, harmonies and drums were there from the start and they do make up the bulk of the piece (and are good by themselves.) It is mostly, once again, the lap steel work from the wunderkind Steve Saddler that gives it its major new dimension, as he shreds his way through the verses and (most importantly) through the grinding solo toward the end.

Finally Colin’s mixing work gave it the final flourishes it needed - the perfect balance and rugged tones. It was my request to add the slap reverb on the vocals (which I am very pleased with) and the odd distortion-played-in-reverse at the very beginning. My main inspiration for this was Zeppelin’s “Black Dog”, I always liked that odd bit of noise, though ours ended up sounding nothing like theirs (for the better, I think).

“Gone So” tends to be a song that appeals to rock fans. Which was more or less my intention - I’m flexing on this song. Not lyrically, but in terms of attitude. Expect more like this soon…#DylanWentElectric

Deep Dive #1: Wood Stove Whine

It’s been a great release month, I’m so pleased with the warm reception our debut album has received. Thanks to all of you for listening and sharing your thoughts and praises. (If you haven't had a chance to catch up with it, it's here.)

For the next few weeks I’m going to go through the tracks, one by one in order, and take a deeper dive into how I wrote them and how we developed, recorded and refined them.

Without further ado…

Deep Dive #1: Wood Stove Whine

Every song starts from a unique jumping off point but the initial spark is always a bit of inspiration. It might be an idea that makes me feel a certain way; it might be a turn of phrase I have never quite thought of before; it might be a few words that make me laugh.

Where This Song Began

Honestly the initial seed of this song was my friend Kevin Shoemaker’s voice (I’ve never told him this, so hi Kevin! And...surprise! You were the spark that ignited this song.) Those of you who know him are aware of Kevin’s captivating powers as a singer and performer and I really wanted to write a song that he might sing harmonies on. In the end I would acquire Kelly Jo Reed as a bandmante, who became my permanent vocal harmonist and it is her amazing voice that you hear on this track and not Kevin’s...but it was Kevin who initially inspired me. I was trying to write a sort of Towns Van Zandt love song with “Civil Wars” style harmonies (see their debut album, Barton Hollow, if you really like beautiful things.)

What I ended up with was something quite different...but it has echos of those things. Towns was certainly prone to ballads of love, loss and desperation and “Wood Stove” has those notes. The original title of the song was “A Desperate Man.” But it took on it’s own life, as good songs always do. There are two things I’m most proud of in this song and the first has to do with melody.

Songcraft

The verses have a relatively simple melody, though the chord progression is more involved than your average 3 or 4 chord folk song. But when you get to the chorus, things get more interesting. The chorus jumps off with a lilting cadence of higher, then lower notes that somehow capture the emotion of the song sonically - one of those things that comes to you (or maybe come through you) in ways you could never recreate on purpose.

I remember where I was when I started writing the lyrics - oddly I was alone on the basketball court at my neighborhood YMCA and they just started to come. The first verse appeared in my head more or less as it stands: “Love me baby / love me soft and true / love me loud enough that I could find my way to you / I’m so lost without you, I can barely find my shoes / love me baby, I’m begging you.” At first I couldn’t tell if it was too simplistic. You know, begging the beloved for their love (something Rumi is prone to do), and the phrase about being so lost I can barely find my shoes...but I liked the twist of “love me loud enough that I can find my way to you” - the idea that love might have a volume, if it’s strong enough.

Now back to the “lilting chorus” - I also remember where I was when I wrote that and it was in my work truck, passing by the three ponds and the rose garden. The chorus melody was sort of the answer to the question “what fresh melody do I really want to hear after the first verses I’ve written.” And when it came to me, I knew immediately it was right. When Patrick (bass) first heard this song, it was this chorus melody that most captivated him - in fact his initial reaction was “how many times can we bring the chorus back in the song? Let’s add three more.” Which I didn’t do but I really appreciated his enthusiasm.

The last thing I’m especially pleased with is a lyric from the second verse: “A lid is stuck on tight that only your hand can unscrew.” Honestly this may be the lyric I’m most proud of from any song I’ve ever written and, though a few people have said they also like that one, I actually have no idea how good it is...I think I love it because it’s so uniquely mine.

Editing, Recording and Production

Colin Lester Fleming played many important roles as producer and the first was to sit with me and rearrange songs so they flowed better. In this song, he encouraged me to change the location of the bridge (“I’ll be the man you hope to find…”) so that it came just before the instrumental at the end. As was the case with all of his suggestions, I was resistant at first, then I trusted his judgement, then I realized he was absolutely right. So if you saw us Live last year, you heard a different version of Wood Stove than what we have on the record.

Then came the question “what sound should Wood Stove have on the album? It sounded great with just Pat on bass and Kelly Jo on Harmonies but for the recording we all imagined something a bit bigger. I was in the midst of a major love affair with the music of a Boston folk band called Honeysuckle (stop reading this blog post right now and get you to their streaming music!) - when I was auditioning producers, I actually reached out to them to find out who had produced their albums, and this is actually how I found Colin. So when it came time to hit the studio, Colin already had a close relationship with those folks which meant (and I still can’t really believe this) that it is the banjo and mandolin player from my favorite local band that’s playing on three of my tracks (Wood Stove, Gambler’s Crutch and Sleepin’ In A Toolshed.) Along with Theo Brierley on stand up bass, Ben and Chris’s sound is much of what defines this song.

The vocals from Kelly Jo and I (and my acoustic guitar) are at the heart of it and the banjo/mando/bass breathes live into it all. Finally we brought in Steve Saddler who is just an inspiration on the lap steel guitar and dobro, and he put down the understated dobro licks you hear (most notable on the second half of the instrumental at the end of the song) and it was, I think you will agree, the icing on the cake. It just made it lively and perfect.

I’m not sure if Colin will agree with me on this (he’s the one who put in the major hours of production work) but I think Wood Stove was one of the songs that required the least amount of fussy production - the job was just to take what we had and make it sound like itself. Which Colin did masterfully. One of my favorite little tweaks involved the chorus vocals - KJ and I came out hot singing the refrains (“Won’t you think about the winter time”) which had a sort of unpleasant yelly quality on the recording...all Colin had to do was bring the volume down, just for that part and what result was an absolutely DELIGHTFUL “yelly” quality, which is what you hear on the recording. I feel like it really makes the chorus swoon and I feel so pleased with that part.

Once Michelle Mancini (https://www.demifugue.com/) worked her mastering magic, the blend of sounds and volumes was soft and strong and lovely.

I’m curious what you have to say about “Wood Stove Whine”! Please leave your thoughts in the comments.

Special thanks to Sierra Rothberg (http://www.lusterity.com/) for the terrific “Wood Stove” cover art.

You can listen to the album on every streaming platorm or buy it on our website.