Sneak Preview - Quid Pro Quo

Starting now until our album is released in late November, I'm going to post songs from the album, Come For the Peaks, Stay For the Valleys, on our myspace page and tell the story behind each song on this here blog. Or, I'll just lie and say something fantastical like, "This song has about fourteen layers of meaning, most of which are derived from the peyote vision quest the band endured while being stranded in the Arizona desert one August night. Long story short - I am the king cobra." Or something.

First up: Quid Pro Quo.

Okay, here's the thing about how I write music: The music usually comes from one place and the lyrics/intended meaning come from another. Such was the case for this song. When writing the album, I really wanted a 10 + minute multi-movement instrumental song. I kind of failed. I kind of realized I was destroying the song by trying to make it longer than it needed to be. I kind of realized that I'm not John MacLaughlin or Omar Rodriguez-Lopez.

QPQ is about 8 minutes and 30 seconds pieced together mostly from some old riffs I wrote in 2003 peppered with some new Mars Volta-inspired riffs. When I was constructing the song, my life was at the height of its turbulence...at least it's the most turbulence I've experienced so far in life. Loss, more loss, compromise, giving and not receiving, struggle, anger, loss. It started to feel like all the ebbs and flows in the song were analogous to the highs and lows of the Fall of 2007, so I named the song "Quid Pro Quo" because, from what I recalled from the dusty part of my brain that got that Criminology B.A., it's a term used in the legal system when bartering for criminal charges to be lessened or for a more lenient sentencing. It means "this for that." The criminal pleas guilty to some charges and the other charges are dropped.

The fact that the song is so meandering and almost loses focus perfectly outlines what this song means to me - I was doing so much compromising that I nearly lost sight of myself and what I wanted...or rather, what I deserved.

On the music dork side, my favorite part of this song is at about 5:32 when the band is playing in 7/8 and my guitar riff is in 4/4. Eventually the two parts merge. That's so flipping fun to play live.

So, that's what this song means to me. Again, you can check it out at our myspace page for the next week or so...until I get my next whim to change the featured new album song.