Music: Creating New, Revisiting the Past. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Whenever I start to wrap my brain around the idea of recording a new album, I'm always amazed at how a collection of seemingly unrelated songs and ideas somehow find a common thread.

As I gather whole songs, parts of songs, and ideas of songs together for a new album, I am interested to find out what story these songs want to tell. What shape will each give to the body of the album? Will these songs join hands and try to be born all at once, or will each one take it's time teasing me with a melody here, a lyric there? What themes and ideas are worth exploring further? How will this album support the others?

A lot of people have asked me which of my own albums is my favorite. This isn't an easy question for me to answer. I look at them all now in hindsight with 20/20 vision. "Oh. That's why I had to write this song; It was to get to this other song." Each album at the time of recording and assembling represented something different and important to me at that point of my life.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. If you have listened to my albums (Inside, Braver Days, Merry White Tree in the Night, and The Elm Tree) and have an opinion about which one you relate to the most, I'd love to hear it. Also, which one did you put away for a season and have recently revisited? Why does it fit in your life at this moment?

Here are links to each of my album pages:
Inside
Braver Days
The Elm Tree
Merry White Tree in the Night

I'm excited to hear what you think.

It's interesting how you can discover new things when you revisit important music from your past. My son and I have been in a Killers phase lately. I am revisiting and my son is just being introduced to the emotional honesty of Brandon Flowers. We are having a great time exploring what songs and albums speak to us.

I hope you'll have a great time too.

Kirby

Keep It Inside

Behind the song:
In the beginning, I tried to force this song to be something it wasn’t. I let it sit for a few weeks and then I’d pull it out again. I knew it was important, I just couldn’t see what it wanted to be or what it was trying to teach me. I’d put it away, rediscover it, put away, rediscover. This pattern went on for a year and a half. Until one day I had just finished reading The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. I thought about the people in my life who give. I thought about my mom giving even when she had nothing left.  I thought about my neighbor who was giving so much.  Both of them would give and never give up.  I  listened to a David Wilcox song, "For Real." Feeling inspired I went to the guitar knowing the story I needed to tell. The song opened up its arms and let me bring it to life.

I wanted words to describe the smell of the leaves, the crisp autumn air, and the woods. In Fahrenheit 451, there is a moment when Guy Montag is hiding under leaves in a wood. Bradbury (the king of igniting my senses) describes the leaves as having a cinnamon scent. I loved the way that description captured not only the scent, but also the crisp feel of autumn.

Musically, we wanted something to be subtly present from the beginning of the song. A kind of haunting melody that would at times compliment and at others stray from the
main melody. It never defines the song, but it is present throughout.

Even when life is difficult, we can find joy in knowing that we can grow. We have faith that the bare branches in winter will be green again in the spring. Difficulties challenge us. They make us stronger. 

In the studio:
We decided that strings would be the appropriate voice of the haunting melody. The melodies we came up with were beautiful but not quite what we wanted. We looked to other songs that we had recorded together and came across the file "Alleluia" from my Christmas album, Merry White Tree in the Night. "Yeah. Something like this." I told Nathan that both songs are in the key of E so we pulled some of the string files over to "Keep It Inside" to use for reference. As we were piecing cellos here, violins there, and the full quartet in the spaces in between, we realized how well the two songs fit. We started placing entire phrases in sections. There are times when the two songs fit perfectly and others when the strings stray slightly from the melody. We had stumbled upon a magic moment that we couldn’t have otherwise duplicated. We would have written the new melody within the musical theory boundaries that typically "works" melodically in a song. Just like the lyrics, choosing the instrumentation for this song wasn’t up to us. This song knew what it wanted to be. We got out of the way and listened.

Writing this song helped me process events in my life and also opened my eyes to how I live it. I need to listen to who I really am and stop trying to force myself to be something I’m not. Life is more rewarding when we get out of our own way. 

Lyrics:
Leaves are dry and marigold beneath our feet
Above our heads a subtle blue
We lay in silence so this silence is our bed
Cinnamon and earth we breathe
We breathe
And I keep it all inside

We climb these branches bending to our weight
I find the safest way into your arms
If I’m doing well you’re pulling
more than they would know
Who could ever fell this tree?
Of you and me

I keep it all inside
No one sees the beauty in an ordinary life
The days are turning into sleepless nights
But I keep it all inside

I can walk this silence with a brave face
So no one has to feel the weight I feel
This isn’t giving up it’s knowing
when to let it go
I would never give up on you.
I forgive you

These limbs are bare now
With no signs of green
The promise of a new day
Blossoms underneath

I keep it all inside
Flowers of the mourning paint an ordinary life
The days are turning into sleepless nights
But I keep it all inside

Kirby Heyborne