The Texas Two-Step

After reaching a saturation point with new ideas, our primary focus now becomes trying to finish the songs we have in hand…once we go into this state of completion, there is a sort of moratorium ban placed on bringing in new ideas, the general intention being to sort out the best from the best in what we have and get on with the business of finalizing arrangements, lyrics, and tweaking each individual part…sadly, I have been avoiding the issue of finishing the lyrics for some time, choosing instead to hide behind the focus on arranging and re-arranging what were already head spinning configurations of numbers, key changes, breaks, and implied emotional nuances…writing music is easy for me, but it is a new form of truth that I wish to find in these lyrics that I am having the hardest time with…I don’t want to obscure what I am truly feeling in my heart (like I did on our first record), by covering up much of my real sentiments with vague psychedelic babble…putting off the lyrics also has an impact on the day to day songwriting, as we are essentially arranging to implied emotions that are not in reality supported by actual finished lines (by the time we go on to Atlanta, I only have about 25% of the lyrics written)…as we know that we will keep cutting arrangements up until the final hour of recording, this isn’t a big issue of concern…and most of the individual parts are close enough that they can be further developed in the studio…but the lack of a lyrical focus hangs over the album like a dull cloud…

Each remaining song is addressed moment by moment with a laundry list of problems, and we set about tackling each one to everyone’s satisfaction…a laundry list on a particular idea might go something like this: “the intro sucks, the 2nd verse is too long, the lift into the solo is weak, the last bit goes on a little too long, and do you think we should change keys just before the end?”…we don’t vote per se, but rather talk or play thru the suggestions that are tossed in the air, and everyone’s overall body language usually dictates when a concept is or isn’t working…the floor is always open to all possibilities, and we dive into each and every issue with an understanding that all details are important to the overall strength of the album…I choose not to linger or get bogged down for too long on any one idea, because there are so many songs, and therefore, by math, too many problems…the basic thinking goes ‘what you don’t get untangled today you will possibly find a solution for tomorrow’…the only visible downside to this way of working is everyone must remember each days changes as they happen, and also retain the previous days option, say, if the next time we play a new part and go, “oops, that isn’t working”, be able to recall the old change at will…

One last, almost finished idea that has been sitting fairly untouched for a long while is a song simply called “today”…the song is given this name not for any existential reason, but rather out of my laziness, because the first line of the song starts with the word “today”, and calling it that makes it easily recognizable to all (laziness also dictates the title is never changed)…I suggest trying to come up with an interesting intro, and all agree that the blunt start (with the band just blasting in at the top) is boring and obvious…as is often the case of a good intellectual concept, musical silence ensues, shoes are stared at, and all I get in response to my suggestion is the buzz of the amps…frustrated, I look down at my guitar, and without hesitation, place my left hand on the 11th fret, high up on the top two strings…the first thing I feel immediately clicks, a dumb schoolhouse take on “la-dee-dah, la-dee-dah”…I look up, and no one says much, but then again, no one says no…without comment, I play it again, and at the appointed moment, the band kicks in full power…problem solved in 60 seconds…“next!”…

The pecking order on influence to the songs usually falls in this order: Billy, Jimmy, James, D’arcy…although D’arcy contributes very little in the arranging department, she is the person I watch most while we work, because like a child, she is incapable of hiding or masking any displeasure, and it shows readily on her face…James general interest is directly proportionate to whether or not a song is “his”, and following that, whether or not he personally likes a particular tune…he is fully capable of offering a brilliant suggestion at any given moment, and then turning right around and looking completely bored as if there were a million places he would rather be than here…Jimmy stands as the auteur of our power, so great is his unconscious understanding of how to lift the songs to the highest heights…his suggestions tend to be more emotional as opposed to musical…he readily reads my mind, and I read his, and much of our work is eye to eye, soul to soul, and goes on mostly unseen by the other two…my role is one of floor leader and cheerleader, as most of the songs are mine…we have a general rule, which is: ‘your song, your call’…this means that whomever is the writer on a particular song has final call on any decision, including a veto on what other members might play part wise…if a song is a co-write, then both people share this vote/veto…songs like “soma” and “mayonnaise” are true musical collaborations, as I sort thru the issues, making sure the other writer (in this case James) is in full agreement on all aspects of the song, and it’s execution…

