Lefty Frizzell’s “That’s the Way Love Goes” has been on my list to learn for a long time. My father-in-law, being a pretty serious music fan, suggested it among a handful of others shortly after he caught wind of this blog. The song was written by Lefty himself, along with Sanger D. Shafer, was included on Willie Nelson’s Frizzell tribute album, To Lefty From Willie, and won Merle Haggard a Grammy for his vocal performance of it on his 1983 cut of the song.

The song’s structure is unusual by today’s standards: verse-chorus-instrumental-chorus, and even the verse and the chorus are basically the same melody. And the spoken lines would be way out of place on contemporary country radio, too. But even as a song from a different time, this one is a classic. Without intentionally thinking about it, you’d probably just be singing along and enjoying it rather than noticing that it doesn’t fit today’s radio format.

“The 77 writers from all over North America who voted in the 10th annual Country Music Critics Poll named [Brad] Paisley Artist of the Year and Male Vocalist of the Year and cited his latest release, American Saturday Night, as the year’s second best album.” – Geoffrey Himes in Nashville Scene.

Well, dang. I guess that justifies learning another Paisley song. I considered learning “Welcome to the Future,” which reached #2 on Billboard’s Country Songs chart^[1], a while back, but didn’t want to over-Paisley this blog. But it’s been a while now, and I think the song deserves its attention. Written by Brad and consistent hit-writer Chris DuBois^[2], the song takes a macroscopic look at the way technology, globalism and race-relations have evolved over the past 50 years. Particularly worth noting is the third verse, which paints racism’s ugly picture with the image of a cross burning in a (presumably black) kid’s front yard for asking out a (presumably white) girl. I think this is interesting because it’s on the country airwaves not only condemning overt racism, but also condemning a quieter symptom of lingering racism: disapproving of interracial couples.

For all of its merits, there are still a couple things that bug me about this song. Specifically, there are two lines. The first is maybe just a personal dislike of calling things “a revolution” due to overuse of the term, so Every day’s a revolution bugs me. But then if I think of the other, more mundane meaning (which I don’t think was really intended as its mundanity runs opposite of the song’s theme), I kind of like it, because it’s true: the earth makes one revolution on its axis every day. The second thing that bugs me is that Martin Luther King Jr. is referred to as Martin Luther. This makes me nuts because those are two distinct historical figures, but since the context clears up who’s who, I guess it’s okay. And I apologize if those pseudo-critiques brought you too far into my world of hearing things literally.

Musically, this song was crafted to showcase Paisley’s guitar-slinging between just about every line, and as a result, the verse structure is surprisingly sparse by contemporary country hit standards. It was pretty hard to get the phrasing right when learning this one. And the “Hey”s in the chorus and bridge overlap, so I had to do this one as a multi-track. Instead of filling the whole thing out with bass and fake drums, though, I kept it to acoustic guitar, a lead and some back-up vocals (on the “Hey”s) and then a synth, to bring in one of Frank Rogers’ notable production choices the Paisley version. I really like the electro-sounding synth in the original recording as a nod to the concept of “the future.”

It’s been a while since my last post, but I finally found some time now that I’ve recovered from the holiday mania, and found some motivating inspiration in the new Lady Antebellum single, “American Honey.” One the whole, I’d rate the song at about a 7 out of 10, but if I could, I’d give the chorus melody a 12.

I was driving to lunch one day last week, and after hearing it on the radio, was crushed that I couldn’t just hear it again. This is one of the few songs that I’ve heard recently that has actually got me to go buy the song from iTunes for a whopping $1.29. The concept and verses seem a little lacking on first listen; in a way they sound like a rehash of Tom Petty’s “Free Falling” (and a million other songs) in that they’re describing a good American girl. But in the third verse the song takes a reflective twist, revealing that the singer is that girl, later in life, which is a redeeming payoff for the song. However, if the chorus hadn’t been so perfect, I would probably have changed the station before ever getting to the story’s payoff at all.

Again in the chorus, it’s not even the lyrics that I love, it’s the melody. Jason Blume makes a case that it’s not the lyrics that make a hit, it’s the melody. And he’s right. Of course the lyrics have to be great, too, but without the melody, no one would buy the record. Honestly, the title and hook lyric “American Honey” kind of irks me, to be perfectly honest, but it’s catchy. And it’s smashed into your head at the end of not only every chorus, but also every verse, so you’ll never forget it, and won’t have any trouble finding the song on iTunes.

According to iTunes, “American Honey” was written by Cary Barlowe, Hillary Lindsey and Shane Stevens. I think they might have listened to a lot of Huey Lewis when writing this one… listen for it in the chorus. Whatever they did, it worked.

I made another multi-track recording of this, mostly because I started with a midi piano track so I could transpose easily and find the right key for me to sing in, with a drum track to make it easier to stay in time. And then I added the harmonies, so I figured I should finish it out with bass and guitar. It’s not perfect, of course, but I got tired of working on it, so here you go, even if I am a bit flat in a couple places, and even if it’s weird for a male to be singing this song.

I find it interesting how a good number of country songs have Christian themes, but they aren’t constrained to being gospel. Instead, they qualify as country. Maybe I don’t understand where the line is drawn or what qualifies as gospel, but I always wonder about that when I hear references like “please lord” or “say a prayer” in the lyrics of a country or pop song. And in this case, half the song is a prayer.

Categorization aside, the simplicity of it is just beautiful. Just about every time I hear this song on the radio, I tear up at least a little, and I don’t even have kids!

“All I Ask for Anymore” was written by a songwriting power duo consisting of Casey Beathard and Tim James^[1], who both have a stable of previous cuts and hits. The lyrics in the song do a great job of being so straight-forward you don’t really even have to think about them, with one notable exception of some ingenious foreshadowing in the first verse. In the singer’s list of smaller things he’s prayed for in the past, one of them is “one pink line when Katie said, ‘I’m late.’”

Of course Trace Adkins’ vocal performance is killer, and the producer’s use of a guitar in Drop-D tuning really brings out and echos the low baritone in his voice, too. And as always, I love all the pedal steel. Currently this one is #15 on the Billboard Country Songs chart, but I bet it’ll keep climbing for a bit.

I did my best live guitar-vocal of this song, up a step from where Trace sings it, but it’s still crazy low!

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.