Happily Every After – Song and Production Stories
After I selected the eleven tracks for Happy To Be Here, I was left with about five tracks that fell outside of the album’s circle of songs. Below I will try to explain a little about the how and why of these choices. Once mixing was completed for Happy To Be Here in May of 2002, no one would make a firm commitment to put out the album. One offer came from Vibro-phonic Recordings to release the best song from the album as a single with some other material. For a little while I considered High Tower and some other songs for this release, but still had my heart set on releasing the album as a whole. I came up with this alternative offer – five totally unique songs from the same sessions, but not from the album. Luckily, Vibro-phonic were immediately interested. In the meantime, The Bus Stop Label - who had initially passed on Happy To Be Here - approached me to release that album. The story ended Happily Ever After with two releases planned instead of just one. So, from September to December 2002 I made a few trips to the studio to wrap up production on these five songs for Vibro-phonic. These are considerably less polished productions than what is featured on Happy To Be Here – but they still carry the mood of that album in places.
TILL I MET YOU
This song was written towards the end of the Happy To Be Here sessions when I was looking for a song to fill out what I considered the second side of that album. I wrote Friend Of Mine around the same time and that ended up in place of Till I Met You. This song owes a great debt to the Hollies, of whom I am obviously a huge fan. Musically it was recorded in just a few minutes by Ric Menck and myself. Dave Nolte’s bass and my magic harpsichord were later additions. For those keeping score Till I Met You would have come before or after Now had it made it onto the album.
MAKE IT UP TO YOU
Make It Up To You was also known as Give It All To You, Million Dollar Movie and one or two other things as I spent years searching for a set of lyrics to fit the music. In the end I settled for this set, which is not to say that I don’t have fond memories of the struggle. Dave Amels played Brian Kehew’s Pianet and I am again playing my Rickenbacker 12-string.
MAGIC HARPSICHORD
Magic Harpsichord is the kind of song I really enjoyed writing for these sessions, and had He Can Fly not materialized out of thin air, Magic Harpsichord would surely have been on the album. The song tells the story of my Baldwin Electric Harpsichord, which is black and red with wheels as the Lucite top reveals. I paid dearly for this recording session as it entailed me (and Brian Kehew) moving the magic harpsichord from my house to the studio causing a strain on my back (and more specifically my sciatic nerve) that keeps me in pain to this very day. Yes, I have suffered for my art, but the Baldwin (which I painstakingly restored, restrung and tuned all on my own) never sounded better.
THE STAY AT HOME SCENE
This was actually written and demoed for A Beautiful Story. I remember standing singing this song and making my first demo in a miserable little cluttered room. Surprisingly, that is the same place where I now sit and write these notes (and where I have written and recorded dozens of songs). My perspective has totally changed and I literally thank the heavens every day for letting me be where I am. I finally figured out how to make things work and that is what Happy To Be Here is all about. This song is however about loss of friendship and a lot of bitterness, hence its exclusion from the album. Nevertheless, the backwards guitar (which is actually my Gibson J45 acoustic put through a small amp that had a wobbly vibrato) sounds great to me today.
I’M GONNA SAY GOODBYE
Perhaps the progenitor of the songs I wrote for What’s It All About?, I’m Gonna Say Goodbye is one of those “instant” compositions. Brian Kehew came up with the idea of holding on the D at the end and later we went raga with the addition of a Ragini box that I bought (an Indian drone machine actually).