During the ‘Gish’ album touring in 1991, we had played a place in Houston called Emo’s…because it was Texas, and usually warm at night, they had a sort of out door patio for drinking…after our show, I spied this incredible looking girl who had long, dyed red hair and an exquisite doe-like face…she was with some guy, who she told me at the time was just her ‘friend’ (I later found out it was her boyfriend)…I tried to get her to hang out with me that night, but she begged off, and that was that, and we said our goodbyes…months later, she wrote a letter me thru our fan club, and we started talking on the phone here and there after that…as I was floating in space emotionally, and definitely on the rebound from the heartache of losing my longtime girlfriend, the idea came up that maybe I could come and visit her sometime…she wanted to know when I could fly down and see her…I said that this was difficult, as we were still in rehearsal, and as soon as we finished, were set to fly to Atlanta to start the record…however, the start date was yet for a couple more weeks, and as the band was pretty tired, I rationalized that a little trip would do me a lot of good…I asked the band if we could work just one more week (instead of the two), and then everyone would take a week off…this was met with great cheer, because everyone was fried from the intense sessions (not to mention the stress of Jimmy’s drug/disappearing issues)…it also seemed a good idea to get out of eyeshot from each other for awhile, if only for a brief moment…

She picks me up from the airport off a night flight, and she is as stunning as I remember her…we joke all the way to a little Mexican restaurant, where we proceeded to stuff our faces and get drunk on margaritas…she takes me home and right into her bed, and it all seems so warm and simple and fun…the next morning, I notice her taking some pills…I ask her what they are, and she says it’s some new pill on the market, “Prozac”…I had heard of Prozac, but only in the context that you didn’t take them if you wanted to get high…it was some sort of anti-depressant, and you would have to take them for two whole weeks before you would feel anything at all (which didn’t jive with our immediate buzz philosophy)…as we talked, I noticed she seemed a little different, but I wrote it off to her possibly having a hangover, as we had drunk a lot the night before and been up fairly late…we decide to go out to get some food, and the first thing she does is turn up some crap metal music really loud in her car, which irritates me because it is about 9am, and I just want to talk to her…when I do engage her, she strikes me as hostile, a totally different person than the one I had hung out with only hours before, or for that matter, gotten to know on the phone when I was still calling her from Chicago…she tries to pick a fight, so I just figure “whatever” and keep my mouth shut…as the days go by, she moves further and further away from me when we go to sleep, and talks to me less and less during the day, so by the 4th day I am feeling pretty strange…what makes this difficult is I have nowhere to go, because the band is not due to arrive in Atlanta for another 3-4 days…I decide the best option is just to try to stick it out, and figure maybe I can talk to her and smooth whatever is bothering her over…I pour my heart out, explaining to her that I like her, I don’t understand what is wrong, and if she wants me to leave, to just tell me and I’ll go…she become very soft, and apologizes, telling me that she has been stressed, it’s not my fault, and she will make it up to me that night by taking me to dinner…the entire effect of this placates me and I figure we are fine…we go out later and have a nice, if not uneventful time, and all seems well…nothing physical is going on between us, but that’s alright because I am more interested in peace than getting a piece of her at this point…the next day comes, and someone has thrown the Sybil switch again, because the monster is back…I cannot believe this is happening, and when she leaves that day to go to work, I seek out her roommate, who is a sweet person…I explain what is going on, and ask her what she thinks I should do…she makes excuses for her friend, but it is obvious to me that she thinks she is a psycho…reading the tea leaves, I pay the friend $20 to drive me to the airport, and I catch the next flight to Atlanta…I later heard from this girl by letter, asking me to give her a call…to my sorrow, I decline, never fully understanding what the deal was down there in Texas…when I arrive in Atlanta shell-shocked, lonely, and stressed, I realize I am really missing the comfort of my band…