For Roadtrip 2012 we drove across the country to visit some friends who lived in San Francisco. The kids were getting restless somewhere in Nebraska, so we stopped for games at a GameStop.
The place was staffed by college kids. As we were waiting on line, one of the boys was talking about his English class. "I have to write an essay, but I have no idea what to write about."
The girl sitting next to him offered a suggestion: "Write about me! I love it when people write about me!" And that gave me an idea. By the time we got to Frisco, I had a song mostly written. I note -- and I will get back to this below -- that as I was writing it I was hearing a female voice singing it. With one pronoun change it works for a male vocalist, though even then I think of it as a song exhibiting female sensibilities.
This is the third song that Toby Wilson, studio musician for hire, has recorded for me. And I think he did better with this than he had with either of the others. Because I wrote the song with a female voice in mind, I asked him to use a female vocalist, so he hired (subcontracted?) Bryony from London. This is the finished track.
Now, if you love this -- and, honestly, why wouldn't you -- tune in again next week and the week after when I plan to present alternative versions.
As part of his production process, Toby initially recorded the song with his vocal -- sort of as a guide for Bryony. As long as he had that, he was willing to include a mix with his vocal instead of hers. But I also had a follow-up thought. Since the two tracks would be exactly the same, except for the vocal track, it should be relatively easy to create a duet. I asked Toby how much extra he would charge to create the duet, and he offered to throw it in for free.
Many thanks to my friend, Christina Crocker, who had the initial idea to turn the song into a duet -- and who came up with the idea for which lines would have the male vocal, which would have the female vocal and which would have both. I'll have more to say about that in two weeks.
I think the song came out fantastic, I'm so glad you went with my suggestion regarding the order of the voices. It's interesting how you became inspired to write a song just by overhearing a line from someone's conversation. It shows how creativity can come about from the most trivial of things. Will one of the alternative versions be the live Koster's Heat one from his concert at Bob's Big Boy?
ReplyDeleteAre you talking about the reunion concert in Dearborn? Where Larry kept eating peanut butter sandwiches between songs, and then puked during the encore -- when he was halfway through a Crosby Stills and Nash medley. I had the bootleg CD of that, but my CD player rejected it.
DeleteNo, this was the show where Larry tried multitasking. Besides doing his concert, he was also participating in the Nathan's hot dog eating contest simultaneously and he kept puking between each song. He was halfway through his classic, Fishcakes and Spaghetti when he started to choke and had to be rushed to the hospital. There's a famous bootleg called "Koster Choked on Nathan's Weenie" but it had a very limited pressing and goes for a ton of money.
DeleteI hadn't heard about that one. I'll have to check EBay..
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