Spite

It got to the point with the guitar for a while where I couldn't wait to get to the studio to pick it up. I had a whole bunch of drum loops I'd assembled and I spent quite a bit of time picking one out and then just running that slide up and down the neck, trying different ways of making sound. I was thinking about some of the old blues dudes, like those guys who use the spoon as a slide, or who just sort of invent the way they play, flipping the guitar wrong side up or putting their thumb over the top. I was thinking about how a lot of things I stopped myself from doing were because I thought I didn't know the rules. If I was the last person on earth and came across a guitar, well I guess I would make music with it anyway. So I sat in the studio and just "played" guitar. And let all the worry about rules evaporate.

Of course, that was a lot easier to do knowing I had super-Gretchen and Rob the Awesome to eventually make it all okay.

I didn't think this song was going to be on the record. I always thought it was too dark, and it might not seem so but I really didn't want the record to be too dark. But this was a piece that came closest to my pure instinct, and I felt that the song sort of earned its place on the album. I came to the studio one evening and picked up the guitar, hit record and this came out. I listened back and immediately heard what the vocal should be, and picked up the mic and sang these words with the intention of revisiting them and really writing a song. I listened back to that a few times and couldn't think of anything to do to it, so I put bass on it. I always meant to come back to it and make it "a song" but I could never hear what should be different. After a while, I just decided to accept the fact that this was the song. I was so unsure of it for so long because it had happened like that, spontaneously and impulsively.

I was in my head pretty deep that night, I remember. It wasn't the happiest of places. I guess that cut off the thinking part of me that scrambles everything up. I'd love to say that the first impulse out of Clem is daisies and frolicking. But I'm working on getting there. I promise the next record will be a little sunnier.