Now here's one that in my mind comes really close to being pretty good, but then in the end stumbles pretty badly. Most of the elements here should add up to awesome, but they don't quite gel. Part of that is because I tried a whole bunch of stuff along the way which I decided I didn't like and had to start that part again. One thing that really broadcasts as "off" is the wiggly timing, which is a big bummer in the summer (technically it's not fall yet as I write this); I was making a drum loop out of something really cool, but it wasn't dead on the beat as I cut it. Or so I thought, and I played a lot of the tracks trying to compensate, until, late in the game, I realized I was just hearing something wrong. But by that point it was too late to replay all the parts, and my mistake had magnified and compounded itself for hours, and... well, hell. Hopefully you can tell that my heart really was in it... I love this song.
The most interesting aspect of this, and something into which too much time went in and of itself, is the debut of my 13-string guitar. It really only has 12 strings, but it has one note, a super-high B, that a 12-string doesn't have, hence the name. I ordered a whole load of .007 strings in order to outfit my Rick 12 that way, but they inevitably break just shy of being tuned to a true B (and I do mean just shy of it; every single one of the first six I tried went well past B flat and most of them actually made it to the true note before self-destructing). After wasting those six, though, I realized what a moron I was being... all I had to do was glance at my acoustic 12-string, which has been permanently capo'ed on the 2nd fret for many years, to realize that I only had to get the string to A and then slap a capo on it. Not ideal and certainly not a proposition I'd like to bust out for a live gig, but it worked. But even that I managed to bungle, by choosing to replace the harmonica solo (don't have a harp in the right key) with a mandolin line. Yeah, good choice when you're trying to show off a new high string sound to steamroll over it with the highest-register stringed instrument there is. But there you go. The 13-string will be back, though... I like what it does.
Personnel: Rex
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