"August 3rd" (Session #3)

After laying down a solid “nah, nah” chorus, I remember feeling a sense of accomplishment. This is a familiar and dangerous feeling for me. It’s dangerous because this sense of accomplishment comes with a heavy drop in motivation. It reminds me of a feeling that I had in University, after finishing a draft of an essay. I’d sit at my desk, contemplating whether I could get away with hitting submit or print without reading it again. Most times I fought against this feeling and did some rewriting and editing, but every so often I’d take a deep breath and just be done with it.

Finishing the “nah, nah” chorus put me (I’m not sure about Tom), in a similar place. I was feeling like we’d made a lot of progress. I knew that it wasn’t ready to submit, but I wanted the next part to come more easily.

It didn’t.

I spent three sessions, between August 16th and September 9th, on my own, banging ideas out on the piano. Scary things started happening: voice cracks, melody changes, random sounds, lyrics with puns. Somewhere in between Tom and I might have gathered to work, but if we did, we didn’t like anything because I don’t have recordings.

Amid the terror, something productive must have been happening because on September 13th a chorus with lyrics appears. I remember working out words on the whiteboard in my studio/office (one might call it a song shop) but I don’t have pictures anywhere that show the progress. At any rate, here is what we start with. Take a listen.

Take it slow, put the fear behind me
I’m all of the hero I need
Footsteps on the road to almost home
I’m happy leaving now
I’m happy leaving now
I’m happy leaving now

"August 3rd" (Session #2)

When we set out on our Songshop experiment, we had big plans. We were going to post something like weekly because well, we were writing weekly.

Unsurprisingly we failed, like for serious failed, uhhh…failed BIG. In case you’re wondering that’s the technical phrase for “committed publicly to a new project and then didn’t do it even a bit.”

This is redemption time, but maybe, don’t trust us? This could be a mirage.

We recorded the bones of the song “August 3rd” on, you guessed it, August 3rd, 2017. We posted it four days later on August 7th, 2017. If our little idea isn’t still stuck in your head, refresh your memory below.

Tonight, November 28th, 2018, I’m sitting at home with my Calgary Flames hat for some unexplained reason that has to do with all sorts of explainable things that I suspect I’ll write about someday (figure that shit out), I dove into the voice note archives and realized that this song has a path worth following.

So, 482 days later, on August 16th, 2017 (I counted, are you really going to check my math?), I want you to hear where we go next.

We pick up the session sometime around 7:30pm after we’ve been at it for a little while. Listening back to the tape, we cycle through a lot of bad ideas before Tom hits on something and says, “that’s the chorus.” Next, we fiddle around, figuring out chords, and some harmonies (kinda) at which point Tom says, “that’s a bitchin’ chorus.” I obviously am as cool as he is so I echo, in my super comfortable Adam-swears-not-that-much voice, “that is a bitchin’ chorus.” Then, a little more Tom wisdom, “you gotta be free with it.” Then, before we leave for the night we give it a little performance, complete with “nah, nahs,” and a Tom vocal tag at the end.

A quick warning, this track is a little longer, so if you’re super impatient and don’t know to find out how we got to what we left the session with (I mean, who are you if you don’t want to hear that?), skip ahead to 2:25.

We’re older than we were then!