I had this bass line in D major around for awhile.  It was fun enough to play through that it deserved to have a song written around it, even though I don't generally write in major keys.  The bass line best lent itself to Latin-influenced music... cumbia, salsa, rumba, merengue, bachata... something like that... the problem is that I don't know how to write any of that music.  Where would I begin?

I began with research.  I listened to a handful of songs from each of the above mentioned genres.  This part of the process probably deserved a lot more time than I dedicated to it... but it was a decent start.  Next, I asked a few friends who I know listened to Latin music if they could tell me more about it.  That didn't work.  The general answer there was that they have it around to dance to, but they couldn't really tell me anything about it.  (Note to self:  do NOT ask non-musicians about music.)  On to the Internet!

For some reason, salsa became the genre of choice here.  Any article or commentary I could find online about salsa music history and structure, well, I devoured it.  I learned that the traditional structure for this genre doesn't even remotely resemble the way that I understand songwriting... then decided that if I attempted to be "authentic" and write a salsa song by traditional structure without truly understanding it, well, that's not very authentic at all, is it?  The solution?  I ended up writing a pop/rock song in the normal pop/rock tradition, but with Latin influences.  Of course, the lyrics had to be in Spanish, there was never any doubt about that.

The result is "Baile Conmigo".  Here are the lyrics.

Baile conmigo 
Baile conmigo 

Oye hermosa 
Pareces muy sola 
Charlar contigo 
No hay quien osa 

¿Por qué? 
¿Por qué? 

Oye hermosa 
Tanta guapeza 
Hace una persona 
Muy muy nerviosa 

No soy metido 
Te hablo, te pido 
Te hablo, te pido 
Baile conmigo

 

This is what the artwork for it looks like.

As usual with my songs, I had a several very talented folks help out with this recording.  Here are the song credits:

Mike Bankhead - bass, piano, vocals 
Khrys Blank - claves, shakers, all sorts of percussion 
Brian Hoeflich - drums 
Phillip Bradley-Hutchinson - trumpet 
Erich Reith - congas, all sorts of percussion 
Rich Reuter - guitar 

Produced by Patrick Himes & Mike Bankhead 

Engineered & Mixed by Patrick Himes at Reel Love Recording Company, Dayton, Ohio

***

Percussive power couple Khrys and Erich were kind enough to do their usual moving and shaking all over the recording, supporting Brian Hoeflich's steady drumming.  (I asked him if he could give me a salsa beat, and he gave me a salsa beat.)  Phillip Bradley-Hutchinson's trumpet is a perfect addition.  Rich Reuter deftly brings lead guitar licks that sing ever so smoothly over all of it.  Finally, as usual, Patrick Himes and engineering and mixing skills present the best version of my work... and he didn't even blink when the indie rock guy showed up with a decidedly non-indie rock song.

This song was recorded amongst the songs that ended up on Anxious Inventions & Fictions, but doesn't really fit in with those songs, so it stands on its own as a single.

You'll be able to listen to "Baile Conmigo" this Friday April 2nd.  It will be available right here on my website, and also over on my Bandcamp page. You'll be able to download on Bandcamp for "pay what you wish" pricing, even if what you wish happens to be zero.  If you do decide to offer some small measure of compensation for the download on Bandcamp, well, since April 2nd is Bandcamp Friday, 100% of all funds will come straight to me, as the kind folks at Bandcamp are waiving their customary fees that day.

 

If you don't feel like reading the story, but are curious to hear the song, please scroll WAY down to the end of this entry, and there will be a link for you.

The Who & Why & What

Some very dear friends were going to move away.  This wasn't the kind of move where the prospect of never seeing them for the rest of my life was a possibility (although in the midst of a pandemic now, who knows), but this move was far enough away that visits would be few and far between.  So, as one does, I was considering a gift.  Here's the problem... gift giving is hard for me, more so in a situation where distance is involved.  Food/drink gifts, while delicious, don't last very long.  I don't have the wherewithal to come up with practical household gifts, and besides, they were already settled in a home, they were just going to a different home and ostensibly bringing their stuff with them.  Not being able to turn my brain off at night is a nearly quotidian issue for me, and many nights the question of what kind of gift to give was the source of my insomnia.  What could I - a generally useless and insignificant being - possibly give someone without it being hackneyed or trite?  Hey, I write songs.  How about a bespoke song?  That's unique and that's sincere, which means the proper sentiment gets across no matter how awful it ends up being.  Ok, problem solved, now to work...

 

The Where

I knew the destination of the move.  That being the case, I did more reading about the location than I'd like to admit, looking for extra details that I might be able to shoehorn into a song.  Relevant lyrics from the song:

Say hello to the Badlands
Prairie dogs and Minuteman
Needles in the Black Hills
Porcupines with their quills

Say hello to the Big Bird

I'm not going to spell the place out to you, I'm going to depend on your profound knowledge of geography and history - or conversely, your Google skills - to tell you The Where.

