Finally a new song! Long Way Home…

This week Long Way Home is getting released on all streaming platforms. As email subscribers you have already had access to it for a month now but from March 24 it has been available to all. In prepping the song for release, Spotify makes you go through a process called "pitching" so that you can (hopefully) get the song placed on some of their more widely listened to playlists. This is what I said in the pitch:

The inspiration for the song was to use a series of vignettes to tell a larger story and highlight a deeper point, from an “ordinary” scene with a homeless person and two passersby, to a Shakespeare-quoting spouse fumbling his way to an expression of love for his lover that is completely misunderstood. The bridge aims to evoke questions about why we make the choices we do – to trust or not trust, to love or not love. 

That is actually the short version because there was a word limit. In the longer version I had told how the first idea for the song came while listening to Paul Simon’s Slip Slidin Away (there were just so many excellent songs in the 70‘s). In that song he presents a few small lyrical snapshots that leave you wondering, “What exactly is going on here? What is he saying?” 

So, in the first verse I was experimenting with the notion that there exist in everyday life little heavens and little hells that eventually wind themselves up into bigger ones. In this little hell a man feels burning judgment from a girl who hasn't intended any judgment at all. She has simply created a little heaven by reaching across a relational barrier that the man wants left in place.

In the second verse, you find a couple running headlong into another barrier. 

You might remember from your high school English class Shakespeare's Sonnet 130, My Mistress‘ Eyes are Nothing Like the Sun. I remember vividly when Mrs. Freeman presented it to our class because at first glance it sounds like a love song gone horribly wrong, or maybe a modern-day “dis track.” A memorable line: "In some perfume there is more delight / Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks."

Yeah, what a player that Shakespeare guy was.

But I also remember the point of that lesson. Shakespeare was reacting to the shallow inauthenticity of love poems that had preceded his own. Instead of inflated clichés Shakespeare was taking a shot at being real – and concluding that he loved his lovers “reality” far more than any false front. 

The lady in verse 2 of Long Way Home isn’t having it though. For reasons unexplored, what her lover intends as the highest compliment just sounds like derision to her. 

It is perhaps a fool’s errand to try to tread in the footsteps of a songwriting giant like Paul Simon (never mind Bill Shakespeare!), but go check out the new song and to see what you think. 

We’ve been talking about putting out a full-length album since before covid started and since things got more or less back on track the plan had been to release the whole thing right about now.

But two things transpired to alter that plan. First, the modern-day music-marketing gurus tell us that NOBODY simply puts out a full 10-song album all at once anymore. That's because attention spans today tend to be shorter and though a few songs from your long full-length album might get attention, the whole thing will more than likely be quickly forgotten.

So these days the pattern tends to be to release singles in 3 to 5 week cycles until the whole album is out, sometimes bunching a few together near the end.

That turned out to be more than welcome news for us due to the second reason, which was essentially that we had nowhere near 10 songs ready for a full album!

Turns out that studio production costs a lot more and takes a lot more time than you might originally think it would. But we have three that are full-on ready to go and releasing those three should provide us with enough time to complete the rest.

In terms of measuring progress, after two months of working on this, we’ve gone from 40 listeners a month on Spotify to 1720 today. For the mathematicians that is 4300% growth. That feels like a good start to the year, and lots to build on. Thank you for being a part of that. 

And Simon and I should probably say thanks to Mick for pausing his studies to pursue this dream. He has changed our view about how to go about engaging with people beyond just live shows, and seems convinced he can make a career out of this thing. I can get behind youthful enthusiasm, having lost some of my own supply .