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