 

The How

Brainstorming sessions. Writing text.  Editing text into lyrics.  

Deciding on a mood.  Well, it's somewhat melancholy, but hey, they're not dying - at least not any faster than the rest of us are - and we very well might cross paths again.  Ok then, minor key for the verse, then have a pre-chorus that modulates from minor to major, then major key in the chorus in order to give that optimistic and hopeful feeling.  Settled.  Pick the chords.  No, not that one.  Yes, that one.  Ok.  Chords.... find a melody.  Agonize over the piano at finding a melody.  Have a look at those lyrics.  Oh, that's not good enough, and that won't work with the melody.  Edit the lyrics again.  Gently massage the lyrics and the melody until they are able to combine.

Back to the lyrics.  How do I say "I love you and I will miss you" without explicitly saying those words?  We're writing songs here, need to be artistic and just a tiny bit oblique.  Ok, well, the general purpose of the song is as a goodbye present, how about making that the theme?  Enter my interest in etymology.  (If you think that word should contain an "n", well, that really bugs me.)  The word "Goodbye" literally means "God be with you"... over the centuries English has shortened that four word farewell into one seven letter word.  Ok now I have my chorus hook.

Goodbye means God be with you
God be with you as you go
Goodbye is temporary
Just until the next hello

 

The When

There is more than one When.

The first... well, there was a moving day.  I wanted to have the song finished, recorded, and gifted by moving day.  I finished the song probably a week before the departure, as far as the final first draft.... then spent time messing around with the arrangement or the lyrics, not liking the edits, revising back to the original idea, pruning here and there again... yeah, it's a process.  By no means am I an engineer, but I recorded the song at home the way I do all of my demos... I even threw on some vocal harmonies.  I bounced it to mp3, and emailed it to my friends on the day they left.  Mission accomplished.

The other When.

I was putting songs together to take to Patrick Himes at Reel Love Recording Company in February 2019, in preparation for tracking on my second solo album.  "Goodbye", well, I didn't hate it.  It kept growing on me.  I thought it had potential given the right instrumentation and production.  I brought it with me, along with a bunch of other songs on pre-production day.  It survived the initial cut down... and as tracking started on a few songs and an album began to take shape, I ended up thinking that this one absolutely HAD to be on it.

There were obstacles.  I wrote this song on piano, but I do not have the piano chops to do it justice.  Patrick plays piano - because Patrick plays everything - but he had done that previously on "Convalesce" (from Defacing the Moon), was already playing acoustic guitar and pump organ on this one, and I wanted the chance to work with another talented musician who I admire.  I decided to ask Nathan Peters.  You might know him from such bands as Vinyl Dies,  Lioness, TV Queens, and the legendary Captain Of Industry. Nathan so kindly said yes, and between the chord chart and my very very low quality home recording, was able to figure out what the song needed from the piano part.

Ah, the bass part.  Well, I wrote the song on piano, and was unable to come up with an accompanying bass part that I thought was good enough.  I reached out to Eric Cassidy for ideas.  He had a great idea, and was kind enough to record a video of himself playing the idea slowly enough that I could learn it.  One problem, it involved a quick note change that required holding a chord shape for the change... this type of thing is baby easy for guitarists - and for bass players that are much more talented than me - but I don't often play chords, and when I do, I certainly don't slide around from chord to chord.  Great idea, how to execute cleanly?  It turns out that I couldn't execute it cleanly.  Every time I would play it, I'd either mess up the chord shape on the slide, or make too much fret noise, or not have all of the notes held well enough so that one of them wouldn't sound muddy.  Here's where the studio magic comes in... I played the root note of the chords, then we used overdubs for the harmony notes.  I'm not ashamed to admit it, I'm just not good enough to do it another way, it is what it is.  We got the sound we needed to get.

The vocals.  Take after take after take.  When flat, try again.  When sharp, try again.  My verse harmonies worked out ok.  Patrick had a fantastic idea for an additional harmony in the verse that I hadn't considered... after he sang it for me a few times so I could get it, I went and recorded that as well.  What we have now are really nice harmonies in the verse with three parts, and all of the parts are me.

(I feel I should mention and thank community drummer Brian Hoeflich here, but make clear that there was no obstacle whatsoever as far as his part is concerned.  He did - as per usual - excellent work.)

 

The Summary

"Goodbye" is track 3 on Anxious Inventions & Fictions.  (If you have the Deluxe Version on CD, it is track 11.)  I am proud of it.  I said what I needed to say, which is the main point of writing songs.  The recording sounds clean, and makes me seem like a much more talented musician than I actually am.  Sure, I didn't actually HAVE to professionally record this song... but I thought the song was good enough to deserve it, and the folks I gifted it to deserve to hear it at its full potential instead of only the horrible version I did at home.

 

Click here to listen to "Goodbye" on the platform of your choice.

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.