Towards the end of 1998, my wife, Marilyn, read an article about a Lewis
Drapp here in Tulsa who helped the Hanson's but a demo together. She
encouraged me to call him. You have to love a wife like that. At the time,
I was as scientist with Amoco, not a musician.
Well, Amoco is long gone and I took some music and guitar classes at Oral
Roberts University. I'm working as a programmer during the day. I teach
guitar at night and play at church.
I wrote this song after we booked the time. That's kind of backwards. I
wouldn't recommend it. I kept it simple because I just wanted to get my
feet wet in the studio. In fact, I wrote it on piano and I'm a guitar
player. That's how simple it is. Of course, I had to write it in the key
of C originally. My friend, Sally Johnson, who sings on the recording liked
it better in Bb. I transposed it to G and used a Chubb capo on fret three
to get to Bb.
The song has a basic AABA structure (verse-verse-chorus-verse). The intro
just repeats the chords for the first line of the verse. The chords are
simple: I-IV-V-V7-I-IV-V-V7. We used a Telecaster on the lead and we
recorded it directly. He had a rack-unit processor but I don't remember
what it was. It was before the days of the Line-6 Pod.
The intro comes straight out of the major Pentatonic scale. The first note
of the intro is the tonic of the major Pentatonic scale and the root of the
I chord. Starting the riff that way, really helps to identify the key. The
riff then blasts its way to the V chord where it outlines a couple of tones
out of the 5 chord with basic trills. When the chords start to repeat, the
intro riff gallops (or trots, depending on your perspective) to the next V
chord to set up the singer.
The only processing on the singers voice prior to getting into the computer
was some de-essing and compression. We added reverb inside the computer.
The singer repeats the chorus for the outro. The repeat is actually a cut
and paste. In fact, all three choruses are duplicates of one another. We
picked the best chorus and used it all three times.
Enjoy!
