Episode Seven of Story Behind The Song
In the winter of 2021, we were all mid-pandemic. I was working from home at my then day-job, my kid was going to school from home, we were all hanging around an awful lot.
My friend and colleague David Coile, a terrific songwriter and raconteur over in Longmont, had a podcast called Raw Songwriting. The podcast really focused on the nuts and bolts of songwriting- David would send the guest a prompt, both David and the guest would write a song to the prompt, and the episode was the two songwriters talking about how they converted the prompt into a song. It was really cool, and I hope David returns to it at some point.
Anyway, he asked me to be on an episode, and sent me some prompts. I chose a visual prompt. A picture of a young woman, dressed in a sort of old-fashioned suit, holding an umbrella, and standing on top of a desk in what looks like a dump or a junkyard. It was in interesting image and it sort of grabbed me. She was looking down pensively, but a desk just isn't that high, so there was no sense of threat or foreboding.
I let that image rattle around for a few days, and when I sat down to really focus, I had a line in my head- “standing on a cliff, looking down.” Standing on a cliff could potentially be a scary image, and I wasn't necessarily thinking about a character considering harming themselves, more the idea of the metaphorical cliff. So many things we do feel like big leaps, and often feel scary. Artistic choices often feel like leaps, life choices feel like leaps. Often we don't know what's going to happen when we choose one thing or another.
When we do make a leap, of any kind, it's an act of faith. So I guess ya gotta have a bit of that right? After I wrote the song I realized that it was definitely in a voice of someone talking to someone else. I can't help thinking that not only was the world in general a little crazy then (still is), but maybe I was channeling some fatherly advice for my daughter? It's hard to say. I don't think like that when I'm writing- that kind of thinking usually messes up the flow of whatever I'm doing. But the things in the back of one's mind do tend to come out one way or another.
Dave and I had a great time talking about songwriting and musician life stuff- you can find the episode at the link above. As I said, I hope he starts that series up again sometime.
This is another song that I released as a single a while ago, so you can watch the video or stream it on Spotify (or wherever you stream stuff), or even better, pre-order the album on CD or vinyl. If you do pre-order you can get an exclusive release t-shirt to go with your new album. All physical media ships at the start of July. So you'll get it before anyone else! You can also get one of the exclusive shirts if you buy a release show ticket. The show is July 18 in Longmont. So do that.