RIGHT BRAIN/LEFT BRAIN: Sherwood





Untitled Document



THIS MONTH: SHERWOOD‘S "GROUND BENEATH MY FEET"

(sherwoodmusic.net)



WITH DAN KOCH (GUITAR)

A DIFFERENT LIGHT

["Ground"] was written when I was visiting my fiancee in Seattle… What’s interesting about this song is there was a slow version and a fast version that we had demoed out, and we kind of liked both, but neither of them felt complete, so we sort of re-weaved it. It starts with the soft intro, and then it kicks in and kinda stays loud for the rest of the song. That really shouldn’t work; usually it doesn’t. As we were talking about it, I was thinking, "This is not going to work, but we might as well try it." But surprisingly, it really works. That song, of all the songs on the record, has the weirdest structure-it has the least amount of repeated melodies, the tempos are different and it’s the most start-stop-start-stop energy-wise-but it totally works, and I have no idea why. The song is kind of a mystery to me, even though we spent so much time working on it and I know it so well.

SONG IN MY HEAD

The initial idea was kind of a Coldplay-like thing, like that song "Lovers In Japan" off their new record, with a kind of rollicking beat like that. And then it was the first part, with the piano-that melody and chord progression was going over this beat-and it just sounded like a Coldplay rip-off. It didn’t really work. Then we rewrote it with the second verse, and it was good, but felt incomplete and kind of short. So then we took the earlier part, stripped it down and slowed it down… There are two verses that are totally different from each other, you’ve got a bridge that is nowhere else in the song, you’ve got two different tempos, and somehow the whole thing works. It’s really surprising, and it’s awesome.

LEARN TO SING

[For the vocal breakdown], that’s where you’re playing through something, whether in the room, or in your head, or in a demo and you just go, "This is weird, but I think it’s what this song needs right here." It was just an idea that I had, where I was like, "Man, I think this just needs a Kansas moment. I don’t know why it needs that-it shouldn’t need that-but I think it does." So we tried it on the demo, then had Brad [Wood] kind of produce that to sound like the vocal breakdown in [Kansas’] "Carry On My Wayward Son," just kind of compressing the vocals and putting a little chorus on them, giving it that ’70s vibe. [Laughs.] It’s one of those songs where when I think about it or talk about it, I laugh because we just tried so many ridiculous things that should’ve come out so cheesy. Maybe it’s because of the lyrics that they don’t; it holds it all together.

THE TOWN THAT YOU LIVE IN

We were staying at the house next door to Brad [Wood, producer]-just his neighbor. They happened to meet while repairing a fence, got to talking, found out he’s a producer, and [his neighbor] is a music therapist with a $20,000 grand piano in her backyard studio. So Brad actually ran 60 feet of cable from his control room to the studio in the back of the house we were staying at, and we tracked on her piano. All the cables for the mics and the headphone extenders were going all across from one yard to the next. She was nice enough to say, "Anytime you want to record this piano, go for it." We were like, "Um, okay." [Laughs.] Brad says it’s one of the nicest pianos he’s seen in his life, so of course we’re gonna use it.

GENTLEMAN OF PROMISE

Specifically with this song, one of the reasons we thought it might work is through a good part of the song, there’s that kind of military snare roll that Joe [Greenetz] plays. We kind of got that idea from some of the mewithoutYou stuff, and Brad produced their previous two records. His drum tones on those records are some of our favorite drum tones, so we knew he’d be able to get a really good drum sound for that part, which is really carrying that whole verse, and that sort of re-intro part. That’s the big thing Brad brought to that song-just getting those drums to sound so good and fresh and pounding, without sounding sampled or anything.

THE BEST IN ME

It was one of the earlier ideas. We hashed through 85 song ideas to get this album, and I think "Ground" was in the first 30 or so. It was kind of one of those early ideas that wasn’t quite working, but because it came early, we had time to revisit it and sort of re-think it, which is how we ended up with the version we have now.



WITH NATE HENRY (VOCALS/BASS)

NOT GONNA LOVE

When I was listening to the music for "Ground," it had this dark, intense feeling to it. Dan [Koch] wrote the line "Ground beneath my feet," and I just built the entire song around that one line. I felt like it was the catalyst… Younger bands mostly write love songs; I guess that’s the only powerful thing that happens to you when you’re 19 or 20 years old, in a band writing songs. But you know, you get up there, approaching your 30s, and you have a little more life experience, so you want to try to channel that. If you’re gonna write a love song, why not try and tell a story about something, so I had this idea of it being sort of a soldier who’s dying.

WE DO THIS TO OURSELVES

Every time I watch a WWII movie or in history in college, you see soldiers who are dying, and it seems as if there’s something they’re dying for. And you come home-you see the famous WWII photo of the guy kissing his girl in the streets of NYC-so there’s just this powerful connection of "If I’m going to die at war, I’m going to die for something." So I had this idea of a soldier who has this flashback of this great memory of him at the beach with his wife, and having this goodbye moment, like, "I’ve got to go to war. I’m leaving," and then he’s on the beaches, getting blown away. It’s a contrast of one of the greatest moments in his life, and one of the worst.

YOU’RE LIKE A GHOST

He’s having this argument with the woman he loves while he’s about to die, even though she’s not really there. There’s this moment where he’s arguing with her, like, "Why did you let me leave? Why did you let me go? Why did I have to do this?" The line, "I look around and see the ground beneath my feet," is sort of this moment where his life flashes before his eyes, and he kind of just stops and looks down, and he just knows he’s going to get killed any second. So it’s kind of a D-Day song, but not really.

NEVER READY TO LEAVE

The intro of the song, where it gets heavy, is the soldier on the boat, in the water, kind of knowing it’s coming, and he’s got about 10 minutes left to live. Like, what do you think about with your last 10 minutes? Most people don’t know when it’s their last 10 minutes. I try to channel that-put myself in those shoes and think about it. I actually spent a long time writing the lyrics, up until the last day we recorded it. I’ve been writing and rewriting it for months, trying to get it right. I tried to avoid keywords like "war" and "battle," so it took a long time to say what I wanted to say, without it being so clear-cut what the song was about.

THOSE BRIGHT LIGHTS

There was one part that Dan [Koch] and I ended up passing back and forth and finishing it: "I hear the gates swing wide/Tonight I’ll have seen both sides," is kind of the idea of the gates of hell and the gates of heaven, and kind of hoping he’ll see the gates of heaven, but he’ll have to go through the gates of hell to get there. It’s this weird twist; the whole song is kind of like that. Heaven and hell, life and death… I’m trying to tie it all into one song. It was really the hardest song to write on the record; it’s one of those ones that took two minds to conquer.

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LINER NOTES


SONG: "Ground Beneath My Feet" ALBUM: QU WRITTEN: June 2008 RECORDED: April 2009, Sea Grass Studios, Valley Village, California PRODUCED BY: Brad Wood

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