Monthly Archives : December 2014

The 12 weeks of Fate Line (aka Fate Line Fridays) – Seventeen Years

Seventeen Years is another one of the older songs on the record – written a few years ago during a trip to Virginia and very much influenced in contentby my time spent living in Ohio. In part the song is an homage to those 17 Year cicadas that emerged outside my home up on Angel Ridge the summer my daughter was born (an allegory to cycles of life for bug and human!)  The song is also a recounting (with much artistic license) of a moment in the life of a teen mom I represented in Athens when working as a State Public Defender on child welfare cases.

We wanted the song to have a kind of epic quality, the 17 year cicada emergence is biblical in its scope …. So in addition to Bob Foster’s mighty Hammond parts, Dr John’s gritty loud electric, and the maiden voyage of my mandolin playing in the bridge, I am most chuffed that Jeremy Darby helped us loop and integrate a recording of the male cicada’s mating call into the start and finish of the song – that and a cameo appearance in the outro by Lord David Attenborough no less! The famous British naturalist, unbeknownst to himself at the time, conveniently quoted a lyric from my song in his BBC documentary on this most extraordinary insect which demanded sampling: “…after seventeen long years.”

Simon says:

Yes, we did try and make it a bit Ben Hur-esque!
There’s rather bombastic drums and a certain sword and sandal swagger to the whole affair! On the big riff that starts the tune everyone piles in: Hammond, heavy distorted guitars, bass, drums… Then Jon’s violin emulates the two note mating call of the male cicada , who has seventeen years of pent up
ardor to release!!

It’s a great a song to play live… And I wanted to capture that energy in the studio. It feels unifying and defiant… The heart wrenching struggle and catharsis of this young mother. As the song comes out of the bridge into the third verse there’s a long drone note on Hammond, Bass and Jon’s tremolando violin that supports the mother’s call:

“She’ll use her strong new voice to call her one true love back home,
He may hear it rise above the cacophony so grand.
But it ain’t no siren’s song, the jagged rocks reduced to sand,
And after seventeen long years he returns to take her hand…”

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The 12 Weeks of Fate Line (aka Fate Line Fridays) – Making the Fruit Fall

Off on our hols on the 401 headed for Montreal and turning my mind to the 4th track on our album, Making the Fruit Fall. This is the one co-write on the record – a joint effort in words and music with my bandmate, producer and partner Simon Law. For my part, I was asked to flesh out Simon’s lyrical idea “make or breaking it down, shaking the tree, making the fruit fall, whys and wherefores fall to the floor.” What unfolded was a look at what happens when you summon up the strength to do just that – shake the tree. Annoyingly (as pointed out by John) Peter Gabriel had already claimed that title so the song became the result of shaking the tree – Making the Fruit Fall. The tune was a welcomed challenge for me to sing – Simon’s jumping and multi-noted melody took me away from my own approach to melody writing. The octave leaps capture the ear and evoke the fragility of courage. The melody compliments the message.

Simon says:
This song originated from a melody, which kept coming back to me and stays intact in the song as the vocal melody. On a street car ride downtown the words Jen quoted earlier came to me fully formed. The song developed from that – Jen, a more prolific lyricist than I, developed the song and added the music for the bridge. The chords, harmony instrumentation, developed over many weeks of playing the song with the band. It’s one of the first songs we did with Jon playing mandolin. And the harmonies created by Jon’s mando and John’s acoustic guitar with Jen’s guitar part layered on top creates a delicate weaving quality which only breaks in the bridge.

The good doctor says:
This song has a familiar descending chord progression that you will hear variations of in everything from Pachelbel’s Canon in D to A Whiter Shade of Pale (and Fate Line for that matter). In rehearsals, Jonathan and I would sometimes play the melody of any handy tune that fits in with this progression.

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The 12 Weeks of Fate Line (aka Fate Line Fridays) – He Once

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