2nd week of the SAC 2016 songwriting challenge!  The challenge for this week was to write a story song that included conflict and resolution.  Wednesday was the time slot, and I had had this idea of writing about the emotional trajectory of the “empty nest”, so much more painful than the bird imagery.  I wanted to capture the awe of first being a parent, the hopes and excitement we have, the pride we have in our children, and the devastation when that relationship unravels.  In terms of the conflict and resolution themselves, I felt the conflicts of childhood are different from the conflicts of teenage/early adult years, and so I structured the song into two more or less equal parts of three sections each – the kid section, the interaction section and the parent section, which I saw as setup (verse), conflict (prechorus-ish), resolution (chorus). I had half an hour before the session, so I changed up a few lyric ideas an decided on a title…. and got in the car.

John Jackson helped to demo it.  He played the guitars, the bass and the strings, and did the engineering, and I played the piano pads!  (this is a big deal for me!) and we started with drum loops – but most of the song is in 4/4 and the chorus changes between 12/8 and 4/4, and we didn’t have a lot of time.  Choosing drum loops that work together over a tempo change is tricky.  We did the recording with the drums in and took them out of the mix.  I think we did a pretty good sketch, you get the picture, but I think this song would have benefitted from being jammed out with a drummer, a bass player and a pianist, because I think we captured some things about the piece, but we missed the mark on others.  I also did not have a lot of writing time, so we’ll see how/if it evolves over time.  John and I will go back in again some other time with fresh ears.

So here is Love knows Everything

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