Spring.

Here’s a little bit about my tune Spring. Take a listen to it on the player below… and maybe even throw us a couple of bucks and buy the track!

I often think that music has been a Live-saver for me. I started as a draw-er, laboriously creating dragons and mecha and game worlds to Live in… later I discovered painting, and portraits and still Lives, and my brush moved faster than my pencil did. Still later it was photography, but that wasn’t as visceral – sculpture was PHYSICAL and DEMANDING but I wasn’t communicating as well as I’d like….

It all led me somehow to music. The physicality of hewing into a piece of wood with the aesthetic demands of rhythm and melody, the ache of my voice, the soothing feel as it locks into harmony with Heather’s, and beyond the communication with an audience, the beautiful communication between bandmates as each layers something new and unexpected to the whole.

Spring is one of the best examples of all of the above. The ferocity of getting something off my chest, the rage and anger just trying to come to terms with the world. The surprise of the rhythms that Heather and Joey bring as percussionists, the incredible rap in the middle by Chuck the Madd Ox and his beat boxing – and then the surprise addition of Rowan’s didgeridoo. Who’d have guessed what Sharif’s piano would sound like – and then that insane electric effect – it’s one of my favourite tracks I’ve ever recorded.

On top of it all is one of those random happy accidents : in the original sketch recording I wasn’t able to harmonize with myself very well (that’s Heather’s job!) and I used some autotuning “magic” on my vocal – but gave the algorithm the wrong key! So when I warbled far enough away from my intended note, it suddenly bent my note well above what I’d intended.

Listening back, I Loved the effect – and that’s where the “spring will cooooooOOOOOme” note came from! Emulating an electronic mistake!

In other news, “spring WILL come” was supposed to read “spring HAS come” for the last verse… but the 2016 election had me singing a different tune. I’ll change it back if I ever start feeling optimistic about the world again…

I can’t believe
This is the way it’s going down
Glass houses on the ground and
Stones thrown all around
The only way that that can play out
Is on a flat flat earth
On a round round world
It’s bound to come around again again
it’s bound to come around around again

I can’t believe
this is the way it’s going down
rage & rape & rhetoric
But we monkeys like our vengeance quick
But you think it’s justice
Even when it’s “just us”
But on a round round world
It’s bound to come around again again
it’s bound to come around around again

Spring will come

I can’t believe
This is the way it’s still played today
White man jumps and
Black man pays
One man Trumps
all the sense around the world today
Whether weather withers Texas
Or whether Mississippi drowns today
I see someone serving up a toast
Drunk & stinking seeking sense
But you just have
To go & do the math
It’s bound to come around again again
it’s bound to come around around again

Spring will come.

MADD OX verse:
The way it’s going down
The sky attacks the ground
Teen spirit
smells like sadness
Just to move the world
Push the Earth
off its axis
Outrageous tactics
Ghetto Acrobats onna pissy mattress
The simple fact is
The struggle ain’t cute
it’s filled with asses
Corporations
Apply’n lashes
Make it rain ta separate the masses
We all need a little sunshine
But the ways of man
Keep fuckin wit our mind
Before you, defined you,
You’re already defined
Break’n the chains
Make up your mind
What conquers the hurt & the pain
is the moment you shine

I can’t believe
Two two sixteen
Cold war’s back
But it’s just a meme
Oil’s cheap
The sun is bright
It’s a February spring
It’s bound to come around again again
it’s bound to come around around again

Spring will come