Sneak Preview - Blood

Each Monday (okay, I'm late again this week) until our second full-length album Come For the Peaks, Stay For the Valleys is released on December 2nd, I'll be posting a song off the record on our myspace page for you to preview and enjoy and talking a little bit about each song on this here blog.

Week Seven: Blood

Initially, this song was a lot more convoluted and tricky than it ended up being in the end. I got kind of tired of trying to make it more crazy than it needed to be, especially given the heavy lyrics that I had in mind for the song.

The foundation was the first couple of lines which I wrote while I was driving home from Minnesota by myself after our month-long tour had been cut in half by my dad's death. The whole song is basically snapshots from my life in the month after his passing - watching the world go by as mine fell apart. The chorus describes what took place outside of a strip-mall Chinese food restaurant in Dallas the band was eating at when I got a call from my cousin that my dad had been in a motorcycle accident and had bad head injuries. I walked outside alone and kicked and hit things because I knew the outcome wasn't going to be good, but I didn't want to totally lose it in front of the band. A few hours later I was in Minnesota looking at my dad's body.

The following months were insane and indescribably difficult. Most of the song on the album written after April 2007 are about that struggle. It was the first time I had lost someone close to me and the experience turned my view of the world completely upside down.

Recording this song was gut-wrenching for me because I really, really tried to put myself in the place I was at when I wrote each song, even when just recording the instrument tracks. Mark Mercer, our engineer, was really good at encouraging us to record performances and not just the songs. I remember specifically recording the instruments for this song one late night at Avast, conjuring up pieces of the experience, and to my surprise, crying as I played it. It was weird. That's never happened to me before. And then weird turned into frustrating when we had to keep retaking the song because there was a problem with one of the drum fills, but I kept putting myself in "that place" with each take and by the end I was so emotionally drained that I wanted to sleep for days.

The album is dedicated to the memory of my dad and Mark Mercer. Mark tragically died shortly after the album was mixed and, as if it isn't difficult enough to think of losing my dad when I play this song, I also think of Mark because this was the song on the album for which he seemed to care most about capturing the delicacies and nuances.

Blood

Elton John was singing my song
As the traffic worked to pull me along
Someone’s calling again
What now?

It’s not a pretty sight what I am today
My eyes are sweating pain and I’m swearing in vain
It sit straight faced as I write and sign
Checks to pay for the last minutes of your life

I beat my fist against the wall
Blood on the brick
Chips in my bones
I’m going home

I swear sometimes I can hear the crack
Of your head on the road and I get sick
I get mad and I have nightmares
And I really don’t care if anyone cares

So, when Elton John stops singing my song
And the traffic stops pulling me along
I’ll see you again