Across the Stateline

The recording process for “Divided We Fall” was really the process of writing the songs. As I have mentioned before, I was writing, recording, and finding tones for the instruments all at the same time… so there was a lot of experimenting going on. Overall, I think it worked.

Typically the first thing I would record for the songs would just be a general acoustic guitar track and drum part. I find that this is all I need to get the feel, chord progression, and form of the song. After I get those initial tracks down, I then start to lay down my scratch vocal parts. At this point I am usually making adjustments to the acoustic guitar and drum parts to accommodate the lyrics and to make the song form fit together. After I have a good set of scratch tracks on the drums, acoustic guitar, and vocals; it is then time to lay down the final tracks. This is the process I used for all the songs on this album.

After all the tracks are recorded I then go into mix prep mode. Typically my goal with mix prep is to make the song sound great with just pulling up the faders… in other words; I want the individual tracks to fit well together. This is also part of my arrangement and editing phase. I have found that a good arrangement and good instrument tone makes the mixdown phase more enjoyable and musical. I will typically to a quick mix with no processing during this phase and play the song in my car. If it sounds great and I’m on the fence about if that is the final mix, then I know it is time for mixdown mode.

Mixdown, for me, is really just another musical part. As I mentioned before, I like to do most of my tone, arranging, and editing in mix prep mode. That makes the mixdown phase really all about making music. All the technical phase and arranging has already been done… so now it is just about making great music.

The instrumentation for “Campfire Song” came about over a period of writing the album. This is the first songs I wrote for the album and when I started I only had a melody and chord progression. At this point I laid down the acoustic tracks, a melody track, some bass, and drums. Then I started working on the other songs. As I started to fill in the guitar parts for the other songs I would come back to “Campfire Song” and fill in a guitar part. Eventually I ended up with 4 electric guitar tracks, 2 acoustic guitar tracks, a dobro, tremolo guitar, a couple slide guitars, bass, drums, and vocals with harmonies. It was a lot of fun taking the instrumentation from other songs and bringing them in on “Campfire Song”.

“Divided We Fall” has a real mix of feels on it. The content of the songs have a very general feel to them. They focus on universal themes; communication, cheating, laziness, etc… However, for as general as these universal themes are, they also have very specific applications to the front runners of the 2016 presidential race. Without naming names, the listener should be able to identify certain presidential candidates from the 2016 race with each of these songs, just from the general universal theme.

As for the production; there is a real mix of traditional and current country music. Every song has a substantial amount of acoustic guitar, dobro, banjo, and tremolo guitar, which gives the album a classic feel. However, each song also has some real heavy overdriven guitars and slamming drum… So the feel dances somewhere between a traditional country band and a modern rock band.

Overall, the feel of the album has a little something for everyone. It has general universal themes that will last throughout the years, but are applicable to the 2016 presidential race, It has a traditional country feel with some current rock punch, and it has big chorus melodies that are easy to pick up and sing in a bar or at a campfire. The listener may find that the overall feel of the album is… just right;)

“Campfire Song” was the first song I wrote for this album, and was going to be the title of the entire album. However, as I started writing the other songs I realized that there was more to the album than just this song. Still, “Campfire Song” was the source of inspiration for the entire album, and it really came about from a state of frustration.

The frustration is with the inability for our government to work together and make changes that America needs. Yes, we need a lot of change, yes, both sides need to work together, and yes, neither side has it right. “Campfire Song” is a song that will hopefully get people in the mindset of understanding that disagreeing just means there needs to be a creative way of moving forward. Yes, we disagree… but it is time to get together and figure out a way of working together. That is what this song is all about.

The songs for “Divided We Fall” were real easy to make. I didn’t have a list of songs to choose from, instead I wrote each song specifically for this album. The overall idea for the album was to write songs that were about the personalities of the 2016 presidential candidates and a general song or two to use as glue for the album. So the song content selection was really decided by the presidential candidate race this year.

The interesting thing about writing an album like this is that I don’t, or didn’t know what was going to happen with the candidates as I wrote their songs. For instance, I wrote Cruz’n before Ted Cruz dropped out of the race. I knew, of course, that I would be writing songs about candidates that would not make it to the final round… so writing a song that could describe a candidate that was either going to win or lose was a parameter of my writing that I was careful about.

We just published a sneak peak of our first album Divided We Fall on YouTube… the album should be available by June 1st, 2016!