I live in Ohio, which is one of 50 states in The United States.  It has been a long time since a war was fought within the borders of this country or state.  It has been so long that all of the people who fought in that war are long dead.  Now, I've visited plenty of other places where war has come much more recently.  For example, I happened to be in Sri Lanka when celebrations were planned to commemorate ONE YEAR since the end of their lengthy civil war.  I visited El Salvador once, and anyone there who was my age at the time would have had civil war as a back drop to almost half of their life.  I have visited France many times, have many friends there, and the folks who live there experienced devastating war fought in and around their homes, a war in which my own grandfather was a participant. War is a horrible, terrible, destructive, evil thing.  People who live where I live tend to forget that.  As a person who is a voracious reader of history, I haven't forgotten, and I ended up writing a song about it.

Here is a picture of the poem I wrote called "Ton Soldat", told from the point of view of a soldier who is sick and tired of war.

See the date on that?  February 9th, 1998.  I was 20 years old when I wrote that, I still had a brother, I didn't yet have gray hair, and I hadn't been to France yet.

When I was putting together songs for my debut album, Echo in the Crevices, I wrote music for this, and asked some of my dear French friends to have a look at the lyrics to ensure they made sense.  I applied their suggestions, changing out the verb "lutter" for "combattre" and "battre".  There were a few other adjustments made to fit the music and make the song flow better.  This song is now called "Le Soldat".  

When it came time to head to the studio, I knew I wanted a shoegaze feel, a wall of distortion and sound, but also laid back.  The bass was going to do most of the movement.  I remember asking Tod Weidner, who was kind enough to play guitar on this song, if he could play the guitar part whilst making sure the attack sound of the pick hitting the strings wasn't heard.  He did a great job with that. He also brought some ingenuity to the bridge, building the chords that I specified piece-by-piece, playing one note at a time during multiple takes... when all of the overdubs were done, we ended up with the sound of full chords.  Also, I figured that if you're going to write a song in French, you had better have some accordion in it, and Eric Cassidy helped me out with that.  Our community drummer, Brian Hoeflich, also added a nice touch to the bridge, laying heavily on the snare drum to give a military feel to the music, which was quite appropriate.

This song needed to be on the album, for its theme and its mood.  I didn't figure many people would like it, because, let's be frank, most people where I live do not listen to music that isn't sung in English.  This was the favorite song on the entire album for one reviewer in particular, and that surprised me. 

It is my hope that having this extra context helps you to hear this song in a new way.  Why not check it out on my Bandcamp page, on Spotify, on YouTube, on Amazon, or wherever else you listen to music?

This song is on my upcoming album, Anxious Inventions & Fictions. It is the result of a songwriting exercise meant to combat writer's block... but strangely enough, I wasn't actually suffering from writer's block when I wrote this song. Let's set the scene... come to Nashville with me, to the CD Baby DIY Musician Conference in the summer of 2018.

One of the most useful sessions I attended was conducted by Shane Adams.  This gentleman is on the faculty at Berklee Online.  I had seen him speak the previous year, and he is humorous and engaging, energetic and open, and clearly quite knowledgeable.  This year, he was talking about a proven method of defeating writer's block.  At the time I sat through this seminar, I wasn't suffering from writer's block... I wasn't really trying to write songs at the conference... but in order to get the most out of the session, if there is an audience participation exercise, you need to participate.

I don't want to explain all of the things that were covered here, but let's briefly say that the method consisted of a series of letters.  No, not the twenty-six characters that make up the English alphabet, the method of communication before email, telephones, and telegraphs.  When I was much younger, I used to write letters often.  I would write to my friends both here in Ohio, in other parts of the United States, and overseas.  I couldn't even tell you how many scores of letters I've probably written.  That being the case, I took to this exercise rather well.

The phrase "she speaks in metaphor" came out of this exercise.  Wanna see?  Here it is:

At some point, I thought this would make an excellent song title.  Once I decided that, I needed a musical approach.  I decided to write this one on my bass instead of on the piano.  Further, as the song title seemed to me at the time that it would lend itself to a rather complicated idea, I wanted to make the song simple, and I wanted the bass to carry it.  For that reason, the verses consist of only one chord.  A minor.  That's it.  The bass line that carries the verses is moving through several of the notes in the A minor scale.  There is a bit more motion in the chorus parts as far as the harmony is concerned.  That settled, I used the piano to help me pick out a melody.  After I had a melody, then came the work to write lyrics to fit the melody and the theme.

This needed to be a rock song.  Ok, not just rock.  RAWK.  To that end, I recruited one of the finest bass players in Dayton, Chirs Corn.  (He has other talents as well.)  He used to play in a very loud, chaotic, experimental, post-punk outfit called My Latex Brain... and in this band, he would surround himself and his bass with what seemed like a hundred different pedals, and make the bass sound like a legion of guitars.  That's the sound I wanted on this song.  I also recruited Thad Brittain for more high frequency guitar work.  For the percussion end, I asked Brian Hoeflich to do his best Jimmy Chamberlain impersonation, and he obliged.

I am extremely pleased with the result.  If my Kickstarter campaign is successful and we get vinyl pressed, you'll be able to find it as the first song on Side Two of the album.  I can't wait for you to hear it.