Seven Year Ache

Seven Year Ache

I heard Rosanne Cash’s “Seven Year Ache” on the radio the other day, and it killed me how good it was. Rosanne wrote the song, and Rodney Crowell produced it^[1] (who I hope to meet at the 2010 Songwriter’s Symposium in Austin next month). It’s just a phenomenal song that holds up just as well today as it did when it when it hit #1 on the country charts in 1981. Right off the bat it subtly and gently beats you over the head with a killer melody coming out of the warmest 80′s synth you’ve ever heard (are you responsible for this, Rodney? If so, NICE). Right out of that, the verse comes in, and Rosanne nails the colorful and yet somehow vague lyrics with such swagger that you’ve floated into the heart-wrenching chorus before even knowing it. One of the things I think is so great about this song, other than the melody and the performance, is that you know exactly what the song is about from the title, but the verses dance all around “You #$%* cheated on me, you $%#*!” without spelling things out so specifically. Instead, broad strokes of scenes and situations are allowed to float around in your brain, allowing the listener to patch the story together.

When I started off working on this one, I was going to sing it myself (like I normally do), so I transposed it down (or up) to E from C, because that’s where my voice was comfortable. But then my wife, Dixie, volunteered, so we tried it out. The vocal is at the very top of her range, but she pulled it off. The quality of her voice is way different than Rosanne’s take, of course, and due to the key it seems a little high for the song, but I’m proud of her for knocking it out.  It was fun to play the role of producer for someone else, too. I played on the midi piano a LOT on this one, from the synths to the rhythm piano to the drum sequencing, and I feel like I’m understanding it better than ever. Inverting chords and playing in different keys and such. Then I tracked bass, guitar and vocals and a little lead-ish guitar to fill in for where the steel solo was in the original.

Mixing is still a challenge for me. I don’t have monitors or even a pair of decent headphones, so this was done mostly through crappy headphones and some Dell computer speakers. Atrocious, I know, but it’s what I have for now. I did try to work with this Redline Monitor plug-in that I found to try to compensate for doing headphone mixes, and going back and forth between using that and not using it helped a bit, I think, but it’s still muddy and too bright in places, among other issues. Overall, I’m happy with how this study turned out, though.